Brain study finds political divide

Source: Los Angeles Times

Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

Scientists at New York University and UCLA showed through a simple experiment to be reported Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience 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.

The results showed "there are two cognitive styles -- a liberal style and a conservative style," said UCLA neurologist Dr. Marco Iacoboni, who was not connected to the latest research.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-politics10sep10,0,5982337.story?coll=la-home-center

---

My favorite line from the article:

"Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives..."

LOL!

To achieve some sort of dynamic tension that won't end in the planet turned into a smoking ruin. "Liberal thought" and "conservative thought" are, apparently, not going away.

I would say that this kind of brain function can be changed by education. It is well-known that kids from very conservative parents who go off to college very often come back as liberals. They have learned new ways of thinking.

One might have been "nurtured" to be a Conservative, but a Liberal mind could come out given an absence of social pressures.

opportunities to explore.
People knee-deep in religion are also usually knee-deep in guilt and fear --
look at Larry Craig for one who still can't admit his homosexuality or give himself a break!!! --

and quite used to an authoritarian style of thinking -- and obeying hierarchies.

In order to sustain what one is taught by patriarchal religions, you have to block a lot of information -- science, for instance.

If you follow one that teaches submission and piety as the way into heaven I'd imagine that would be the more suppressive ones as opposed to ones that teach virtue and affirming the power of the self.

How about "Manifest Destiny" and "Man's Dominion Over Nature" . . ..
do you think that had something to do with the license to abuse the nature -- ???

How many patriarchal religions haven't taught intolerance and hatred for gays, for instance???

True spirituality comes from within -- may be universal -- and has nothing to do with organized religion, nor middlemen.

corresponding to the basic human natures of all those involved. One can find in any religion both dogmatic structure and submission to the authority of "truths", and openness to the "virtue and affirming power of self".

although I must say, it education does not always do that - just look at that stupid fuck GWB

and the CIA doctored his F's to C's and B's. GWB was raised by boobs to be a boob counting on money and power (mostly power) to cover the sometimes astronomical disasters they create.

who cannot write a decent sentence

with education. I'm a liberal, one of my brothers is a raving conservative and the other is a moderate conservative. All of us went to college.

But the difference in our thinking is not limited to politics. My raving conservative brother is a nice guy but a total control freak. My moderate conservative brother is a nice guy but his only interest is money. I am the naturally creative one, care more about people than money, and am the only left-handed one.

How much of this is inborn, and how much a result of using your brain liberal-style?

(if not popularly available). I would suggest Pinker's "The Blank Slate" as a primer, but essentially it revolves around the mind's preference for certainty - on the scale from an openness many possible interpretations of information or a preference to the selective interpretation of information. The first requires a more integrated and long-term system of mental processing, the second only a capacity to fit data into an existing framework of thought. All indications are that the preference has in the long term (over a lifetime) a biological basis.

no point in trying to solve any differences without psychotrophics.

that would 'calm large urban populations'.

That story just didn't stay out there long.

You are saying it was taken down, right?

At the time, I was yelling at the TV to keep it alive, but it was gone by the next day

I do take some satisfaction that either the drug failed or they haven't found a way to administer to large populations. All one has to do is look at the people defending their homeland - Iraq!

Makes me wonder what other sorts of drugs Big Pharma might be developing for the traitors destroying America. We know Big Pharma sure gets a lotta bang for their campaign buck when laws get written.

you're going to use the water supply against the population by drugging it, you have to keep the water running.

But that's ok. The public water supply is completely functional here.

With a US population that's more & more drinking bottled water, or getting their liquids thru soft drinks etc., the drug would have to work by permeating the skin.

The Thanatos Syndrome

And, no, I don't want a flu shot, thank you ;)

It certainly calls into question the very idea of "conservative intellectuals".

Good one! :rofl:

Adn a truly reMARKable observation!

:rofl:

I don't know anyone who truly relates to his thought processes. He's all over the map in his opinions about seemingly everything.

I saw him on C-SPAN over the weekend. He said he's not an alcoholic, but that he does feel uncomfortable if he doesn't have a drink every day by lunchtime or the early afternoon. Uh...that sounds like an alcoholic to me.

Serious denial.

and then post some bs propaganda email in its entirety. It might help make the point that some of these arguments just aren't worth the time and effort. You can't have much luck changing a mind that just isn't hard wired for change.

The tests the article reports on pretty much match my observations, with one omission. I have also noticed all the rabid wingers I know personally come from families with very controlling, yet not loving and accepting parents, particularly the male parent. Seems all the far right conservatives I have know are pissed off but unaware of what they are pissed about, so they lash at anything that comes along. To a one, they had rather aloof or down right nasty fathers. The seem to go through life imitating those they hated yet yearned for acceptance and love from. And they don't seem to grow up to be free of the childhood wounds. They go through life looking for harsh authority figures to kiss up to...."Please, LOVE ME! Look how much like you I am!"

I do know lots of liberals who had toxic parents too, but they did NOT want to imitate them in some pathetic attempt to get that approval which never came. Perhaps the difference in how the brains works would also explain the difference.

Wonder about size of the corpus colossus in cons v liberals would measure up. I believe there are studies showing it tends to be larger in women and homosexual men than in heterosexual men. Wonder if there have been studies regarding its size and the political spectrum.

This article is good to whip out in a GD post by suspected mouthpiece using DU bandwidth to ask for help when just looking to cover posting RW talking points. Ya know the ones: please help me refute... then 700 words straight off on Hannity or such.

having around. I thought any liberal minded duer might need a way to communicate successfully with some crow bars of truth.
:think:
It may not be 100% pertinent.

;) Will check out that forum group :thumbsup:

I must be missing the spelling part of my lefty brain. Thanks for putting up with me.

as I spelled and typed badly. havocmom's very own trifecta!

I never thought of myself as being a "mouthpiece...looking to cover posting RW talking points."

I posted an email I received from an otherwise liberal (?) friend. I rebutted the email, using points people told me in the responses here, to her whole mailing list (That friend no longer corresponds with me...oh, well).

Sometimes messages claiming to ask for "help" are just that...messages asking for help. :shrug:

When someone uses DU bandwidth to post an entire winger rant, the OP doesn't add any of their own rebuttal (or it is blatantly lame), then never posts in the thread again, it is worth some skepticism in my book ;)

since I wasn't quick to come up with a rebuttal.

of putting RW talking points on DU.

Sorry if I ruffled your personal feathers. Gotta have thicker skin if you post on the internets... people do have a right to their own theories, whether they are correct in all cases or not. ;)

Actually, I don't accuse people, I alert if I have some serious concerns.

