CONSERVATIVE vs. LIBERAL BRAINS
Do these people's brains work differently?
This LA Times article caught my eye. Apparently, scientists at NYU and UCLA have concluded that the brains of liberals and conservatives work differently.
Here is an excerpt:
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 show "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.
Participants were college students whose politics ranged from "very liberal" to "very conservative." They were instructed to tap a keyboard when an M appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a W.
M appeared four times more frequently than W, conditioning participants to press a key in knee-jerk fashion whenever they saw a letter.
Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in the 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.
Researchers got the same results when they repeated the experiment in reverse, asking another set of participants to tap when a W appeared.
Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at UC Berkeley's Institute of Personality and Social Research who was not connected to the study, said the results "provided an elegant demonstration that individual differences on a conservative-liberal dimension are strongly related to brain activity."
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.
Based on the results, he said, liberals could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.
As much as I'd like to convince myself that liberals are naturally open-minded and thoughtful -- and that conservatives are steadfastly stubborn and closed-minded -- I'm not sure I buy it.
I've met plenty on the left who have just as much of a bull-headed and "knee-jerk" reaction to things as the right-wing reactionary who refuses to believe in evolution, global warming, or the right of African Americans to be treated equally. Hell, I've been rigidly unyielding in my viewpoints for much of my life. And that's because my opinions are correct.
Perhaps the above experiment had a skewed result because liberals don't like touching the W key as it reminds them of our commander in chief.
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