Peer reviewed cognitive science studies find deficiencies hardwired in conservative brains.
[Update]
A disclaimer before the disclaimer: This is meant to be a fun post. The possible flaws with the papers I list are real problems. Don’t let my enjoyment of a bit of snark fool you. I am not strongly positing this scientifically as a general result I accept or arguing that you should take it seriously without a very large grain of salt.
Ok, now that you are reading this, a disclaimer first:
1. One study referred to here only used 90 students and two British MPs. The sample size is small.
2. It is important to not let one’s bias interpret scientific results. This study does not prove that all conservatives are like that because those sampled have larger fear centers and smaller regions that are associated with courage and optimism. The study that shows conservatives lack genes for neurotransmitters that allow for accepting new ideas seems harder to refute off the cuff though.
It merely indicates based on a sample of 90 test subjects that conservatives are irrational cowards who can’t think well due to their brain defects….
I must stress again that there are only 90 subjects in the first paper. This is too small for a strong conclusion. Despite all of the supporting evidence of conservatives having fearful, irrational minds, full of cowardice and pessimism from the programming of Fox, we can not make blanket statements based on this data alone. As to the second paper, conservative, by definition, means an inability to accept new ideas, so finding that they lack the mental hardware for it should not be surprising that a gene for a linked neuro transmitter is missing, in a study of over 2000 thousand subjects, is more compelling.
According to these two studies:
1. Conservatives have larger fear centers.
2. Conservatives have lesser developed centers associated with courage and optimism.
3. Conservatives lack a receptor associated with being able to process novel ideas. Also those who might have been liberal needed active social lives to activate a certain gene for certain neuro-receptors - so some fair number of conservatives wouldn’t be that way if only they had gotten laid a little when they were younger.
Remember the disclaimer! Science does not work on anecdotal evidence. Just because you may know a prudish conservative who could never ever get laid, who is fearful about everything and would smugly be a chicken hawk or screen beret who lets others fight for him, does not a scientific conclusion make, no matter how many of us know conservative wankers just like that.
The results that indicate that conservative brains are simply damaged and they were stuck that way are only preliminary. The other paper clearly indicates that many would not be that way had they had social lives.
Now on to the papers…
Political Orientations Are Correlated
with Brain Structure in Young Adults
Ryota Kanai, Tom Feilden, Colin Firth, and Geraint Rees
You can read the paper here
or here
Abstract:
Substantial differences exist in the cognitive styles of liberals and conservatives on psychological measures [1]. Variability in political attitudes reflects genetic influences and their interaction with environmental factors [2, 3]. Recent work has shown a correlation between liberalism and conflict-related activity measured by event-related potentials originating in the anterior cingulate cortex [4]. Here we show that this functional correlate of political attitudes has a counterpart in brain structure. In a large sample of young adults, we related self-reported political attitudes to gray matter volume using structural MRI. We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala. These results were replicated in an independent sample of additional participants. Our findings extend previous observations that political attitudes reflect differences in self-regulatory conflict monitoring [4] and recognition of emotional faces [5] by showing that such attitudes are reflected in human brain structure. Although our data do not determine whether these regions play a causal role in the formation of political attitudes, they converge with previous work [4, 6] to suggest a possible link between brain structure and psychological mechanisms that mediate political attitudes.
Salon wrote about this:
Specifically, the research shows that people with conservative tendencies have a larger amygdala and a smaller anterior cingulate than other people. The amygdala — typically thought of as the “primitive brain” — is responsible for reflexive impulses, like fear. The anterior cingulate is thought to be responsible for courage and optimism. This one-two punch could be responsible for many of the anecdotal claims that conservatives “think differently” from others.
Since only adults were included in the investigation, researchers were unable to determine if cerebral physiology drives politics or if political beliefs change the brain. A previous University of California study suggests the former is possible, isolating a so-called “liberal gene” — the neurotransmitter DRD4 — responsible for an increased receptiveness to novel ideas.
The other study referenced in the Salon article followed 2000 people though:
Appearing in the latest edition of The Journal of Politics published by Cambridge University Press, the research focused on 2,000 subjects from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. By matching genetic information with maps of the subjects’ social networks, the researchers were able to show that people with a specific variant of the DRD4 gene were more likely to be liberal as adults, but only if they had an active social life in adolescence. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter affecting brain processes that control movement, emotional response, and ability to experience pleasure and pain. Previous research has identified a connection between a variant of this gene and novelty-seeking behavior, and this behavior has previously been associated with personality traits related to political liberalism
Here is the actual paper:
Friendships Moderate an Association between a Dopamine Gene Variant and Political Ideology
Jaime E. Settlea, Christopher T. Dawesa, Nicholas A. Christakisa and James H. Fowlera
Abstract:
Scholars in many fields have long noted the importance of social context in the development of political ideology. Recent work suggests that political ideology also has a heritable component, but no specific gene variant or combination of variants associated with political ideology have so far been identified. Here, we hypothesize that individuals with a genetic predisposition toward seeking out new experiences will tend to be more liberal, but only if they are embedded in a social context that provides them with multiple points of view. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we test this hypothesis by investigating an association between self-reported political ideology and the 7R variant of the dopamine receptor D4 gene (DRD4), which has previously been associated with novelty seeking. Among those with DRD4-7R, we find that the number of friendships a person has in adolescence is significantly associated with liberal political ideology. Among those without the gene variant, there is no association. This is the first study to elaborate a specific gene-environment interaction that contributes to ideological self-identification, and it highlights the importance of incorporating both nature and nurture into the study of political preferences.
Again, please do not let your own personal bias cause you to wrongly interpret this data and pre-maturely conclude that conservative brains are damaged are all damaged. Simply because so very many conservatives are clearly driven by fear, paranoia, and an inability to accept new ideas or evidence, does not mean they are all incapable of healthy thought processes or condemned to mental deficiency because of their damaged brains. Correlation is not causation!
More study must be done before science can clearly classify conservatism as a mental disease caused by brain defects. Speculating that in a more compassionate future, conservatism will be seen as a manifestation of a diseased mind caused by a malformed brain, is not yet warranted no matter how much anecdotal evidence there is.