Is that anywhere near the corpus callosum?

Spelling is NOT my forte but the hemispheres of my brain communicate well ;)

My dad has turned into a partisan, cool-aid drinking Republican for whom facts do not matter. He's also a self-centered, raving narcissist. He was spoiled rotten by his four older sisters. Nonetheless, his father was an absolute saint of a man, just the sweetest, most humble, kindest man you could meet.

His mother, on the other hand, was a paranoid schizophrenic.

Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times more likely than conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts and were 2.2 times more likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.

Sulloway said the results could explain why President Bush demonstrates a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and Sen. John F. Kerry, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat who opposed Bush in the 2004 presidential race, was accused of being a flip-flopper for changing his mind about the conflict.

Based on the results, he said, liberals could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.


http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-politics10sep10,0,5982337.story?coll=la-home-center

I've always known that Republicons were mentally deficient

This study helps support the notion that nuance is good. Most issues aren't black and white as Bush and his ilk would want us to believe. The world is a complicated place. We SHOULD have leaders who can appreciate the complexities and ambiguities in life (like John Kerry - and his fantastic wife, Teresa).

or is this a new,open liberal study ?

According to Wm. Perry's famous 1970 Harvard critique of university students, the most common and "lowest" form of thought is "Basic Duality" in which "a person constructs issues of truth and morality in the terms of . . . unconsidered differiantiation between in-groups vs. out-groups," in other words, Black vs. White, Us vs. Them.

This is commonly found, per Perry, upon entering college, when there are only right or wrong answers that are memorized while doing their prior twelve of schooling!

Again, according to Perry, they should gradually be made aware of open-ended questions and progress to "Realization of Relativism," and after that, "Evolving of Commitments."

One phase of the second stage is questioning and rebelling against all authority -- something we see happen outside the young adults as well in those who refuse to afford any consideration to anyone for any reason: the selfish, the habitual offender, etc.

Gee, who knew researching that article on Systems Theory and the Information Overload I started last week at the library would pay off in political discussion!

William G. Perry. Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years: A Scheme. (NY: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston, 1970)

That person must be having a hard time accepting the new information.

... which, ironically, was itself an "us vs them" post -- placing higher beings such as, theoretically, the poster (beyond "us vs them") above those involved in sectarian flame wars.

Just thought the post was ironic.

Cheers!

the conservative party as it stands today. Up to 30 years ago there were conservative intellectuals but I doubt if you would find any among current Bush supporters.

Conservatives don't think because they CAN'T think. They are f'''ked in the head. Now we have research to prove it. I wonder what the freeper's response to this proof that they are idiots is going to be?

That's their response to everything that doesn't jibe with their worldview. The media is biased, American universities are biased, etc.

Last week, or maybe two weeks ago, there was some hot discussion about how this fundie person was arguing, or rather, had argued, in a series of articles written several years ago, that, in fact, the Sun revolves around the Earth, and it was this fundamental error (along with a vast Jewish conspiracy of course :eyes: )that was the reason astronomers kept getting such large distances and long-ago creation dates for the Big Bang.

I waded through some of it in Post #38, if you're interested!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1646992

Welcome to the DU! :hi:

Whether it's the results of scientific research or social research, right-wingers will almost always say that the studies are biased if the results aren't in their favor.

These are the same people who believe that creationism and intelligent design are scientific theories that should be taught in biology classes across the United States.

Current issue of "Discover" magazine contains a multitude of subtle (and not so subtle) stabs at the boooooshies' anti-science policies. I was discussing it this morning with some friends at a local coffee shop, in the context of the right-wing-brain, left-wing-brain article. A gentleman sitting at a nearby table just kept looking over his (right) shoulder at us, but he did not offer to join the discussion. I suspect he was furious at our comments but had no idea how to refute them.

Frank Sulloway, who is quoted in the LA Times article, is one of the co-authors of "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition" -- (c) 2003 Am. Psych. Assn, available in pdf format on the web -- along with John Jost of NYU.

To quote from the "Acknowledgments" at the end of Conservatives without Conscience by John W. Dean:

... I realized when reading studies relating to conservatism and authoritarianism undertaken by social scientists that I had found important information which was unknown to the general public. Professor John Jost of New York University helped me grasp the work he and his colleagues have undertaken in their massive study of conservatism, and he kindly provided me additional reading material to better follow the work of social and political psychology. John Jost's work led me to the studies of Bob Altemeyer, who, in turn, went beyond the call of duty to assist me in realizing the relationship of contemporary conservatism and authoritarianism.

Altemeyer's book The Authoritarians -- written after Dean's but with his direct urging -- is also available in pdf format on the web.

Let us not, however, forget John Stuart Mill, who said nearly a century and a half ago:

"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. "

as well as

"Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think."

I know too many right-wingers who are so desperately afraid of thinking for themselves, for fear of making a mistake that they will accept anything they are told that fits their mistake-preventing (and self-preserving) mindset.


Tansy Gold

It seems to say that conservative thinkers display a higher number of false positives in pattern matching tests, and that conservatives use less brain activity to execute a pattern matching test. It says absolutely nothing about intelligence.

that the earth is older than 5000 years, that dinosaurs existed, evolution is the truth and global warming is real.

Too bad we failed. And now they're crusading to reproduce like rabid bunnies. This whole "abstinence" thing is designed to create a huge crop of ultra-conservative neanderthals.

on edit:

We need to develop a new psychological/political "Kung Fu" to beat these one-track-mind slugs. All it would take is a rudimentary knowledge of the choices they will very predictably make, so we can employ the proven principles of martial arts to use their "strengths" against them.

and then they cherry-pick or make up facts to justify their choice.

These are the things they try to make invisible, and these things are always their downfall.

They are NOT good at adapting to new situations and they seem to panic and/or become scared very easily.

This is why they do all the puffing up of their chests (males are the majority of conservatives) and buy and brag about guns.

Lots of liberals have guns, we just don't brag about it.

Let's not make the mistake of assuming that this difference is necessarily genetic or inborn.
Notice that they say that it is related to processing differences. What it doesn't say is which comes first.

Are differences in thinking caused by differences in brain function, or are differences in brain function caused by differences in thinking? That seems to be a question which this study doesn't answer, at least not that I can tell from the article.

It's entirely possible that the differences in brain functioning are due to upbringing rather than DNA. I suppose it might even be possible that adults could be retrained to be more accepting of ambiguity and thus to use their brain differently.

