It’s probably occurred to all of us that people on the left and right seem to think differently, but it’s nice to get clinical proof once in a while.
Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.
In a simple experiment reported today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information.
Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.
Apparently, the research suggests liberals are better able to appreciate nuances, details, and complexities. No surprise there.
One Trackback To “Left-wing brain, right-wing brain“
Buh-huh.
You can say I lost my faith in Science and Progress.
In MBTI terms, cons tend to be S’s, particularly SJ’s.
So, most Libs are smarter than your typical Conservatard? No surprise there.
The article also uses the phrase “knee-jerk” when describing the way the more conservative participants reacted during the study. I have, however, met my share of “knee-jerk” liberals.
That Explains everything…………….their brain dead….well halfway atleast….maybe alittle more than half…..haaaaaaaaaaa……those who still stand with the Preznit are either plain old stupid…or they have a burning hatred for the Democratic party…take your pick……..to me their stupid hatin mofo’s..
I’m sorry, this study is based on “science” and published in the liberal L.A. Times - I refuse to take the time to read the story and actually learn from it, because its very premise is concocted by liberals, who actually took the time to study such a thing.
;)
Puhleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze! This ‘new study’ is not ‘new’ nor does it tell it like it is. For that you need to read The Authoritarians free and online, written by Bob Altemeyer. Who is that Homer Simpson wants to know. Well…..
Bob is a Canadian researcher whose work John Dean, of Watergate fame, relied on quite heavily in his, Dean’s, book ‘Conservatives Without Conscience’. So clik on over and check it out.
It’s worse than you think it is. No…
Really.
Swashbuckler @ 3:
I was going to say the same. In my experience with friends and family, it is almost always the case that liberals are Ns and conservatives are S’s.
Luckily Republicans know the difference between Good and Evil, and everything must be one or the other and if you are not on the side of Good then you are automatically on the side of Evil forever and ever and ever. Amen!
But this study was done by UCLA & NYU, both eggheaded ivory tower liberal institutions… therefore, it is obviously biased. [/freeper]
Science is a myth though its all hocus pocus, just trust jesus
I kid I kid
Blue Buddha @ 9:
Just to let everybody else in on the jargon. By the way, I concur.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs
Blue Buddha @ 9:
jtmonty46 @ 5:
…and as for the “knee-jerk” part, I tend to find those to be F’s rather than T’s, since they go by personal feelings rather than analysis. This is particularly true for FP’s.
No surprise there at all. Have you ever tried to reason with a republican? Good luck!
Quite a few MBTI sites categorize Bush as ISFJ… not that surprising I guess.
I - Introverted: Terrible speaker and awkward in social situations.
S - Sensing: Everything needs to be in clear, rigid black & white terms (see my posts above)
F - Feeling: Makes decisions on personal feeling rather than analysis.
The bottom line is Banks are hording cash because they can’t even make their rollover payment. They won’t even loan money to people with good credit right now.
I meet so many people who CLAIM to be liberal and they are just as, if not more, knee-jerk than those who claim to be conservative. By that observation, I determine that they are really conservative. For example, consider someone who is vehemently on the side of free speech. Most would assume that that means they are liberal because they tolerate points of view with which they disagree. However, wouldn’t they be considered conservative because they don’t tolerate ambiguity when it comes to such an issue (i.e. free speech sometimes but not all the time)? When someone says “I’m a liberal because I believe fully in the separation of church and state” that is a form of conservatism because they wouldn’t tolerate a view that says “sometimes it’s okay to include religious beliefs when making government policy,” which would be, by the definition established in the experiment, liberal.
Yes and nuance,details, and complexities are what seems to frustrate most Americans about their elected officials.
A.Citizen:
“Bob is a Canadian researcher whose work John Dean, of Watergate fame, relied on quite heavily in his, Dean’s, book ‘Conservatives Without Conscience’. So clik on over and check it out.”
–I’d add check out Robert D. Hare’s book ‘Without Conscience’ as well…
http://hare.org/
Hare’s work on psychopathology is illuminating. And not new at all.
(In Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s last book, ‘A Man Without A Country’, he devoted a whole to what he called ‘PP’s; Pyschopathic Personalities. I believe it was Hare-inspired.
I also believe he did so not out of pettiness, but believing it explained a lot,
that it explained to some large degree why he ended up without a country…)
Blue Buddha @ 16:
I would say he’s HEAVY on the J.
Very elegant study.
I wonder if there is a developmental component. I remember clearly when I stopped believing in the conservative mystique. I don’t know if anyone else had this experiment, but as a twelve year-old, I perceived that conservatives (republicans) supported traditional values, the church, the military, and America (valued over other countries). At twelve, this seemed like the only sensible way to prioritize. Around sixteen, I started thinking all of that was bullshit, and the values of free-thinking, freedom of expression, and cultural awareness gained primacy - and progressive political thinking followed.
I’m often curious if some of the young republicans I see might be more influenced by a perception of their cultural identity when determining their political leanings, rather than actual analysis of the issues.
Radically Moderate @ 19:
Arrrgggghhhh! Nuance.details, complexity… Bad!
Fire, smoke…obfuscation…Good!
Conformation of a long held view that the difference between Conservatives and Liberals, the former has Lizard brains, the latter Homo Sapien.
Rufus T. Firefly @ 18:
But not all decisions are made rapidly. Just going back to a core principle doesn’t make one conservative. I’m not sure the experiment suggests that conservatives make decisions quicker, rather the experiment provides support for the hypothesis that conservatives are quicker to anticipate that things will be predictable.
