Brain structure differs in liberals, conservatives: study

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Ok so then your political views centre around human nature + the nature of animals.

I'm "raging" against em? How could I be raging against em if I think this study is a joke? And where does it say in the article that more studies are needed? The internet is a funny place, I always get that I'm "angry" just cuz I think something is BS.

Well being against gay marriage is more prevalent among Republicans and being for gun control is more prevalent among liberals, so how did they conduct the experiments to provoke higher amygdala activity? And yes I know that not all republicans are against gay marriage and all Democrats are for gun control. Michael Moore is a Catholic who disagrees with their views on gay marriage and abortion. But this isn't the norm with Catholics (not to say there is no controversy at all and that there's unanimous agreement but it's more prevalent among Catholics).

Where do they say more studies are needed? Yeah I meant politics don't revolve around fear. And yes I know they say "appears to" but that just sounds like a dubious disclaimer since they sound pretty certain here:
I'm aware that they said "associated with" here instead of "revolves around", but still the whole poiont of the study is that conservatives are physiologically more sensitive to fear and disgust while liberals are physiologically more tolerant of ambiguity. What they seem to be unsure of is whether this is a cause or an effect, but what they seem sure on is that these differences are either what political views revolve around or are major factors to one's political views. I find both of these ridiculous since political views involve such a complex interaction between all parts of the brain that you can't just narrow it down to one or two sections of the brain. It hasn't even been made clear whether conservatives are more sensitive to fear or disgust in reaction to anything in general or if the studies were conducted in a way that provokes hyperactivity in the amygdala.

How are they even remotely certain that entire political views revolve around fear and ambiguity tolerance since both sides fear certain things and tolerate ambiguity on certain things? Like whenever it comes to poverty, liberals tend to be tolerant about the vague idea of throwing money and books at the poor to help em. Likewise whenever it comes to family values conservatives tend to be tolerant about the vaguenesss of what "family values" are other than the nuclear family model.

I did see this one study that shows both conservatives and liberals are functioning in their limbic system when it comes to things they're biased on and they swore up and down they were being rational when the activity in their limbic systems were way more active when things got heated than their prefrontal cortexes. I'll post a thread once I find this. I think the dude's name was Dr. Drew Western or w/e.

Conservatives tolerate ambiguity about what family values mean to them? The more religious and conservative a person gets, the more dogmatic and rigid they are about what constitutes a proper family, gender roles, etc.

• What feminists call "patriarchy" (a gender-based social-dominance orientation favoring males over females)
• No abortion
• No premarital or extramarital sex
• Focus on having and raising children
• Instilling children with religion
• No divorce

Liberals tolerate more diverse models of the family: remarriage, gay marriage, gay adoption, childless couples, living single, etc.

I've always wondered if the Con-Artists have a position on single fathers. On the one hand, they tend to idealize the "nuclear family", on the other hand... I haven't really heard them complain at all about it.

• Wow! so this is how you make bullet points!

AKA Fox News

First of all, we've seen recently that the real conartists are liberals not conservatives, though that is also insulting some conartists, because even they don't stoop as low as liberals.

@ Subotai

If the truth shows there is a good reason for a cause of concern, then a rational individual is correct in being concerned. Fox News gets more viewers than the other media outlets combined because they have something called journalistic integrity. They wouldn't be killing their competition in ratings, if the other outlets didn't all have serious credibility issues.

What you did wrong here is you didn't come up with something equally catchy and callow - like lie-berals. There, I gave you some ammo. Pleasure to coach ya.

The Weekly World News was once among the highest circulated papers in the world (peaked at 1.2 million per issue).




Clearly it's all about credibility.

Actually National Enquirer lectured the New York Times, on Journalistic Integrity, so its a strange world. If Fox News actually aired stories like weekly world news, they wouldn't even be on the air or would be like Comedy Central's Daily Show.

Liberal v. conservative... Fight, Round 2,345,890,001, Let's Get Ready To Rumble!! ! *Begins sleeping*

I tire of the Democrats, as they end up being wimps who cave when a Republican yells boo. And the Republicans need to shut up when they have nothing to say. There is no government for the people, here, folks. They fight back and forth, and in the end, we lose... If you need some proof, just look at the recent budget "battle."

They cut Education... Education...Edu-we-hate smart-people-cation! Then, added to Defense spending. Who wins here? Not the kids, not the parents, not the schools... The government needs a new plane to not fight with.

The government is a tank with two turrets, both cannons pointed at each other, as they drive over our faces, and the driver gets a tax cut. The top 1% are getting richer with each passing fiscal year, indicating that these fights aren't doing any good.

We don't have two political parties, we have a bowl of crap looking in the mirror at itself. So, don't divide into liberals v. conservatives... If you must divide, divide into poor v. rich...

Such is why they didn't make a claim that no other parts of the brain were involved,
merely that there is a correlation between political ideology and what can be found on a brain scan of the regions they examined.
An EXTREMELY modest claim is what they made, and it was consistent with their findings.
And your assertion that extremely complex interaction between all parts of the brain are needed for political views to form is exactly that-
a bald assertion.
It could very well be that our worldview is almost entirely determined by which of a few extremely basic and timeless motivators we are more sensitive to.



They didn't say political views revolve around fear.
They published the results of brain imagery as correlated to political view,
with the implication that fear might be a MORE pronounced component of a conservative's view as opposed to a liberal's.
I'm sorry this is so upsetting.







If you can find an absolutist statement among the researchers, I'll eat my hat.

Strange, I actually scrutinized the crap outta the article a few times and after scrutinizing it once more, turns out you're right on this. I tend to be skeptical of studies of political views in general, it has nothing to do with me getting butthurt. However I would still like to know how they conducted this. Like did they ask questions? Show pictures? Activity in a region of the brain has more to do with connectivity than size.

Yes, that would be very interesting. I'm trying to find where this was published, but having no luck....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsFRgIb8mAQ[/youtube]

Any comments about the grey matter of this conservative?

Indeed. The game is divide and conquer. Smoke and mirrors. Sleight of hand.