So let's not just assume that hardcore right-wingers are beyond hope. They might be, but this study doesn't appear to prove that.

You can click on it and buy the bumper sticker. :)

The study they conducted relied on making rapid decisions. There would have been no time to process the responses given using your definition of "processing"; they were "gut reactions".

Sure, I believe that we can be trained to use our brains differently, but just as there's a wide spectrum of sexual orientations (to give one example), there's also a wide spectrum in political orientations, if you will. Just as all Democrats or liberals don't see eye-to-eye on every issue, not all Republicans or conservatives see eye-to-eye. Unfortunately, it seems to be the neanderthals who control most of the Republican doctrine.

but it seems to me that it's also entirely possible that upbringing may affect the manner of thinking which in turn affects brain functioning and thus rapid "gut reaction" decision making.

In fact, the urban vs rural dichotomy would seem to point in that direction. Why would their be such a genetic difference between urban and rural populations?

(Your argument for nurture rather than nature.) Along those same lines, I also believe that we can adopt different modes in different circumstances.

It would be interesting for example, if all the students were given $20 at the start that was put into a pot. Then if the students had been told they were on one of two equal sized teams competing against the other. If their team won, they'd get to divvy up the whole pot between them, doubling the $20 to $40.

i.e. I think that liberals can become more like conservatives - knee jerk, black and white behavior decisions - when we think we are at risk of losing something important. It would be interesting to compare the outcome of the original test with this hypothetical one.

Even easier, take a random sampling of some of the posts in some of our more contentious threads here at DU. You'd have a hard time telling the difference between some of our comments and what you'd find any day at Free Republic.

The one-sided arguments become tiring to read on both sides. I do feel, however, that there's a hatred and mean-spiritedness on the Free Republic site that I don't see here - at least not to the same extent. It might be because I'm gay. Whenever I read the hateful comments about gays on Free Republic, I have to remind myself that not all of them feel such vitriol toward the gay community, but then I'm also amazed and depressed by the fact that no one speaks up in disagreement.

I guess it's that intolerance of ambiguity which goes along with being conservative that inhibits most of them from disagreeing with the loudest voices on Free Republic.

It almost makes me think you have read about this study:

Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition


http://www.wam.umd.edu/~hannahk/bulletin.pdf

You're so right. We are definitely influenced by our environment. Thank you for adding your intelligent thoughts to the discussion. :)

and belonging to the group.
There are lots of liberals in the country, but many tend to be more closeted than their urban compatriots.

:sarcasm:

and he is a Bush believer, Hannity listener and I am a flaming liberal. Is it the male/female thing for us??

Were raised in the same house by the same parents?

And yes, it's not exact DNA but we fished from the same gene pool.

...but obviously not all of the same DNA. You have to look back through generations of your family to find similarities that are possibly related to DNA.

I *do* think that education and upbringing (nature) play a large part, though.

and i don't mean george bush, i mean the animal, in africa, the chimpanzee

a very little difference in DNA makes all the difference in the individual

You just said what I tried to say downthread, but you did it much more coherently.

To be honest, I'm not even sure that differences in the way we think have to stem from upbringing. It's possible that developing a certain view of the world leads to your brain processing the world in that way. It's definitely patently ridiculous to use the incompletely understood results of one study to explain the behavior of two individuals.

I hate these news stories...it seems like they're always written by someone who hasn't got a clue about science or psychology beyond how to write an attention-hogging headline.

It seems increasingly clear that when we're talking about brain functions and processes, it's more like Nature + Nurture - both have their "hand" in cognitive development in important ways.

and in light of this study, I find it kind of ironic as well. I don't think you can truly separate the two for one thing. I believe that nurture builds upon nature, and that nature can sometimes define how we interpret environment and that for many issues neither can be completely ruled out as a factor.

My brother is more conservative, although he is not a Freeper - but he is also older, bigger, and has a short temper and is thus used to getting his way and being an authority figure (in his own mind). Perhaps my early-learned ability to compromise and to think around the obvious solution (ie: fight dirty, lol) has helped me to develop what eventually became my more liberal thinking. On the other hand, he sees himself as an important part of a hierarchical authority structure, so perhaps that is why he leans more conservative. Well, that and he's pretty greedy too.

It's definitely a complex issue, however, and while I find studies like this amusing and interesting, I do not necessarily see the results as "this is why things are the way they are." I think a recent study showing that adults who identify as conservative often felt picked on as children to be equally interesting.

I need more coffee.

But as for the differences of brain functioning due to upbringing rather than DNA is something that I think about a lot the upbringing part that is not the DNA part. That all the current "conservatives" are just children that have never grown up. Only see the world as what they would be most comfortable with. For them and anything that makes them uncomfortable is immediately attacked and ridiculed anything that makes them comfortable is fiercely defended no matter how right or how wrong it might possibly be.

I'm just waiting for the time when a "conservative" gets on television goes "you're not the boss of me". Though some have come pretty damn close.

On edit: I bought a bumper sticker.

my parents would have been in that group. Of all the presidential candidates, my views jibe with Kucinich. I was always left, and at my ripe old age, I'm even more so.

J

Or in the case of conservatives, "not so" intelligent design. ;)

Why would god give conservatives inferior brains? I guess we can never know his purpose for things. :shrug:

gOD wants 'em not-so-smart, so they won't question his will.

J

I suppose Martin Luther King had an inferior brain?

Also Fr. Daniel Berrigan, Fr. Philip Berrigan, Fr. Roy Bourgeois, many other less well-known activists in the civil rights and anti-war movements -- inferior brains?

Not quite.

Thankfully, we've moved past such ignorance as a planet.

believed in geocentrism and creation when that was the accepted belief of all, scientists included, were stupid? I think not.

Long, long after Aquinas, Augustine, and Thomas More, people believed that man would never be able to fly. Space travel was even more ridiculous to people for many centuries.

When the early automobiles were invented, people believed that if autos ever went above a certain speed (40 mph perhaps), people would be killed by the speed.


I suspect that there are things we believe to be scientific truth today that people will be laughing at in the future. Science always moves forward and makes new discoveries.

"Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in their anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M."

It's seriously biased.

At this point, any "liberal" worth her/his salt would have trouble pushing "W".

http://www.kewego.com/video/iLyROoaftMNR.html

I'm sure, however, that "M" and "W" were chosen because those are the only 2 letters of the alphabet that are vertical inversions of each other.

They've been brainwashed into thinking that "W" is the answer to everything.

