Brain structure differs in liberals, conservatives: study

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Great response. I will only add that Democrats really aren't that concerned with global warming. Newsflash: America's CO2 emissions are still rising! Anyway, the scientific consensus is that Global Warming will cause big problems to Earth's biosphere. Not destroy it, but cause serious problems

1) Since when is being educated a bad thing?
2) Lots of Republicans come from rich families. So how are they not elitist?
3) All politicians are power hungry, regardless of their party or leanings.

It already says it's not clear whether it's the cause or the effect. But since we know about neuroplasticity, it could be a combination of one's temperament and the changes one's brain went through.

But yeah this study is a joke. It just comes to a conclusion that it all boils down to fear. Both sides obviously fear different thing and it's not the size of a particular area that determines how sensitive it is to activity but its neural connections. Also it could've been skewed so that they brought up subjects that would strike fear in a conservative but not phase a liberal, thus conveniently getting "more brain activity in the amygdala". Liberals have a fear of guns that borders on a phobia.

Also, this study can be interpreted in so many ways. For example I could interpret a liberal's tolerance of ambiguity and conflicts to mean that they aren't truly open minded, they are just unable to make obvious distinctions. Like how they can't seem to distinguish between terrorists (who make bombs go off in crowded areas and use kids as human shields) and freedom fighters (who only fight armed forces and try to minimize collateral damage as much as possible). It's like they go so far to avoid discrimination that they become indiscriminate. Also liberals don't seem to be disgusted by people who commit heinous crimes like rape and child molestation.

And here's yet another interpretation. The fact that liberals can tolerate ambiguity and conflict better could also mean that they see things in a vaguer way which means they see the bigger picture. This has advantages and disadvantages. It's a less rigid way of thinking, but since it's missing details and nuances it isn't as structured so it tends to be more arbitrary.

That being said I would like to see a study on the frontal lobe activity of both liberals and conservatives.

I get a pretty high sense of disgust from things like fecal matter (it pisses me off when people forget to flush in a public bathroom; but I also enjoy complexity, ambiguity, and nuance. Fear-wise, I can't say I've ever felt afraid of someone simply because they look Arab, Muslim, or Hispanic; the thought of doing so never really struck me, so I see these Qu'ran burnings and worries about mosques as deliberate fear-mongering and nothing more. Anal sex does seem a little disgusting at a visceral level to me, but I don't find this to be a reason to prohibit gay marriage.

I don't have much social fear, and that may be the Asperger's syndrome making me fairly imperceptive to social cues, include social cues of threat. This may be what makes me socially liberal and willing to "live and let live."

I think I am a pretty fearful, anxious person. Yet I am liberal, so I dont know where I would fit into that study. I am pretty strident with my beliefs though. I would have thought the large amygdala would predict that the person was strident with their beliefs, not predict what sort of beliefs they actually had.

I'm fearful and anxious...but not of new ideas/different religions/different viewpoints/Big Bad Terrorists Somewhere Out There.

Like the ones who destroyed the WTC on 9/11/2001 and hijacked all those commercial flights back in th 1970s and 1980s.

ruveyn

Yeah....minority incidents. You've more reason to be afraid of the crappy driver in front of you than a muslim hijacking your flight.

So in other words conservatives don't do as well at simultaneous broad-view when it comes to social issues as their likely placing more focus on fortifying the system's going concern while liberals in their own sophistry bubbles have trouble identifying real threats when they see them and subsequently don't account for certain realities well.

Doesn't sound too far off the mark.

More Americans die every year from a physician's s**t handwriting than died in the entire decade 2000-2010 at the hand of Jihadists. Anyone who is scared of terrorism has fallen prey to the availability heuristic, a known and well-documented cognitive failing. Ruveyn, you should know better than to give in to your innate human inability to comprehend numbers.

In that case, peanuts should be my real concern,
since they kill more people annually than all terroristic activity combined.

The terrorists I'm worried about aren't some intangible radical sect that might eventually lash out from half a world away.
They're people in my own country in $5,000 suits who crush people and ideas via industry, media, and perfectly-legal political maneuvering.

It's cuz the study is BS. All political views boil down to how you view human nature, and there's a lot more to it than just fear and tolerance of ambiguity. How one views human nature is a complex interaction between many different parts of the brain. I'm right wing and I am able to handle uncertainty fine. Matter of fact the reason I am more of an individualist politically is cuz life is inherently uncertain and being overprotective about it is unreasonable.

This! QFMFT.

My political view has positively nothing to do with human nature.

The study isn't "BS" because it's wrong about rash conclusions/assertions IT NEVER MADE.

Who cares if you're right wing and think you can handle uncertainty fine?

"Males are statistically more disproportionately more likely to be left-handed."
"Nuh-uh! I'm left-handed and a GIRL!"

Your political view has absolutely nothing to do with human nature? Everything about politics comes down to dealing with other people, that doesn't make any sense at all. And the whole point of me pointing out that I'm right wing and can handle ambiguity is not to prove that there's always the odd one out, but that this study is not only making a link between fear + tolerance of ambiguity and one's entire political alignment but also making it out to be the norm. It's a complete hack job. Low sample size and they didn't tell us where the brain activity came from. If they showed liberals pictures of guns I'm sure a liberal's amygdala would go apeshit with hyperactivity just like conservatives would with pictures of gay marriage.

And what's not rash about this?
That's a part of politics, it doesn't revolve around politics.

No, my political views are merely an extension of my ethical views, which are normative prescriptions about what would be most beneficial to mankind, other organisms, and the planet we share, according to my subjective conception of desirable.

They rounded up some people, found a cool correlative pattern based on their political ID and images of their gray matter, said more studies are needed, and now you're raging against them. That's all I'm getting.

I'm a gun-loving Leftist with a gay Republican brother. That's what you get for trying to put people into boxes, and why sometimes in studies it's best to let people self-identify.

Uh. The fact that it qualifies the assertion with "appears to", as opposed to a bald declaration,
like yours that fear doesn't revolve around politics (I'm sure you meant politics don't revolve around fear).
It would appear, as the authors of this study say, that more studies are needed.