Left brain, right brain
Left brain, right brain
Are liberals more adaptable than conservatives? And what does it mean when someone switches sides?
Los Angeles Times Editorial
September 12, 2007
Astudy reported in the journal Nature Neuroscience suggests that liberals are more adaptable than conservatives. "Duh," you might say. After all, it's conservatives who insist that "when it's not necessary to change, it's necessary not to change." But this study goes beyond the truism that conservatives like to conserve to suggest that liberals might be better judges of the factsthan conservatives.
Liberal and conservative college students were asked to tap a keyboard when one letter appeared on a computer screen, and to refrain from tapping when they saw a different letter that appeared less frequently. Researchers found that liberals were less likely to mistake one letter for another; the lefties also registered more brain activity when the less frequent letter popped up.
Marco Iacoboni, a UCLA neurologist not connected to the study, said it showed that "there are two cognitive styles -- a liberal style and a conservative style." Lead author David Amodio, an assistant professor of psychology at New York University, explained the difference in terms of a commuter who drives the same way home from work every day. If he's a liberal, he is more likely to be alert to a detour. If he's a conservative, he's more likely to, well, stay the course.
Fun stuff, except perhaps for Fox News. But there's a problem with the templates of the rigid conservative and the flexible liberal. The history of politics and ideas abounds with personalities who migrated from right to left and vice versa.
One of the notable intellectual developments of the 20th century was the defection from communism -- the "God that failed" -- by disillusioned believers such as Arthur Koestler and Whittaker Chambers. More recently, the term "neoconservatives" was applied to former liberals who had moved right not just on foreign policy ("neocon" is now shorthand for a supporter of the Iraq war) but also on social issues such as affirmative action and crime.
The traffic is two-way. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the New York Times reported, "came to Wellesley as an 18-year-old Republican, a copy of Barry Goldwater's right-wing treatise, 'The Conscience of a Conservative,' on the shelf of her freshman dorm room. She would leave as an antiwar Democrat whose public rebuke of a Republican senator in a graduation speech won her notice in Life magazine as a voice for her generation."
So: Did former leftists move right because their liberal "cognitive style" alerted them to an alternative route to the just society? If that was the case, why didn't those same adventuresome brain cells eventually trigger a leftward relapse? And if the mark of a true conservative, neo or otherwise, is a neurologically grounded reluctance to change, can converts to the cause be trusted? Those, Dr. Amodio, are the real brain-teasers.
JLNobody wrote:Well, excluding "us", of course.
Three short sentences and the long pursued "they" are finally isolated and identified. Occam's Pfizer.
Hard-Wired Right
Another specious scientific claim.
By Jonah Goldberg
A new study announces that conservatives and liberals have different brain wiring. This isn't the first such study, nor will it be the last. Just a few years ago, in fact, I pounded my keyboard like a gorilla going after a piece of Samsonite over a somewhat similar study. But for reasons that perplex me, these things are taken quite seriously by a lot of folks.
As for me, as I indicated yesterday, I think this study is just a continuation of a long line of craptacular research. So, let me expand on the craptacularity.
Let's start with the Los Angeles Times write-up:
In a simple experiment reported today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information.
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 decisionsÂ….
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.
There were also several paragraphs like these from experts:
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.
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."
Okay, so where to begin? Let's start with some of the other possible interpretations of these tests. Studies suggest that changes in the activity of the mind can change the wiring of the brain. So perhaps these scientists have the cause-and-effect backwards. Perhaps becoming conservative changes your wiring rather than the wiring makes you conservative.
Or instead, maybe the hurly-burly of college life ?- or simply the age and ignorance of the college students ?- makes these distinctions more pronounced as students are long on glandular passion and shorter on introspection.
Or perhaps, self-described conservatives are for neurological ?- or entirely ideological ?- reasons less eager to impress a bunch of guys in a lab coat. A recent ?- and, to be fair, very modest study ?- suggested that liberals care more about status while conservatives care more about money. So maybe, the young liberals saw an advantage that was lost on the conservatives, and thus the liberals tried harder. Perhaps the liberal kids thought that they could get a gold star from the man in the white coat ?- and if they tried hard enough, maybe even an internship! Meanwhile, the conservative might have said to himself, "this is craptacular" and lost interest. One way of producing more accurate results might be to re-run the test with the addition of cash incentives and see what happens.