"Researchers got the same results when they repeated the experiment in reverse, asking another set of participants to tap when a W appeared."

I thought they just ran off of their brain stem.

Wow. You learn something new every day.

Ooops. Please, PLEASE ......DON'T LET THE FREEPERS FIND OUT! You know how they twist things, and they'll think that I'm....I'm....just like THEM! You know.......BRAINDEAD!!!!
I'M SOOOOORRRRRRRRYYYYYY!!!!!!

I think they choose to be idiots because its easier.

What if the way a person CHOOSES to think is what CAUSES their brain waves to behave a certain way? Otherwise its like saying there is no hope for these people, and I think they will change. A few more studies like this insinuating that Conservatives are less intelligent and more sheep-like (a thread from earlier this week about a psych study) and I have a feeling people will be sneaking under the fence to our side.

Not even repugs like scientific proof that points out their inferiority.

There are a lot of studies that indicate that the way we CHOOSE to think about things at least partially determines the way our brains work.

three major things:

. views they have adopted about religion
. the world beyond their county, state, country
. the loyalty and stubbornness to stay with leaders whose message and actions are completely opposite of what they, the leaders, say and the followers limited ability to verbally defend their loyalty with acceptable logic and common sense.

I think this could be shown to apply across the history of western (specifically European North American) man.

It comes down to open or closed. The closed seem to like packages.

I wonder about what the brain shows for the third entity that we are looking at:

Leaders who can groom people to hate and kill and who go (and are going) to extreme ends to silence the open ones and keep the closed from going to open. Leaders who can kill, steal, lie, deceive, make slaves of humans without conscience. They are quite liberal in their crimes.

I never get a headache and I consider myself a liberal. My oldest son and I discuss this every so often and both of us believe that people who allow conflicts to accumulate in their brain probably have more headaches than those who give a subject enough thought to resolve the conflict early on. We also thought that those who feel pain with conflicting data would most likely cut short the painful process.

junksciencejunksciencejunksciencejunkscience....bwaaaaaaaaah!

ROTFLMAO

is simply tied up in maintaining a high level of hostility, and repressing thought.

...because of the work of those who study children. Anxious babies and young children have higher levels of adrenalin circulating- they are in "fight or flight" mode. This interferes with healthy growth and untimely you can see increased anti-social (sociopath) personalities. Lack of EMPATHY.

I think this study is about Empathy- less or more of it.

We know lack of empathy is directly related to early parenting- babies who do not get their needs met in the first three years of life do not hard-wire correctly in the brain (again, activity that takes place in the early years of life) So you get people who are inflexible, less caring of others, etc. (Did someone say *?)

vanlassie

:shrug:

I was very conservative in my teens and early 20s, but had an epiphany of sorts around 24 or so that subsequently brought me pretty much full circle by the time I was 30 or so.

Nothing drastic in my case, just a gradual evolution of thought.

but factors in your earlier life didn't allow your innate tendencies to emerge? :toast:

as you naturally matured and developed your own world view?

I dont know how you were raised, just guessing. I know a lot of brain washed little children end up thinking radically different from their parents as adults.

Most people don't shift wildly in their beliefs as adults, and for the few who do shift in their teens or 20s, their beliefs are usully set by the time they're about 30 years old. It would take a dramatic life event (such as drug or alcohol rehabilitation, a severe trauma in life, etc.) for someone to dramatically change his or her political beliefs as a middle-aged or older adult.

"Most people don't shift wildly in their beliefs as adults, and for the few who do shift in their teens or 20s, their beliefs are usully set by the time they're about 30 years old. It would take a dramatic life event (such as drug or alcohol rehabilitation, a severe trauma in life, etc.) for someone to dramatically change his or her political beliefs as a middle-aged or older adult."

Do you happen to have a link that supports those conclusions? I've never seen it expressed like that.

Thanks in advance.

i can't point to any studies, just life experience and ancient copies of "ms" magazine

but i thought it was pretty well known among feminists that only men become "frozen" and can't really change much in adulthood

women can and do change radically, most especially at the menopause but at other times too


i have a friend who has busted out and is getting a ph.D in her 50s, you knew reading the sentence before you got to the word "her" the friend was like 90 percent likely to be a woman

we all have stories like this, i think

i don't think it's genetics, i think it's that the status quo is shitty for most women so why shouldn't they change and evolve and try new things to hit on something meaningful for them, if they just sit back and accept they get handed a life of changing diapers, first the kids, then the grandkids, then their own parent's -- you got nothing to lose by becoming radicalized when faced with great "options" like that!

:P

I think they do -- and there are Republicans who worked this in reverse --
were liberals and now neo-cons -- Olsen, for one. And I think the anti-abortion religious fanatic .....can't think of his name at the moment/prominent back a decade ago -- he was also a liberal. And many other cases.

So I think that information can change people -
Sometimes people just don't think their own thoughts and feelings matter -- and that others know better. Then they change their minds. Lots of reasons for all of this.

I'm only half-joking.

but Slaughter House 5 -- unbelievable -- and, in fact, I think the movie is EXCELLENT.
I don't know what he thought of it ??

I have long felt that none of these guys were 'really' liberal...only that they were going along with what seemed the zeitgeist of the time. Other people were getting ahead by being liberal so they did it too. Once the national feeling changed with the rise of Reagan and they saw an opportunity to make money being who they really were all along, they grabbed it. I esp. feel this to be true of Dennis Miller who was always meanspirited and misogynist even when he was nominally leftie.

I don't know if they were truthfully "liberal" or not --
I did read that about Olson --

But these do seem to me like people who will always want to be on the side of power --
having power OVER other people -- not just power to be used, perhaps, constructively --
but power OVER others.

Don't like 'em --

STRONGLY disagrees.

:P

Your brain was already predisposed to the same thought patterns as a liberal. It simply took time and exposure to life, consequences and the harshness of reality before you became the person you were wired to be.






I'm completely talking out of my rump here. However, it did almost sound feasible, didn't it? :P

most "studies" I see cited here.

:toast:

Researchers showed subjects one letter at a rate much higher than another. The conservative group had a harder time wrapping their heads around the idea that a different letter was on their screen than the one that they had been conditioned to expect.

In other words, the conservatives were more easily conditioned by repetition.

It seems to me that these same conservatives could be as easily conditioned to another viewpoint. Further, it seems to me that we may be confusing causality. People who are more susceptible to media repetition become conservatives, not the other way 'round.

unfavorite oxymoron (or is that oxymoran) ;-)

-- President Bush!

(Two words that never should have been used together!)

"Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in their anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M."

Yea -- I have more brain activity when I see W too. Apparently the Conservatives have almost none, at least in the critical thought region.

You just know that the MSM won't say this.

Maybe it's the research I've done on all the old "proofs" that women were inherently intellectually inferior to--or at least markedly different from--men, all the nuanced forms that basic premise has taken through the years, and all the ways it has been used to hold women back. The same type of "research" has been used to claim that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites, the poor to the wealthy, etc. To accept as a given the irredeemable intellectual inferiority of any large group of people is incredibly wrong, counterproductive, and IMHO, pretty damn depressing.

While I don't deny studies indicating differences in cognitive functions between groups of people have a scientific validity, or even that they perhaps have something to tell us about who we are and how we work, they simply fail to address the basic question: are these cognitive differences the cause, or in fact the *result* of differences between groups? Why do reports in the media about these studies and their findings fail to even address the repeatedly proven fact that conditioning affects the way our minds work? I see no reason at all that *choosing* to interpret information from the world around you a certain way isn't going to affect the way your brain processes that information.

I'm looking at this thread and seeing the harm that this report is already inflicting...there's no need to argue with the other side if you can just tell yourself that they're hopelessly stupid and never gonna get it. The point is, where the hell is that gonna get us?

It is intellectually lazy at best to rest one's understanding on the "easy route", that is to look for patterns and assume they have meaning beyond the pattern.

We, as THINKING liberals, can do better.

Thanks for pointing it out first

It's a little ironic that a study which supposedly indicates a greater capacity for embracing ambiguity on the liberal side has quite a few people going "Yay! Conservative=Stupid," and not seeing how much harm that kind of thinking really does to us as human beings.

I guess it bothers me because I believe that the only chance the human race has to advance beyond the petty, bloodthirsty, myopic mass that it is now is in learming to identify the possibility for redemption and harmony with our enemies. I don't mean to say that we should fail to challenge them or that we should allow them to walk all over us, but I don't see how we can hope for anything but a violent, unjust, tit-for-tat world until we consistently choose empathy over malice, learning to see ourselves in even those who do us harm. I see nothing to celebrate in evidence that the potential for peace and understanding between opposing groups cannot be achieved, and I fail to see how anyone else espousing an open-minded, compassionate, liberal worldview can do so.

We need to remember that NONE of our ideas can work for everyone. I see so many times that people think "if only the world were this way" that somehow it would work for all. Usually, it is on the dogmatic right, but there is plenty of "my way is best FOR ALL" to go around.

I think the longer term challenge, once we minimalize these sociopaths, is to realize and account for the truth that people ARE different in what they want, can do, will do, and wish for others. We have gone so far backwards from just 40 years ago, and with the attempt to remove habeas corpus, backwards a thousand years, so there these are more pressing problems. However, let's try to not go down the path of "one size fits all." There are a number of people who do not and will never agree with us, in many ways because they are different and want different things. We need a real society that can be adult enough to not only accept that but help those people also to fulfill there desires, as much as possible.

Don't know what that is, but it is the height of arrogance to always assume, as this study leads many to, that we are correct and they are wrong.

As someone very dear to me said so many times: "that's too easy!"

It is powerful to remember that many ideas are just "too easy."

more intelligent than others. Looking down on people who are less intelligent is hardly a progressive attitude.

There are, as everyone should know, different types of intelligence. Those of us who have the type of intelligence to excel in academics may lack the intelligence of those who understand how things work, how to build things, repair engines, etc. Others have exceptional musical or artistic intelligence, or social intelligence.

It's fine to recognize our own strengths and develop them but we shouldn't disparage the strengths of others.

Watch males; they are attracted to things getting blown up --
and they don't even realize it -- !!!

And I'm not attracted to things that are blowing up. This has nothing to do with brain functionality, it is based on somebody's perspective on life which has a great deal to do with how a person is raised.

To do with the neurological condition. I think most men are just easily entertained.

I have to go now there is a balloon drifting past my window.

blowing stuff up, I'm there on opening day! I also liked Transformers, all the Bourne movies and others of that ilk. And ain't I a woman?

So what does this study even prove, that is significant? That there is a difference between narrow minded people and open minded people? I think we already knew that.

It just says that liberal-minded people are better able to deal with complexities and ambiguities in life. I've generally believed this in the past. The study didn't really tell me anything new.

We have no way of knowing if a liberal person is more able to deal with ambiguity than a conservative person because he or she

a) has some sort of genetic predisposition towards grasping complexity

b) was brought up in an environment that exposed him/her to greater complexity and provided the tools for grasping it, or

c) chooses at some point, for whatever reason, to assume that the world is full of complexities and ambiguities which must be dealt with, and hence is better prepared when faced with them.

Like I said, I don't think that this study has no value, I just am really bothered by the conclusions so many seem to be jumping to. It's really dangerous to assume that you can determine any individual's behavior based on the cognitive or behavioral patterns observed at some point in a group he or she happens to belong to.

{QUOTE}
I'm looking at this thread and seeing the harm that this report is already inflicting...there's no need to argue with the other side if you can just tell yourself that they're hopelessly stupid and never gonna get it. The point is, where the hell is that gonna get us?
{END QUOTE}

I'll tell you where it gets us, it gets us exactly where we are now. It gets us two political ideologies which spend the majority of their time and money each trying to convince us that the other is completely wrong or completely stupid. And the inevitable result is that nothing at all is accomplished, ever. Both parties are guilty of propagating this war of ideas because neither party sees benefit to itself in admitting that it could be "Partly" wrong about anything.

Neither Liberals nor Conservatives are ever COMPLETELY right or COMPLETELY wrong. while those of us that have realized that can be somewhat unpopular here, the truth stands. And "Studies" like this one (Which seem to inundate both sides of the spectrum) have done nothing at all except allow each of the respective groups to feel good about ignoring the contributions of the other.

And there's nothing wrong with studying them to learn more about brain function. If someone uses this study to discriminate, it's not science's fault.

That is not the point. The association with "liberal" vs. "conservative" is silly. Sorry, but it is.

It is just like the associations that people made about male/female and the "sides" of the brain. Come on! We are really quite better than this.

Are you saying there are no differences between male and female brains? Now THAT'S silly. Who's "we"? As far as I know the scientists who did the study do not give their political affiliation.

I think you have no clue whatsoever about how the scientific method works. If you want to peer-review and critique the study, go ahead. Otherwise, your comment is nonsensical.

