conservatives think their way through a problem, RATS feel their way through it...
Posted on 02/17/2013 1:43:47 PM PST by ConservativeMind
A team of political scientists and neuroscientists has shown that liberals and conservatives use different parts of the brain when they make risky decisions, and these regions can be used to predict which political party a person prefers. The new study suggests that while genetics or parental influence may play a significant role, being a Republican or Democrat changes how the brain functions.
Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-party-brain.html#jCp
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
It fits the study, perfectly.
conservatives think their way through a problem, RATS feel their way through it...
Anyway, studies like this go to show something that I've always believed to be true: that people adopt their political beliefs for mostly irrational and emotional reasons, and only try to justify them rationally after the fact (and I'm not being holier than thou, that's applies to me too)! The only difference is in what emotions are set off and what sets them off.
Now I wonder, does that 69.5% accuracy for parent-child party affiliation also apply to kids who have been adopted? To see how much of this is hereditary vs. environmental, we'd have to do a study of adopted children raised in households with political views that are the opposite of their birth parents'.
That should have been "Since brain wiring influences behavior and behavior re-wires THE BRAIN, many will dismiss..." I really need to start using the preview feature!
Having been adopted at the age of three and having lived for a very long time, I found this article and discussion very interesting. But I think there are more things that need to be considered, such as generational issues, the part of the country where you were raised and the sign under which you were born.
My adoptive parents were staunch Democrats - but the old style - and voted Democrat until they died several years ago. I don’t remember that politics was ever discussed much in our family when I was growing up. As an adult, it only caused strife so I quit talking about it. Raised as a Southern Baptist in a very hard working family. I have retained their strong value system throughout my life as it relates to church, work, education and how my children were raised but have always voted Republican. However, I do espouse opinions and, according to my adoptive mother, did engage in activities which she called “falling off the wagon” that looking back absolutely had to be the result of genes, my birth sign or generational changes in attitudes.
This is such a bogus study
I don't accept that premise. In fact, if I did, it would make me more life a leftist than not. It's why the idea of the "narrative" is so central in modern politics. It is a cornerstone of postmodern "truth," that there is no discoverable truth, only "narratives," stories we tell, to ourselves and others, that reshapes the facts to fit our predispositions. The process of deconstruction is breaking down the narrative to find the irrational primitives that drive it.
But that presumes an essential equality of all narratives, an equality you yourself appear to accept. Yet conservatism inherently rejects that all narratives are created equal. They really are not. The narrative that fails to account for, say, gravity, will be less successful in describing reality than the narrative which accepts gravity as a fact. There may be ways to work around gravity, but it cannot simply be ignored.
This is why conservative, free market economic beliefs are more successful than their leftist counterparts; they are more closely aligned to rational realities. The same applies to conservative (aka rational) social policy.
By contrast, liberal political beliefs are predicated on a massive disconnect between present reality and future possibility. Someday, says the Maoist, if we can destroy enough uncooperative people, if we can totally reengineer human nature, we will have all happiness and unicorns, nirvana at the end of the barrel of a gun held solely by the state. In real world terms, this is magical thinking, it has no hope of ever working, and yet it is the hallmark of the leftist fantasies that drive the middle tier of any Marxist revolution, the useful idiots. The victims know better, and the cynics at the top of the leftist hierarchy know better, and are in it only for themselves, as Orwell points out.
So no, the primitives that drive the political beliefs of the left versus the right are not equivalent, either in moral or rational terms. We do have the better argument, and in the end it is impossible for rational beliefs to fail, though they may skip a generation or two, because sooner or later, the unicorn illusions will fade, and the gravity of real things will prevail.
more LIKE a leftist than not
The difference between people who think for themselves and people who think for what other people will think of them.
The Obama campaign exploited the latter group brilliantly.
It's always interesting to meet people who seemingly out of the blue develop personality traits that don't fit until you find out something about their ancestors or real parents.
By the way, I assume that by "old school" Democrats you mean FDR/Truman Democrats, or anti-FDR southern Democrats? That's a completely different bird from today's Democratic party!
The study might be a good predictor of a person’s views, but it’s a very poor predictor of how a person will vote in a given election. There have been lots of polls about policy, and people dislike almost every position Obama takes, often by 2:1 or more. But he has overall positive approval ratings and has just won reelection over someone with whom most people agree on the policy subjects. How can this be?
Because your average low-information voter has cognitive dissonance. Another way of saying liberalism is an illness.
Liberals value equality and "fairness" over liberty and meritocracy for emotional or aesthetic reasons just as conservatives value liberty over equality for emotional or aesthetic reasons. The fact that the latter results in a more prosperous society than the former is incidental.
When it comes to social issues, the emotional foundation for differences is even more obvious. Pro-aborts have an emotional response from the point of view of the mother, anti-aborts from the point of view of compassion for the unborn child. Neither response is based on cold, mathematical logic.
I assume that by “old school” Democrats you mean FDR/Truman Democrats,...”
Sorry I meant to add the word “Truman” to my “old school”. We lived in Kansas and everyone back there, back then was a Democrat. Have tried to have some discussions with some high school mates from that same era who always vote Democrat but they always end with “...my parents and grandparents all were Democrats...”. Apparently they forgot whatever history they learned about FDR and Truman in comparison to the Democrat philosophy of today.
I still contend that your birth sign has a lot to do with personality traits. BO is a Leo, through and through, as am I. Dark side, King of the jungle, narcissistic and self-centered, almost impossible to accept blame, finds details too tedious to deal with, are just a few of the more common traits that are very obvious, particularly in his case. Bet he also has a Taurus house lurking somewhere because of his stubbornness - not a good pairing.
YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN!!! YES WE CAN!!!!!1! YES WE
I like your illustration, but are you describing the brain activity from liberals, which centers in the social-group thought area, is thinking of partying when placing a risky bet? The article further states that conservatives trigger the fight-flight response area, which I liken to pumping up the adrenaline to take on the work if the bet fails or cheering when it pays off.
Both persons make similar bets based on the information, though.
How do you describe these distinct areas between political affiliations?
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