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Is "Left" Vs. "Right" Hard-coded Into Your Brain?
New submitter kyjellyfish writes "Research published in the journal PLOS ONE, suggests that your parents 'Left
or 'Right' party affiliations are not the only factor at work shaping a person's political identity. Differences in opinion between 'Lefties' and 'Righties' may reflect specific physiological processes. In research performed over 10 years ago, brain scans showed that London cab drivers' gray matter grew larger to help them store a mental map of the city."
From the article: "Other scans have shown that brain regions associated with risk and uncertainty, such as the fear-processing amygdala, differ in structure in liberals and conservatives. And different architecture means different behavior. Liberals tend to seek out novelty and uncertainty, while conservatives exhibit strong changes in attitude to threatening situations. The former are more willing to accept risk, while the latter tends to have more intense physical reactions to threatening stimuli."
So what the article is saying is that conservatives are pussies. Gotchya.
I was a hard-core conservative a few years ago, now I'm a hard-core liberal.
Did my brain rewire itself?
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
I was a hard-core conservative a few years ago, now I'm a hard-core liberal.
Did my brain rewire itself?
Nope, your brain is just fucked up; "hard-core" leanings toward any political party these days is insane.
Nope, you're just bipartisan.
So how does this work in a traditionally free country like America, where conservatives favor freedom of the individual, with its inherent risk that an individual might fail, while the liberals want the government to guarantee the health safety and happiness of every human being and remove all risk from life?
Perhaps it is explained that what the conservatives fear is not risk, but loss of control. American conservatives are afraid to place their fates into the hands of the elected experts on human happiness.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
It's not hardwired: If it were, we'd be able to do these scans at birth or an early age and find similar patterns. But we don't. Which means the brain's structure changes in order to specialize in certain thought and behavior patterns. The fact that this applies to politics as well as, say, geospatial, tasks, should be absolutely no surprise.
It's disengenuous to suggest these things are hard-wired because they imply they cannot be changed. Except they can: I've known many people who, after experiencing a significant emotional event, altered their politics, religious affiliation, and even base personality traits. The human brain is exceptionally malleable. This study only offers a snapshot at a particular point in time and suggests that if certain structural properties are present, the thinking pattern is likely to be of a certain type. It does not say whether that structure was present before, after, or the extent to which it can be changed, and if so, how quickly.
It's like taking a photograph of a car driving down the road and assuming that it's on that road, and only that road, forever.
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There is a whole bunch of evidence for Neuroplasticity (your brain rewiring itself due to input, behaviour changes and illness), so it is possible.
I have to admit that a big part of my connservatism comes from fear. I was bullied a lot as a kid. And it wasn't unsual for the bullying to be multiple people against me. Now that I'm an adult, I don't want to be bullied anymore, by anyone. And I especially don't want to be placed in a posiition where I have no recourse against the unreasonable demands of others that are backed up by violence.
The biggest threat I see in this regard is the government. I mean, I need a minimal level of government to enforce the law that says no one else can use force against me. But if the government does just that, then I can just walk away from anyone else who wants to harass me. Microsoft can push a lousy OS, but I don't have to buy it. NBC, CBS, and ABC can produce hours and hours of lousy reality TV programming, but I don't have to watch.
Only the government remains as being able to come to where I live or work, tell me what to do, and use force to back it up. If there is some question about whether what I did is ok, then at best I get a trial where the same poor social skills and poor persuasion skills that made me a victim in school are likely to make me a victim of a lawyer and a jury.
Perhaps one might argue that because we live in a democracy, the laws will be just and good and I shouldn't mind following them. That's true if the laws are minimal. But if the laws are numerous and easily made, they are likely to be based on the whims of the public and whatever mood their in. Part of the reason I didn't fit in at school is that I like different things. Chances are that I won't have the same tastes and passions as the majority of voters. And did I mention my poor persuasive skills? I won't be the one who is able to get a majority of voters to see things my way.
I want a government that will protect my rights and the rights of those around me, and do very little beyond that because whenever the government does more, my freedom to be different diminishes, and the freedom to be different is the very core of all freedoms.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Oh look, it's news reinforcing the false premise of the two party system.