On the other hand there may just be variables at work here than we cannot grasp easily. As is frequently the case, a mixture of nature and nurture is likely at work here. I don't know the answers, because I'm not a neuroscientist (no, really ?- I'm not ?- though they do often call me "Dr. McDreamy." ("Actually, they call you Dr. McDreaming of a ham sandwich" ?- The Couch)
But setting aside a poor methodology, there's still a problem with how the results of this study might fit with the larger world. If this study is accurately tracking the innate ?- let's even call them "genetic" for fun ?- differences between liberals and conservatives, then wouldn't we expect these numbers to hold (roughly) constant ?- like eye color or left-handedness ?- over generations and across regions of the country or the world?
And what are the implications of that? Is socialist Sweden's population saturated with liberal-brains? Are other ethnicities simply genetically "conservative" ?- i.e. opposed to change ?- and that's why they have the problems they do? And what about Canada? They're very liberal up there, but genetically or neurologically, are they really that distinguishable from Americans?
In Russia for a very long time, "conservatives" wanted to conserve the Soviet system which made them the anti-matter universe versions of American conservatives. Surely the substance of what people want to conserve matters, if we are to take these studies remotely seriously.
Studies of this sort have a long pedigree, going back to the execrable Authoritarian Personality, and they all have a similar flaw. They stack the definitional deck in their favor.
Yes, sure, there's probably some neurological factor involved in why some people resist change 'more than others. But, absent the relevant qualifiers, love of change is not "liberal" any more than being for the status quo is "conservative." For example, liberals from Jonathan Chait to Nancy Pelosi have a white-knuckled grip on the welfare state created by FDR and LBJ ?- in other words they're conservative about the liberal status quo. Meanwhile, so-called paleoconservatives are quite radical in their agendas. Think about it: There are cranky, risk-averse people at any number of liberal institutions and risk-loving rightwingers at conservative institutions. Have you never met an inflexible leftwing bureaucrat? Have you never hung out with a partying, devil-may-care Republican?
I have. Then I smashed him with a rock and buried him in a shallow grave for embracing too much ambiguity! I kid, I kid.
The bottom line is this: there are Marxists who haven't embraced a new idea in 40 years, and there are conservatives who want to tear down the welfare state, imposing radical and sweeping changes on society and allowing the creative destruction of the market place to run amok (at least that's what liberals keep telling me). Which are conservatives and which are liberals? The idea that liberals-qua-liberals are comfortable with ambiguity begs the question: Ambiguity about what? Walk around Madison, Berkeley, or Burlington some time, explaining very rationally that the evidence on global warming is ambiguous. As you're wiping the spittle spewed from their outbursts off your cheek, take a moment to savor the liberals' comfort with ambiguity.
And what about the millions of people ?- some famous, most not ?- who have switched sides? What of the hordes of New Deal Democrats who became Reagan Republicans, starting with Reagan himself? What about the Michael Linds, David Brocks, and John Deans? What are we to make of the 9/11 converts to conservatism? Did these people metaphorically rip out their brain wiring like an angry man pulling off the sensors from his heart monitor? Was Kevin Phillips like Neo in the Matrix, awakened to the true reality, such that he could pull out the rightwing brain tubing from the conservative mainframe?
A good indication of why whatever merit this study has, is ensconced in a huge, steaming pile of b.s. ?- and I don't mean "biased science"?- is this passage from the LAT:
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.
First note how Bush's "single-minded commitment" is an objective fact while Kerry's flip-floppery is merely a "perception." More important, does this mean that liberals who stick to their guns are conservatives? Do conservatives who change course (as Bush has, in fact done) have liberal brains? Is this really a conclusion we're willing to draw from a bunch of kids tapping at Ms and Ws on a keyboard? Please. The study may measure something, but the interpretation of the study is pure flapdoodle.