Well, rather than talking about the scientific method, which has nothing to do with the issue I picked at here, let's talk about differences between male and female brains. Please do review the studies. They do not state that female brains are this way and male brains are that way. No, they look for statistically measurable associations between gender (a loose term anyway, as somewhere on the order of 1 in 100 births have some reasonable ambiguity) and some physiological, neurological, or psychological characteristic/response/behavior or other measurable (repeatably, hopefully) datum. In the end, there can easily be more in common between the brains (in terms of the measurable data) of a given man and a given woman, than between a given pair of individuals of "opposite" gender.

The silliness, to me, is that researchers keep LOOKING, long and hard, for these "differences", and that we (humans in this case), as good pattern matchers, jump to the all to easy (and yes, silly) associations in "dichotomy": male/female, liberal/conservative, etc.

BTW, "we" are the posters and readers here at this forum, whom I see in large part to be liberal, thoughtful and critical. We can be more critical than this study and of any conclusions stated or implied.

Finally, I hope you are a Scientist after insulting me in reference to the scientific method.

This is a scientific study, it makes no judgements about which "type" of brain is better. Maybe people on this board do, but that's NOT the fault of this study. The study has to use the language that we use and understand to differentiate people, like "conservative" and "progressive" or "male" and "female". I Guess they could study the differences between the brains of "flurmbers" and "glickners" but since no one would know what the hell those are they would be worthless identifiers. :eyes:

"The silliness, to me, is that researchers keep LOOKING, long and hard, for these "differences",..."

Uhh, yeah, that's sort of the point. That's a perfectly legitimate and effective way to study brain physiology. How would YOU study it? People ARE different and it has a great deal to do with their brains. I see no problems or "silliness" with studying those differences and how brain chemistry might be involved.

"Finally, I hope you are a Scientist after insulting me in reference to the scientific method."

Actually, I'm the Queen of England, what's the fucking difference? If you want to critique the study, go ahead, but do so within the framework of science, not politics. This is not a political issue, it's a scientific one. And if YOU are a scientist then you should know better.

If you got a problem, apparently it's one that one of the foremost Scientific journals in the world would like to hear about since they peer-reviewed this study and saw fit to publish, "we" didn't publish it or produce it, so I don't see how "we" being "better" than this has anything to do with anything except as a way for you to look down your nose at people on this board.

have any effect on how somebody perceives the world? Read my post below this.

n/t

Granted that in the past study similar to this were used to oppress people that were considered inferior. The difference in this test is they are only using people with different outlooks on life, one liberal one conservative, not based on race and/or gender. I resonded above to a post about this that alluded to, having not read the article first, DNA which is never mentioned in that article. But I did respond to that post saying that the difference between somebody's outlook on life say the difference between perceived liberal and conservative as that study was looking at was based more on upbringing rather than genetics. Even if genetics could figure into this somehow, again not based on race or gender, this study is based on a person's perspective in life not the brain they were born with, which, even if somebody was born with the type of genetic brain anomaly as an either down syndrome or autism, would be strongly influenced by how they were raised.


And where I think it's going to get us, that will have a better understanding of how people perceive the world. Not saying that we have to round these people up and put them into reeducation camps. But having a better understanding of how people can perceive the same thing in such an extremely different way, as with the war in Iraq, we might have a better way of understanding how to deal with somebody that appears to be completely ignorant of everything that the perceive. In the post above I alluded to it being sort of like never growing up, like a child would perceive the world, where everything that they are comfortable with is fiercely defended and anything that makes them uncomfortable is fiercely attacked, kind of like with the same knee-jerk response to the key inputs, everything is either black or white, they neither cannot hesitate nor anticipate, no gray areas.

My concern is that we may be confusing causality.

Are conservatives less likely to be able to react appropriately to anomalous information or are those who are more susceptible to conditioning via repetition more likely to be politically conservative? Which came first? Conservative or programmable?

I think the people who are most conservative today are those most susceptible to the barrage of media brainwashing. They're not inherently conservative, they're inherently gullible.

Bad news for the pea brained freeplets

... since they're less capable of adaptation. They'd make for better frontline soldiers.

I thought they were robots and would have microprocessors rather that brains.

That's assumption one.

Next, put aside the usual snide remarks about the RW being brain dead, with us or against us, morans.

Let's say there is merit in this study.

True, you are not going to change the mind of the conservative. We know that because that's the way it's been for years and because, now, there may be some basis in science. So, change the way the message is presented to that audience.
For this audience, skip the nuance. No flipping or flopping. State your message in black and white. Not if this, then that, or well, it depends. That works for the liberal audience. Our brains are apparently wired that way, plus we're smarter and more charming. But you may not want to have a beer with us over a barbecue in the back yard. But the democratic candidates have to present their message in black and white terms the RW can understand. Granted, this may be problematical with gay marriage or abortion rights, but it can work on economics, the way, etc. It may not be easy, and it certainly doesn't sit right, but it's worth considering.

Mostof these people should be ignored or at best mocked and ridiculed. They will never change their minds about anything , and will never, ever vote for someoene w/ D after their name no matter we fram an argument.

And complex arguments CAN be boiled down. I have always wondered why we can't seem to speak our views in the context of our moral framework;
a) It is right to allow people to marry the person of their choice. That's what freedom means.
b) It is wrong to tell women that they must bear offspring they do not want. That's what freedom means.

Right. Wrong. No ambiguity.

Progressives can be factually correct, but still have trouble persuading anyone.

:rofl:

Flame me if you will, but I resist any "study" that claims one group of people are biologically superior to another.

This is a hate-based study. They started with a conclusion, and worked backward. We all like to feel superior, but isn't it enough to be right about an issue without claiming Darwinian superiority?

Don't be too quick to embrace stories like this. It can start a dangerous trend.

... I didn't see any claim of superiority or inferiority, but a scientific study about perception, pattern matching, and political viewpoints has great potential to be abused. I see that happening in this thread already. I see posts that betray a desire to use the study to prove that conservatives are stupid, or "analysis" based on shallow reading of a shallow article about the study already talking about how people are "innately" liberal or "born conservative". It goes to a damned scary place.

If your political opponent has the free will to be either conservative or liberal, then your struggle with him remains a conflict of ideas. Your opponent can become your ally at any time, if you can convince him to change his ideas. When your opponent is born your opponent, when he opposes you because of some accident of his birth, what then is the solution to defeat your opponent? He can never think like you, and will always fall into his inborn tendencies. The only way to defeat him and his inborn, inferior ideas is to what, disenfranchise him or kill him?

No thanks. I don't want any of that, no matter whose politics it supports!