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"Liberals" (in the modern US sense of progressives / left wing) are enormously fearful and risk averse: they want governmental protection against unemployment, against medical expenses, against global warming, against guns, and lots of other things. Granted, the nature of these fears are seemingly more rational and plausible than those of conservatives (who seem to fear anything from the wrath of God to being tempted into homosexuality by gay marriage), but they are still driven by fear.
The only group who isn't driven by fear is libertarians, people who actually have trust in their ability to make a living somehow and survive in an uncertain and changing world, independent of God or government help. Libertarians are often linked with "conservatives", but they are more accurately described as classical liberals.
Is there treatment for that? Or is the rubber room the only option?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I was a hard-core conservative a few years ago, now I'm a hard-core liberal.
Did my brain rewire itself?
It's more likely that your definition if conservative and liberal changed.
My people call themselves conservative or liberal, while meaning totally different things.
Infact, the original meaning isn't left right :
the normal opposite of "conservative" would be "progessive" ( sticking to what's known to work versus taking the risk of trying new things ).
the normal opposite of "liberal" , would be authoritarian ( liberalism favoring more freedom , whereas authoritarianism favoring less freedom ( more control by state ) ). Although there is also the distinction between liberal (state should ensure freedom ) and libertarian ( state should be minimized, thus providing more freedom)
Left : more personal freedom, less economic freedom.
Right : more economic freedom, less personal freedom.
For example, you could be a left-leaning conservative liberal, which would mean that you value freedom, with emphasis on personal freedom, but prefer to stick to tried and true policies for achieving this ( just an example, I'm not saying you are ) .
Slipping shoelaces ?
One of the top conservative magazines in the country, the National Review, has an editorial policy of supporting drug legalization.
You have a point on gays. That is one of the few areas where conservative rhetoric has been very out of line with the general conservative philosophy. The marriage thing isn't really an issue of freedom - nothing stops gays from having religious ceremonies and making lifetime commitments - it's more an issue of forcing others to agree that gay marriage is good, or at least to pretend to - for example note the recent lawsuits against a photographer and a cakemaker who refused to participate in a gay wedding. However the laws against sodomy were a violation of freedom and too many conservatives supported those laws. (though as a constitutional issue the laws were valid - the Supreme Court unsuprisingly screwed up again - but just because the Constution allows a state to make a law doesn't mean the statue should make that law.)
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Neither "hard-core conservative" nor "hard-core liberal" refer to any political party. Ideologies perhaps. You could equate Tea-Partiers to the former and Occupiers to the latter, but neither group appears to have much faith in their "designated party" from the 2-party system we've got. Liberals complain that Obama is perpetuating and strengthening heavily criticized policies from GWB. Meanwhile, the conservatives have been throwing their stalwarts (Arlen Spector, John McCain, and now Chuck Hagel, et al) under the bus for not being suitably uncompromising about their core ideologies. And the GOP is torn apart as their try to pander to this group while distancing themselves from nutjobs such as Todd Akin.
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Mod parent up. I wish we could count on our respective parties to uphold some core values. I don't vote for Democrats because I expect some return in the form of liberalization of government or society. Disappointment after disappointment has taught me not to do that. I vote for Democrats because I don't want more Scalias and Thomases deciding what the Constitution really means, and because I don't want the Bushes and Palins and Ryans and Romneys of the world pushing their crazy world views on us all.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Right : more economic freedom
Well...Maybe, if you happen to be a corporation.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
From the article Not by Twins Alone: Using the Extended Family Design to Investigate Genetic Influence on Political Beliefs
Variance components estimates of political and social attitudes suggest a substantial level of genetic influence, but the results have been challenged because they rely on data from twins only. In this analysis, we include responses from parents and nontwin full siblings of twins, account for measurement error by using a panel design, and estimate genetic and environmental variance by maximum-likelihood structural equation modeling. By doing so, we address the central concerns of critics, including that the twin-only design offers no verification of either the equal environments or random mating assumptions. Moving beyond the twin-only design leads to the conclusion that for most political and social attitudes, genetic influences account for an even greater proportion of individual differences than reported by studies using more limited data and more elementary estimation techniques. These findings make it increasingly difficult to deny that—however indirectly—genetics plays a role in the formation of political and social attitudes.
