Study: Conservative disgust response is involuntary

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

A really enjoyable article that pulls together past and present research, and empirically confirms an observation Thomas Jefferson made over 200 years ago:

"The same political parties which now agitate the United States, have existed through all time," wrote Jefferson. "The terms of Whig (liberals) and Tory (conservatives) belong to natural, as well as to civil history...They denote the temper and constitution of mind of different individuals."

* At the center of the research are many scholars working at the intersection of psychology, biology, and politics

* political partisans on the left and the right differ significantly in their bodily responses to threatening stimuli. For example, startle reflexes after hearing a loud noise were stronger in conservatives. And after being shown a variety of threatening images...conservatives also exhibited greater...arousal of the...the body's fight-or-flight response.

* Conservatives go through the world more attentive to negative, threatening, and disgusting stimuli—and then they adopt tough, defensive, and aversive ideologies to match that perceived reality.

* those on the political right and those on the political left may simply experience the world differently...Maybe you've had this experience, watching a political debate with somebody who disagrees with you, and you discuss it afterwards. And it's like, 'Did we watch the same debate?' And in some respects, you didn't.

* your disgust sensitivity is involuntary; it is not something under your control. It is a primal, gut emotion.

* humans have core preferences for how societies ought to be structured: Some of us are more hierarchical, as opposed to egalitarian; some of us prefer harsher punishments for rule breakers, whereas some of us would be more inclined to forgive; some of us find outsiders or out-groups intriguing and enticing, whereas others find them threatening...preferences on such matters appear to have a genetic basis.

* when you combine...research on the physiology of ideology with waves of other studies showing that liberals and conservatives appear to differ when it comes to genetics, hormones, moral emotions, personalities, and even brain structures, the case for politics being tied to biology seems pretty strong indeed.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/04/inquiring-minds-john-hibbing-physiology-ideology



Or, as I would put it, Conservatives are plain chicken shit, afraid of OMG!-Who's-that?!-everything.


But interestingly, these differences in genes, personalities, etc.. affect Americans less when income is more equally distributed.

Income Inequality and Political Polarization

* people less divided by wealth have less need of strong party distinctions.

* the extreme political divide will not be brought back down until the extreme concentration of wealth is brought back down. The solutions to extreme concentration of wealth are well known

Income Inequality (causal) at an all-time high


Political Polarization (effect) at an all-time high



http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/08/26/896445/-Income-Inequality-and-Political-Polarization-Income-Inequality-Kos#

[get the red out]

1. Question

I wonder how, or if, this would apply to someone who goes from being "conservative" at one point in their life to "liberal" in another? Do they shift their political thinking or does the political system shift on them?

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

4. Looking at it as a spectrum, I suspect those individuals would be in the middle...

and are captured in the residual that makes this correlation less than 1.0.

[Comrade Grumpy]

2. I think we see a lot of conservative disgust responses on this web site, too.

It's almost more of a psychological thing than a political spectrum one.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

6. Yeah, I agree. I'm very empathetic in some areas, and...

very intolerant in others. But on whole, I'd still wind up on the left in the spectrum.

[Dawson Leery]

3. This explains hate radio/fox/conspiracy websites, etc.

[napkinz]

5. Scientific Proof: Liberals Are Smarter Than Conservatives

March 20, 2014
Mindy Fischer

Several studies have found that Liberals have larger and more active anterior cingulate cortex, or ACC, than our Conservative counterparts. And while they are lacking in the ACC department, they actually have larger amygdala than we do.

Now What Do These Brain Parts Do??

First the Libs….

Basically, the more developed ACC allows the Liberal to be a better problem solver. It helps us to cipher through difficult information and make educated decisions. According to scientists, Liberal brain chemistry allows us to monitor conflict, detect errors, and we are more likely to

“respond to informational complexity, ambiguity, and novelty. Liberals, according to this model, would be likely to engage in more flexible thinking, working through alternate possibilities before committing to a choice. Even after committing, if alternate contradicting data comes along, they would be more likely to consider it. This is how science works, and why there might be so many correlations between scientific beliefs.”

Now the Cons…

The Conservatives on the other hand have a more developed center of emotion with the amygdala. It is said to be the center for fear, so with such an enlarged and heightened amygdala, much of what they do and how they react to most situations comes from basic fear response. Discover magazine also says,

“Conservatives respond to threatening situations with more aggression than do liberals and are more sensitive to threatening facial expressions.”

“So, when faced with an ambiguous situation, conservatives would tend to process the information initially with a strong emotional response. This would make them less likely to lean towards change, and more likely to prefer stability. Stability means more predictability, which means more expected outcomes, and less of a trigger for anxiety.”

So, basically what this all means is that they are just plain scared. And how can you relax and laugh and find humor in things that are genuinely funny when you are scared shitless all the time?? I mean, come on. We’d probably be a little grumpy too if we were born with Conservative brains, right?

Well, I hate to rub salt in an already irritable righty wound, but I have a feeling that I know something that will make you and I smile, but likely will only deepen the frowns to our right. Since that Obama-Galifinakis piece, web traffic to healthcare.gov has increased by 40 percent. And you know what else? Despite all of the lovely comparisons with Nazism and slavery, Obamacare is right on track to meet even the most optimistic enrollment estimations made one year ago.

Have a fabulous day lefties!!

entire article: http://samuel-warde.com/2014/03/scientific-proof-liberals-smarter/

[Enrique]

7. um, eww

cookies!

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

8. I wonder if there's research that explains the beatification of Ronald Reagan?

Are conservatives predisposed, and therefore more likely, to accept distortion than liberals?

There are party elites who are willfully distorting history because the Republican Party doesn't have a JFK. Then there is the generation that's too young to remember Reagan. I'd lump them in with those of my generation who never noticed politics until a black man was elected. So these folks are dupes.

But what about the Cool-Aid drinkers? The generations that, for the most part, know better. Are they predisposed, and therefore more likely, to accept distortion than liberals?

I'd like to see that study.