It just says that liberals handle complexities and ambiguities better than conservatives. Even without this study, we already know (just by observing people in everyday life) that some of us are good with complex situations, while others aren't.

Some people are smarter than others; some people are better-looking than others. That's life.

I don't think there's much harm done here. Conservatives will always think that they're more intelligent than liberals. Liberals will always think that they're more intelligent than conservatives. The show goes on.

It is a study that is basically try to show the difference between how people perceive the world. Like say the difference between Dennis Kucinich and Ann Coulter. One, Dennis Kucinich has a very liberal outlook on society, Ann Coulter on the other hand has a very "conservative" outlook. This study is trying to show why there are differences between them, not if one is superior over the other. It's trying to look into why Dennis Kucinich can see things so much differently than Ann Coulter. And a lot of this is based on how somebody is raised from a child and the experiences that they gain in life and how that affects their outlook. The responses to the key inputs are based on that. Somebody with a more liberal upbringing will hesitate to make sure they press the correct key on the other hand somebody with a more conservative upbringing may have a tendency to just go with the flow. And as in the case with some "conservatives" say like Ann Coulter, they seemed to be like a small child and how they would perceive the world, a very black and white view hence the key responses, no hesitation or anticipation, only what seems most comfortable.

And there is this from the article.

you'd have to be a pretty poor observer of the human race to be above like age 14 and not to have noticed that liberals are more intelligent on average than conservatives


being able to handle ambiguity is a KEY skill, and extremist conservatives in particular just don't have it, they seem stupid because they ARE stupid

i don't know why we should continue humoring them, they can't be educated above a certain level, can't be reasoned with, because they quite simply don't have the tools

anyone who has had to deal with them for any length of time already knows this

Like, who knew?:shrug:

I think my favorite line in the article is, "The tendency of conservatives to block distracting information could be a good thing depending on the situation....." Uhhh, do you mean like, facts or the truth???

and what the neo-cons have done is SUICIDAL ---

So something went wrong --

When we poison our lives with pollution, the brain is the first effected.
Organized patriarchal religion is another poison --

People who feel threatened -- homosexuals in a repressed society, like Hoover and Nixon -- will seek power over others.

"Still, he acknowledged that a meeting of the minds between conservatives and liberals looked difficult given the study results.

"Does this mean liberals and conservatives are never going to agree?" Amodio asked. "Maybe it suggests one reason why they tend not to get along."

They had to conduct a study to figurer that out? :rofl:

1) Incredulous; an immediate dismissal of the study's rather rudimentary conclusions with; "those are elitist liberal rags/universities/professors/inkjet printers/etc., and they can make up anything they want!"

2) Inventive; The immediate discovery of contrasts combined with hyperbole and exploited as corollary strengths or weaknesses, then the more advanced shepherding and requisite dissemination.

Expecting and finding the results your looking for seems obvious but there seems more. This idea of defending someone else's definition of who or what you would be the real work at least in my thinking anyway. The natural position would be finding that adaptable position which in turn bring one back to the survivable position and into and back to the conservative. The misnomer of plastering someone up with this idea that they are conservative but in reality by definition they are not really conservative. Using the words by definitional meaning instead of the pejorative or a belonging. Wouldn't it be better to use the proper definitional of arrogant, ignorant, hard headed and greedy than the classification of conservative which might be in many instances opposite of what they really are :shrug:


Having people live by the consequences of their actions is a hollow promise and nothing to bet on btw

Thanks for the link......

"Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives..."

women. Women solve problems with both sides of their brain, men tend to solve problems with only one side of the brain--the left side. Put another way women use all of their brain, men only half.

Why aren't women in charge of the world? If they were perhaps problems would be more adequately solved since all resources were utilized.

I'm just saying...........

Or, for that matter, why aren't more reasonable people in charge? As opposed to those who would steal natural resources for the benefit of a greedy few... those who would kill off movements which would benefit the many at the expense of those same few... etc., etc., etc.?

Probably because it takes a certain personality type to WANT to lead and be 'in charge'... and that personality type isn't usually predisposed to help the many at the expense of the privileged few... they'd usually rather just join the greedy few.

*sigh*

what seems to be the case is that both genders use the left brain more for verbal problems and the right brain more for spatial problems, but that men tend to do this in a more specialized way than women, who are more likely to show some brain activity from both hemispheres for both types of problem. There is only a very small difference between the two, but some people have suggested that it could be linked to findings that men tend to be more focused in their attention, whereas women tend to be better at multi-tasking.

...are easy (for them) ways to avoid the messy, hard work of living with people who are different. This is one of the essential ways in which they are weak.

a reasonable discussion of an interesting study.

I'll just chime in to say it doesn't imply superiority so much as differing functioning.

If we were a 'tribe' we would need both sets of function for survival.

There's a reason they are called 'conservative' folks, they don't push the envelope and dislike change. IMHE a society needs both.

We are more open to new ideas, and not stuck in one thought-process, as are our more Conservative Americans.

We speak from the heart more, and they speak more from a script of strict dogma.

Say what you will, it's just one more reason to clebratebeing a "Liberal"!

TC

when i was a kid, the REAL lil'bush, some of them smarter edjumacated kids would pick on me, then they would kick my ass... i told them i would come back and fight them later... they would say "you and what army"... haha got them now!!!

i dont think the drugs or alcohol did me any harm. i can still pick up small objects with my toes, and the occasional slurp of beer doesn't hurt either.

conservatives not flexible??? then how does dick get his head in that undisclosed location?

People who are conservative or liberal first have neural activity different from each other; then they find the political party and activities they are most comfortable with. Doesn't that mean that shouting at each other about our politics is not going to get us anywhere? There once was a term: counter-productive. Falling into the idea that one thing is superior to another is not only counter-productive but anti-liberal.
How many of you readers have family members who are conservative? How many have children who already display that bend? What has been wrong for the past 2 decades is that we have acted like each was a different species and that our understanding and comfort was a choice. This study indicates that is not so and liberals at least should have the openness to understand the implications.
We have to stop shouting and snarling. This country; this idea of self-government is simply too important. We have to grow up all over again to stop this madness.

..

It seems that conservatives aren't inherently conservative. They simply have less ability to accept reality A once they've been conditioned to accept reality B.

Progressives need to be doing the conditioning.