If there is a small-c conservative personality type ?- and I believe there is ?- I don't see much evidence that it lines up neatly with a set political agenda or party. Moreover, I think it is astounding that so many people are eager to give credit to one of the most illiberal assertions science has made in a long while. Conservatives' ideas aren't wrong, their brains are! So much for liberals claiming that they are the descendents of the age of reason. So much for conservatives believing that ideas have consequences.
?- Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online.
If our society lived up to the political ideals of the left, I don't think many leftists would be advocating change. But many rightists would. So change, as such, is not the dependent variable of relevance. But if we look at people in terms of rich and poor we might find the rich (usually conservatives--why not? the status quo is to their benefit) very conservative regarding change, while the poor can be expected to be liberal regarding change.
Problem with this distinction is that most poor people are too "dumb" to be liberal. Liberalism acknowledges a world of greys and "dumb" people are comfortable only in a world of black and white.
An interesting phenomenon is the fact that conservatives (even wealthy educated ones) are very willing (probably in a Machiavellian sense) to phrase their political propaganda in simplistic terms while liberals seem to want to be right and intelligent even when their more nuanced propaganda reaches fewer minds.
So, while neurological considerations are not totally to be rejected, the fact is that the political values of most people shift from liberal to conservative--to some degree--as they get older and financially more secure. Yet they retain the same nervous systems. I think that most (not all) of the variance can be accounted for with the variables: economic status, levels of education, and age.
blatham wrote:JLNobody wrote:
Quote:hardening of the categories.
Lovely line, JL.
Finn suggests that we liberal types happily latch on to such a notion as this study apparently concludes because it helps us feel superior. Possibly. But I don't feel that I need help in the matter.
And after all, it isn't as if that 'superiority thing' is the sole province of folks on the liberal side. Though perhaps finn will show me wrong here by confessing his conservativism's inferiority and junior status.
One need not feel inferior to not feel superior.
Having a sense of superiority is not particular to Libs or Cons, nor is being superior in any number of ways. After all, Alec Baldwin is one hell of an actor.
The differences lie first in the fact that Libs need to feel superior and secondly it is their Lib beliefs which they feel mark them as superior.
As every amateur psychologist knows, the need to feel superior is an obvious reaction to the actual feeling of inferiorty, and this fits perfectly with the second point. What easier way is there to achieve superiority (or at least a sense of it) than to simply express agreement or acceptance of a particular ideology or belief system? Doesn't take any skill or talent,no particular strength of character, just the ability to say "Yeah! Me too!"
I think most Libs quietly recognize the vapid nature of their swollen sense of self. How else can we explain their need to cast the issues and times - and most importantly, their personal role therein - in tones and terms of such High Drama?
The current (Republican) government so clearly seeks to establish a dictatorship of the most vile and oppressive means, while they and their fellow Freedom Fighters of the Left risk life and liberty posting rants on A2K or joining a crowd of aged hippie dilletantes at a protest on the Washington Mall.
That's it: I'm an aged hippie dilletante!
How can I think you Finn?
ebrown_p wrote:Can one go through life without either a heart or a brain?
Yes. Our current president would be a fine example.
Jonah Goldberg's rant still doesn't explain why conservatives think the W is still fine when it/he is obviously upside down.
Sorry... hadn't read Bear's response yet...
Finn dAbuzz wrote:blatham wrote:JLNobody wrote:
Quote:hardening of the categories.
Lovely line, JL.
Finn suggests that we liberal types happily latch on to such a notion as this study apparently concludes because it helps us feel superior. Possibly. But I don't feel that I need help in the matter.
And after all, it isn't as if that 'superiority thing' is the sole province of folks on the liberal side. Though perhaps finn will show me wrong here by confessing his conservativism's inferiority and junior status.
One need not feel inferior to not feel superior.
Having a sense of superiority is not particular to Libs or Cons, nor is being superior in any number of ways. After all, Alec Baldwin is one hell of an actor.