The article can be found here.
This is complex indeed.
Real political philosophy is not a one-dimensional "right" or "left". I know it is hard for some people to grasp, but you can't describe everything political on that stupid scale.
... since americans are among the most uninformed electorates on the planet today. The average american, and average slashdot poster is CLUELESS about politics.
The reality is america is totally hard right, obama would have been not long ago a moderate republican (which is hard right the rest of the world). So you have a bunch of clueless americans who are voting between basically what amounts to the same flavor of hard right ideology with little difference. Many americans then make a big stink about their uninformed political views and opinions.
Reality is the average american is too ignorant/stupid to have any kind of informed political view of america given the huge amount of propaganda that pervades their media and education system.
conservatives want you to take individual risk, but tell you exactly what you can and cant do
Incorrect. Conservatives are for individual risk, and ALSO states rights which are inherently letting people do what they want to do.
liberals on the other hand want you to live your live as free as possible
HA HA HA HA HO HE HO HA HA HA HO HE
Oh yeah, that's why they like regulation so much, because it grants you so much "freedom" - freedom from being able to choose anything but a "safe" path the government agrees is best for you.
No, liberals are the party of Control - always have been, always will be.
Until you figure that out you'll keep voting in people you think are making you more free while they turn the screws tighter each year.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
... seems to be wired for big-endian.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
You clearly wouldn't know "extreme left" if it bit you in the butt. What passes for "left" in the USA is the extreme right most everywhere else.
For instance, the Dutch VVD is the closest we get to you democrats, they are a RIGHT wing party. Left wing is the SP and they are socialists. Real socialists. In France there still are communist parties AND they have quite recently been part of governments (Miterand, I think was the last).
The Republicans are in EU terms, extreme right and with that I mean one step away from goose stepping.
A thing to remember is that for instance the French LOVE big government, to them it means the system is working. Which it more or less is. The Germans KNOW what to much freedom can lead to, they know that some censorship is a price to pay for being the most evil country on the face of the earth, starting WW3 would not be appreciated by the world and so they ban certain books and parties. And it works so well that when they copied from the BBC the idea of Germany's greatest German they were so not worried about their citizens they excluded Hitler from the nominees... who could ONLY be included in the first place because they allowed Austrians in the list of greatest Germans... some people never learn.
The US was founded by people who LEFT the rest of the world because they didn't agree with the local systems. The rest of the world is populated by those who didn't find the local system objectionable enough to leave. This is a major issue with migration, it is rarely an entire balanced population that moves but rather a subset of a "normal" balanced population.
A clear example of this is/was Australia. They got more men then women because more men then women emigrated to find their fortune. Could it be that if a migration stream mostly consisted of say puritans fleeing from a country where they were not free to prosecute would influence they new home land and make it different from their old land because the "rest" is missing?
Mind you, that could lead to some nasty thoughts... what happens to a group of people who were picked for their properties as slaves... what if the only people to migrate are the poor who couldn't make a success in their old country? A population build up of fortune seekers?
Nasty... but if you are willing to entertain the thought that migration populations are subsets of a "normal" population, then some issues can be explained quite easily (why the US is so puritan and gun loving for instance.)
Mind you, a co-worker from Chili was forced to go through a course teaching him about Holland... in the book it told him that in Holland family is not as important as in other countries... right... I know several people who live in the same street as their parents and their grandparents are only a few minutes away. My co-workers LEFT his family on another CONTINENT and in 4 years had visited them ONCE!
To who does family then matter more? THINK before you answer. In CHILI family might matter more BUT not to THIS particular Chilian person who didn't MIND not seeing his family for years!
An emigrant/immigrants is a SPECIAL person DIFFERENT from all others in his home land because he LEFT IT BEHIND!
The US is made out of emigrants and slaves and tiny amount of natives. The EU is made of natives and a tiny amount of immigrants (really right wingers, it is less then 5% and that is counting everyone whose grandfather wasn't born in the same EU country).
It explains a lot, if you are willing to think.