How would you go about conditioning someone? Where is anyone willing to go with this? I thought we were liberals and could accept differences? We need to separate, within ourselves, the wheat from the chaff. There are those who really have no conviction other than they deserve power. Now they do not care where on the spectrum that comes from as long as they have power to tell everyone else how to think, act, believe. That should be what we are fighting against not the convenient labels and stereotypes. George Bush is chaff; Dick Cheney is chaff; name the "elite" who think they are better, more moral, more deserving and see the chaff but for God's sake lets stop doing what those mentioned are doing and stop demonizing those who view the world from a different perspective. Being able to see and accept differences and not have that a major problem in relationships and politics is what we are supposed to be about. So let's be that.

People have had "wrong" hammered into their brains for so long, that it's gonna take a whole bunch of "right" to displace it.

I'm not squeamish any more. Let's do what works.

I'm okay, you're okay. Perhaps. But *they're* not, they need to be led to the correct conclusion.

The 'chicken and egg' issue that often comes up with regard to brain imaging studies. Do conservatives respond less efficiently to conflict because of something hardwired in their brain, or do they show different brain activation patterns because they are using inefficient strategies? For example, work by McClelland and his colleagues shows that dyslexics show different brain activation patterns on language tasks than non-dyslexics (in particular, less use of the left angular gyrus), but that if they are given intervention that improves their reading, they also show more typical brain activation patterns.

In any case, it is interesting that conservatives are less effective in dealing with conflict and uncertainty even in simple tasks - which may well be linked to their preference for simplistic political solutions.

Another possibility, of course, is that there is a specific disorder called rightwingitis, which causes its victims' brains to seize up in the presence of a W!

"liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work."

IT SHOULD READ

"Liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because their brains work."

Why couldn't they pick a different letter than "W" or am I missing something?

When I see a "W" I probably have unusual brain activity just from seeing it. Maybe the same way people have unusual brain activity when they see "666"

by 24/7 ultra-right-wing media. So it could be that conservatives' "brains" are more succeptible to lies and propaganda that ours.

The question is, is it innate or because of the brain washing(from parents, media, etc.)

and what the study implies (which is something that we observe on a daily basis) is that so called "conservatives" tend to be unable to think critically, particularly when doing so might challenge their storied beliefs.

IMHO, "conservative brains" is an oxymoron.

to begin with.

Love this quote from the article:

"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.

Sulloway said the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat who opposed Bush in the 2004 presidential race, as a "flip-flopper" for changing his mind about the conflict"

I think most of us already knew there was a severely narrow minded problem with the repukes.
I just wish they'd come out and give stanford bennett iq tests to each group and tell us the results. I know what would happen...

This is a good indication: "and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy."

Coupled with their inability to take in new information, they are going to repeated fail simple iq questions where the answer is not obvious and they have to build or even grasp possibilites from the information given.

I've been watching a gaming forum conduct a group circle-jerk over how they would murder a home invader. Funny thing is, the only ones I see participating in that thread are the conservatives...

Just "duh".

The conservative penchants for yes/no, black/white, with us/agin us, etc. is all the indication you need of the difference in brain function. When living by the KISS principle supercedes thinking through the issues in the search for truth, you got yourself a conservative.

intelligence. The difference between genuises and the rest of us, is that genuises has less brain activity (i.e. the brain ran more efficiently and less energy had to be expended to do the same tasks).

Too bad I have to get to work...don't have time to google it.

This is a fairly new area of study, but it seems that on the whole highly intelligent people show less brain activity for very simple tasks, and more brain activity for difficult tasks.

which finds the difference between the conservative brain and the liberal brain. The conservatives are so locked in to the right vs wrong, left vs right, male vs female, white vs black, one way or the other way of believing. I have always been a shade of grey thinker. I'll bet most of us lefties are. Speaking of 'lefty', you know that left is sinister and right is divine? I hate it that they can always drag God over to 'their' side. I have long since had an interest in mental health and brain function. In my own unscientific study doing intake assessments for Mental health and Substance abuse, we used proverbs to separate the 'concrete' thinkers from the 'analytical' thinkers. The concrete thinkers took the literal meaning of a rolling stone gathers no moss. The analytical thinkers related it to human behaviors. I think the conservative thinkers tend to be more literal and concrete. the liberal thinkers seem more able to use symbolism and analysis. The same goes for the authoritarian stance of never questioning but blindly obeying orders and religious edicts. I can't imagine not questioning, exploring, and analyzing knowledge. I believe this is what sets us apart, what has lead to scientific discoveries and to the rise of Democracy. We are the thinkers!

It seems like, in general, they all demonstrate the classic symptoms of autism.

What is autism ?
snip---
"There is general agreement that, in its full-blown form, autism involves a triad of impairments—in social interaction, in communication and the use of language, and in limited imagination as reflected in restricted, repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behaviour and activities. Those who combine all three impairments to a marked degree have the classic form of autism..."

http://www.uoguelph.ca/oaar/what_is_autism.shtml

Take Bu*h as the classic example of the conservative mind. Socially, he's a total boor, he can hardly manage to speak a coherent phrase, he can't seem to grasp that occupying Iraq is a dead-end street and therefore keeps repeating the same mistakes, and he keeps repeating the words "terrorist" and "nine-eleven" over and over again ad nauseum.

Anyway, just a thought; no offense meant to folks diagnosed with autism.
;)

and the old "triad of impairments" formula is solidly refuted in the latest research.

We neither lack empathy, nor imagination -- though certainly there is a communication impairment.

Over on Second Life, the LePen crowd was most quickly driven out of the Porcupine sim, when they tried to set up offices there. Why? They moved in right next to the Autistic Liberation Front, and we both knew who they were and don't believe in tolerating fascists. Contrast that to the more neurotypical neighborhoods they relocated to, where the neighbors either knew nothing about LePen, or didn't give a damn, or both.

Conservatives more autistic, my ass.

Political Leanings May Be in Your Head
Brains of Liberals, Conservatives May Function Differently

By CARLA WILLIAMS
ABC News Medical Unit
Sept. 10, 2007

Share Ever wonder why Democrats and Republicans can never agree? The answer may lie in the brain.

Liberals and conservatives think in fundamentally different ways, researchers reported in a study published Sunday in the journal Nature.

The study, conducted at New York University, suggested that while conservatives are known to be more structured and persistent when making decisions, liberals are more open to new experiences. Researchers have traced these stereotypes to differences in brain activity.

"Political orientation is based on the fundamental way our brains process information," said lead study author David Amodio, assistant professor of psychology at NYU.

"There is a range of ways that people process information. Some people are more comfortable seeing the pros and cons of a situation. Others are more comfortable to see the situation in only one way."

More:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=3580747&page=1