Study Predicts Political Beliefs With 83 Percent Accuracy: If you want to know people’s politics, tradition said to study their parents … parents can predict the child’s political leanings about around 70 percent of the time.
But new research, published yesterday in the journal PLOS ONE: Ideological differences between partisans may reflect distinct neural processes, and they can predict who’s right and who’s left of center with 82.9 percent accuracy.
Previous research has shown that during MRI scans, areas linked to broad social connectedness, which involves friends and the world at large, light up in Democrats’ brains. Republicans, on the other hand, show more neural activity in parts of the brain associated with tight social connectedness, which focuses on family and country.
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.
Building on this, the new research shows that Democrats exhibited significantly greater activity in a region associated with social and self-awareness, during the task. Republicans, however, showed significantly greater activity in a region involved in our fight-or flight response system.
Here's the key passage:
Lead researcher Darren Schreiber, a University of Exeter professor said, “It suggests that politics alters our worldview and alters the way our brains process.”
Here's the typical verbal and unscientific compromise dispensed to the press:
Schreiber says, “If we believe that we’re hardwired for our political views, then it’s really easy for me to discount in you in a conversation. ‘Oh, you’re just a conservative because you have a red brain,’ or ‘Oh, you’re a liberal because you have a blue brain,’” Schreiber explains. “But that’s just not the case. The brain changes. The brain is dynamic.”
Sent to Demo on 1/11/13 taken off comments same day.
ReplyDeleteGOTTERDAMMERUNG
Are we a dying species? As our climate changes and more species change both physically and habitually to survive in an evolving environment to avoid the die-out or extinction, is our species evolving physiologically as the normal changes? It is an unusual thought; our clannish upbringing teaches us that every human has a conscience. What of the new human?
At this time research indicates that there is not an emanating, evolving human species, although this information, like climate change, may be skewed.
My feeling is that change, physiological change is occurring, it just is not an established theory. 80/20, the Tipping Point, Pareto Principle. These ideas might explain why ninety-nine percent of us are managed by a vicious fraction
2/17/13.
A equally interesting phenomenon is the absence of the flight or fight response. Human response is now incorporating a freeze mode based on trauma, much like PTSD. The brain loses its ability to flow between moods and energies necessary for a productive life.
This PTSD, I believe, results in political arguments are irrational; the new ministers expounding them, have maneuvered themselves into an arena where a discussion is impossible, If a counter point is presented the minister responds, not by addressing the intellectual persuasion, but by raising the physical volume, or fictionalizing their argument by “What if...” scenarios.
I can only believe that this response will be deleted, and I really don’t care. It’s just a journal, of events leading To a Native economic and political conception.