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And the government grants certain rights and responsibilities to heterosexual couples that do that by taking the simple step of registering the marriage. By the principle of equal treatment under the law how is it equal treatment to deny the same status to gays who make that lifetime commitment?
Unfortunately, marriage has many secular and economic implications that religious ceremonies and lifetime commitments do not in of themselves encode. For equal protection under the law, marriage (the legal institution) is necessary. People can wring their hands all they want about how homosexual unions may be legally equivalent to heterosexual marriage but, if the two should be identical legal constructs, it begs the question why different language should be needed to describe them. If not the word marriage, why not not simply reword all legislation with the more neutral 'civil union' as the norm and remove contentious words such as "marriage" altogether?
:)
Yes, I know I'm just setting it up for the "omg teh gays r destroying ur marriage, see!! see!!" response.
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i don't see anything about the rat race in his post. The deal is simple - if it's your choice to be more social and grind less at work, accept the consequences (eg lower standard of living, low disposable income) like an adult. The choice is fine, but the oversized sense of entitlement would be wrong, as it would have to be funded by people who might hate work just much as you if not more, but don't skip the hard parts of life, who have the fruits of their labor taken from them.
The marriage thing isn't really an issue of freedom - nothing stops gays from having religious ceremonies and making lifetime commitments - it's more an issue of forcing others to agree that gay marriage is good
You know, I'd have no problem with churches banning gay marriage and stopping gay people from having the religious ceremonies. They are free to have pretty much any views - consistent or self-contradictory - that they want, and I'm free to point and laugh at them. The thing I find indefensible is that a gay person who has been in a monogamous relationship with another for 20 years is not permitted to be their next of kin for legal purposes, while a drunk heterosexual couple that just met and stumbles into a wedding chapel can get this - along with certain tax breaks - immediately. These legal rights should be granted to any couple (or even group) that wishes to have them, not reserved for certain combinations of genitalia.
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If there is no true imminent danger of any jews actually being burnt, then yes I support it. I won't join them of course, but I support their right to say it.
If on the other hand it sounded like a real plan - something like "Tomorrow at 6:00 am, we gather here and burn this neighborhood of jews to the ground!", then that is punishable because it is tied to a specific actionable plan to do damage.
But if I walk around saying "I will KILL all brown eyed people on the planet!", that just makes me a loony, not a criminal.
This journal should try to answer that question first before making silly correlations between party affiliation and personality traits.
Left and Right, Liberals and Conservatists, was originally a distinction that made sense at the beginning of democracy: do we try to keep a system similar to what was before (conservatists) or do we try for something new and different (liberals).
Obviously, you don't want to ever keep trying for something new and different. All you end up with if you do that is change for the sake of change, instability, and needlessly complicated laws piled on top of each other. In current times, it is actually the right wing that enacts the most new laws, which is quite opposed to what you'd expect since they're therefore the ones doing change. Oh, there certainly are some real evolutions wanted by the lefties, such as legislating marijuana, which probably should have happened decades ago but hasn't due to ill-placed conservatist convictions, but it's mostly a small mediatic issue with little relevance in the grand scheme of things.
So what is the difference between left and right, really? You could say it's that right wing governments want to minimize government spending and taxation, while left wing wants to use taxpayer money to provide a baseline of quality to a variety of services (health, pension, transport, telecommunications...). A savvy person would think the first approach is best as governments are not able to efficiently run services, while it is good to have a minimum service for the latter. Yet in the past decades government spending has always been highest with right wing governments.
There are actually many issues where you'll find that the distinction is not clearly cut or has varied considerably among history.
In the end, Left or Right, it doesn't mean anything other than who's sponsoring you.
I think the research passes the smell test. It makes sense that two groups of people that can look at the same topic and have wildly differing opinions probably have some structural difference in the organ that creates those opinions. If you look past the "conservatives are pussies, liberals are daredevils" flamebait, there are a lot of interesting questions like how do those structures form and change? Perhaps those questions can be answered by reading the article? Hopefully some other readers out there are also interested in the science. Unfortunately after a quick scan through the comments I didn't see any neuroscience or biology types chiming in. Just right vs left vs not left enough.