I think in your example, a liberal would make a nuanced argument regarding the establishment clause; whereas, a conservative would attempt to force an outcome based on a predictable pattern (i.e. liberal would think that people who hold religious beliefs should participate in government, but policy should be compatible with the constitution - conservative would think religious people are being excluded from the political process.)
“Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.”
So, does this mean we can remove Repugs from office because of bad DNA?
Awesome!
I’d say my experience as a child growing up was that the children who grew up into conservatives were the ones who tended to take whatever was told to them by some authority as gospel. If doing any particular task was considered by the teacher as “hard,” they tended to have that opinion of such a task, even if they hadn’t yet tried it. I’ve found that the people who grew up to be liberal often took the time to find out things thesmelves rather than adopt the opinion on the subject that was first introduced to them. During high school class discussions, especially historical ones, I often found that any theory that went against conventional wisdom was shot down just for that reason by those more interested in pleasing the teacher than learning the truth.
jtmonty46 @ 22:
Did you get the point?
Remember that the poll numbers for Congress are no better than Bushs’ numbers.
sounds like a load of crap to me!
Old Billy @ 24:
I understood the article to indicate that the “knee-jerk” response (perhaps a poorly chosen phrase) indicated that the perception, by the more conservative subject, that the “W” was an “M”, was because they took less time to analyze the displayed letter. The same held true when the letters where switched in sequence of presentation. Although the article did not specify, it was most likely the fact that an M and W are the same when inverted. I wonder if they tried the experiment using other letters?
I have a very nice relative who is a conservative and has told me many times that once he has made his mind up about something, he never changes his position, unlike some liberals (meaning me) who keep looking at situations from all angles.
My only problem with this definition of liberalism and conservatism is that it certainly doesn’t sound very smart to say you nnnnnnever change your mind, regardless of what new information may come your away about the position you’ve taken. Actually, it doesn’t sound too bright.
Thus, the Iraq War.
Conservatism is fear. We already knew this.
Radically Moderate @ 27:
Evidently, not. Did you mean the nuance, details, and complexities, as used by Congress /Bush Admin to perplex the American people or, that American people can’t (or don’t want) to understand the nuance, details and complexity in the issues facing them as responsible citizens?
My original snarky comment was meant to poke fun at those who are intellectually lazy and will believe anything they are told. But, if I have to explain my joke, it must have not been that good. From this day forward we shall never speak of it again…..
Right wing brains = Nose pickers, Snot eaters. Disgusting, but true.
My conclusion is much simpler: We are homo sapiens. They are homo stupidus.
Please no more MBTI references, it seems quite rigid to classify personalities based on the degree to which someone expresses 4 dichotomies.
All 7 billion people in the world can be represented by 16 different categories of personality. Seems a tad contrived.
That being said, this study doesn’t seem to mean much either. So people who have a habit of thinking rigidly continue to think rigidly. People who think more critically continue to think critically.
jtmonty46 @ 33:
Okay I got it that time….rimshot….
I meant that far too many Americans do not want to be bothered by nuance and details and somewhere in the American psyche we have abandoned critical thinking for instant gratification(sound bites).
Gives the aphorism The Devils in the details a whole new meaning.
craig @ 32:
I remember my parents being life-long Democrats. Roosevelt, Truman, Stevenson, Kennedy, Johnson and then…NIXON. God-damn Nixon! Believe me, I’ve had many conversations with them over the years as to what happened and all I can get out of them is the horse-shit Reagan Era “agree to disagree” crap. These are the same people who, when I was eight, saw John Kennedy as a new beginning for America. The was Hope.
He was assassinated and then there was the down-hill spiral of Vietnam and the prospect of more of the same with Humphrey. The only thing I can think of is that my parents bought into the right-wing “government is broken” crap and you should be afraid of thinking about the grey areas of life. Every problem had to have a simplistic yes or no answer.
I still believe in Hope. The answers to the questions in life are not easy to come by, and some people don’t like those answers. It’s called life.
The headline should read-Left Wing Brain, Right Wing Brainless. Wish I were kidding.
The question is simple, left wing - defective person. Right wing - realist
Booty K Jones @ 36:
Read up on it a bit more, you don’t seem to “get it.” Pay particular attention to the word “preference.”
Weekend with family STOP Eyes gouged out STOP can’t talk now STOP Soylent Green is Republi-
We’ve had this problem since day one in this country.
The split isn’t lerft/right, it’s forward/backward. Progress or regress.
The conservatives just want to conserve, clench onto, that safe old time, when daddy was there.
Progress is what has always moved this country forward and brought us all of our gains.
Actually the problem goes all the way back, but you know what I mean.
Ask you conservative friends to list the accomplishments of the right…better yet, don’t.
I did and all they had was welfare reform. Welfare reform? That’s it?
Sheesh…we’ve fought and won a revolution, abolished slavery, got the vote to women, created the weekend and the 40 hour work week, abolished child labor and fought for peace and civil rights.
Welfare reform…really?
“Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.”
Wait, isn’t this in the definitions of ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’? As I always understood it, at our respective cores: liberals wanted change and conservatives wanted things to remain the same. Forget the loaded and often subtly changing political definitions of who these two groups are, this is still essentially the case.
Therefore, it is not exceptional or surprising that cons are ’structured and persistent’ whereas libs are ‘open to new experiences’.
That’s just who we are.
cons have violent outbursts when their index cards don’t have the answer
Explainer @ 43:
Haha - welfare reform was Clinton’s acheivment anyway. If they had tried welfare reform under Bush, they would have (1) found some ridiculous way to privatize it (2) no one would want it and (3) they would have thrown poor folks over the wayside just to demonstrate how quickly they were getting people off the government teet.
Liberals are easily better at government simply because it’s such a progressive concept. Perhaps it wo