Rice Univ study: physiological traits predict political attitudes

[Ah Xoc Kin]

Sep. 22, 2008
Is America's red-blue divide based on voters' physiology? A new paper in the journal Science, titled "Political Attitudes Are Predicted by Physiological Traits," explores the link.

Alford and his colleagues studied a group of 46 adult participants with strong political beliefs. Those individuals with "measurably lower physical sensitivities to sudden noises and threatening visual images were more likely to support foreign aid, liberal immigration policies, pacifism and gun control, whereas individuals displaying measurably higher physiological reactions to those same stimuli were more likely to favor defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism and the Iraq War," the authors wrote.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080918170616.htm

[Jim__]

1. Did they control for personal background data?

My expectation is that people from rural backgrounds would tend more toward conservatism. People from rural areas may be more sensitive to noise than people who live in noisy cities. Just reading the brief write-up, I couldn't be sure.

[Viking12]

2. There were only 46 participants; all from Lincoln, NE

My critique is similar to yours. The researchers appear to assume that physiological response to threat is a innerant biological feature of individuals rather than something that can be learned/ condition through various experiential factors. Maybe that has been better addressed in some of the literature they cite.