Here is the main claim made, stated quite confidently:
-This is an misinterpretation of the result of their analysis. All they can say is that it would be unlikely that the difference between Rep and Dems in measured activation levels would occur by chance if their null model was true (ie no difference + all assumptions are true + they corrected for multiple testing, etc).
Strange sample sizes:
-There should be some explanation for this. I don't see it. They also used two different scanners, why did this occur? Did they extend the study after initial analysis didn't give a significant result?
Vague description of the analysis:
-What "robost" regression function was used in R? What exactly was done here? Why not provide us with the code and data?
--What assumptions are made when using this method of analysis?
--This term appears to refer to a family of approaches at regression and not a single approach: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robust_regression
Use of dynamite plots
-Where is all the data?
--Where are the scatter plots showing us the relationship?
--Where is the distributional information about each covariate?
Multiple testing:
-Fair enough, but they have deviated from their original model and this has now become an exploratory study. All the more reason they should have presented all the data.
Discussion of alternative explanation for results and possible sources of error:
-Where is this? They are the ones that ran the study and have the most information about the experimental situation. It is much more difficult for me to do so based on the summary in this report, this should not be my job.
"Wherever determinism appears, controversy attends, raising spectres of days when colonialists, eugenicists, public health officials, and political idealists believed they could cure the human condition through manipulation and force."....oh, wait. Wrong tense, anyway.
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I wish the bias weren't so obvious in the post. They might as well have said that all conservatives are actually apes and that liberals are so advanced because they are willing to throw away anything old for something new and shiny. New equals better, always, and therefore opposition of a new bill rightly makes one a monkey. There are a great many things that are replaceable and worth looking at in regards to reform; there are other things still which don't need to be tampered with because they work. It has everything to do with our definitions of broken. Perhaps opposition can bring about some good, and having either party run unchecked would probably be disastrous. We should know this by now. Liberal doesn't equal good any more than Conservative equals bad. On the contrary, they are both beginning to mean very little of worth in my mind.
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Look, I know it's hard enough to get editors that perform basic functions like "make sure the link isn't just blog or product pimping" or "make sure that article hasn't been posted already", so asking them to actually PARSE the text and edit it is expecting a lot....but really, could you slant the language in the summary more?
"From the article: "Other scans have shown that brain regions associated with risk and uncertainty, such as the fear-processing amygdala, differ in structure in liberals and conservatives. And different architecture means different behavior. Liberals tend to seek out novelty and uncertainty, while conservatives exhibit strong changes in attitude to threatening situations. The former are more willing to accept risk, while the latter tends to have more intense physical reactions to threatening stimuli.""
So when liberals do it, its 'novelty, uncertainty' or 'risk'.
When conservatives do it, it's 'threatening'.
No, no editorial bias there.
Would it read differently if we reversed the words used, and said that liberals seek out 'threatening' situations and conservatives avoid risk and uncertainty? Meaning (roughly) the same, but it kinda makes liberals look rather stupid in turn.
Further, from the article: "The researchers found that liberals and conservatives donâ(TM)t differ in the risks they do or donâ(TM)t take" and âoeIf you went to Vegas, you wonâ(TM)t be able to tell whoâ(TM)s a Democrat or whoâ(TM)s a Republican". The summary says that they react very differently (when in fact, the article only says their brains 'light up' differently), but their actual behavior is indistinguishable.
Finally, the conclusion of the article says it quite clearly that the dynamic nature of the brain constantly reconfiguring itself means that we really cannot assert that anything is hard-coded...in DIRECT opposition to the summary header.
The actual studies are fascinating, shitty /. summary notwithstanding, for a couple of reasons:
1) to me it seems obvious, that the articles have the cause/effect reversed as well. It's not that our politics set our brain patterns; our brain patterns no doubt are expressed in our worldview/politics.
2) it's even more curious that the differences in response are NOT reflected in behavior - that's absolutely bizarre.
-Styopa
Left and right are not the only options. http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz
Anyone who says "too much freedom" causes evil is part of the problem. Try cracking a history book. The Nazi party came to power because Germany had social and economic problems and the people decided to let the government "fix" it.
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