The differences lie first in the fact that Libs need to feel superior and secondly it is their Lib beliefs which they feel mark them as superior.
As every amateur psychologist knows, the need to feel superior is an obvious reaction to the actual feeling of inferiorty, and this fits perfectly with the second point. What easier way is there to achieve superiority (or at least a sense of it) than to simply express agreement or acceptance of a particular ideology or belief system? Doesn't take any skill or talent,no particular strength of character, just the ability to say "Yeah! Me too!"
I think most Libs quietly recognize the vapid nature of their swollen sense of self. How else can we explain their need to cast the issues and times - and most importantly, their personal role therein - in tones and terms of such High Drama?
The current (Republican) government so clearly seeks to establish a dictatorship of the most vile and oppressive means, while they and their fellow Freedom Fighters of the Left risk life and liberty posting rants on A2K or joining a crowd of aged hippie dilletantes at a protest on the Washington Mall.
Did you do your little superiority dance after you posted this Finn?
Nothing like accusing the other side of being inferior to make yourself feel superior.
I find the statistics on education level vs. political persuasion to be much more interesting than an isolated study.
Eh gads! Criminy, someone quotes Jonah Goldberg?
That's like telling people you enjoy the taste of spit-up in your mouth.
Come hither to observe the take down on the paste-eating doughboy. and put down your coffee mug least you destroy your keyboard. tboggs.com had a Koufax Award nomination for it.... after "Flowers for Algernon"
http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2005/05/flowers-for-goldberg-nro-post-day-one.html
parados wrote:Finn dAbuzz wrote:blatham wrote:JLNobody wrote:
Quote:hardening of the categories.
Lovely line, JL.
Finn suggests that we liberal types happily latch on to such a notion as this study apparently concludes because it helps us feel superior. Possibly. But I don't feel that I need help in the matter.
And after all, it isn't as if that 'superiority thing' is the sole province of folks on the liberal side. Though perhaps finn will show me wrong here by confessing his conservativism's inferiority and junior status.
One need not feel inferior to not feel superior.
Having a sense of superiority is not particular to Libs or Cons, nor is being superior in any number of ways. After all, Alec Baldwin is one hell of an actor.
The differences lie first in the fact that Libs need to feel superior and secondly it is their Lib beliefs which they feel mark them as superior.
As every amateur psychologist knows, the need to feel superior is an obvious reaction to the actual feeling of inferiorty, and this fits perfectly with the second point. What easier way is there to achieve superiority (or at least a sense of it) than to simply express agreement or acceptance of a particular ideology or belief system? Doesn't take any skill or talent,no particular strength of character, just the ability to say "Yeah! Me too!"
I think most Libs quietly recognize the vapid nature of their swollen sense of self. How else can we explain their need to cast the issues and times - and most importantly, their personal role therein - in tones and terms of such High Drama?
The current (Republican) government so clearly seeks to establish a dictatorship of the most vile and oppressive means, while they and their fellow Freedom Fighters of the Left risk life and liberty posting rants on A2K or joining a crowd of aged hippie dilletantes at a protest on the Washington Mall.
Did you do your little superiority dance after you posted this Finn?
Nothing like accusing the other side of being inferior to make yourself feel superior.
LOL at least he didn't brag about hob-knobbing with wealthy Australians.
sooooooo.. being superior means one is inferior and being inferior means one is superior?
hum....
Quote:When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."
No doubt about it, when arguing with the Right Wing one has come to expect falling in the rabbit hole and enter Wonderland.
Pass me that hukka!
HoW tough is this to follow Kuvy?
One need not feel inferior to not feel superior.
Does that really tax your brain cells?
Because I am fond of you I will try and explain:
If one doesn't feel superior, it doesn't necessarily follow that one feels inferior.
In other words, there is a contented realm between a sense of superiority and a sense of inferiority. Let's call it disengaged, well-adjusted, possesed of a sense of equilibrium...surely you can catch on now. Our laughable self-professed Buddhists might understand if they understood Buddhism as more than a "cool" label to self-apply.
Can you contribute with more than glib versions of "I know you are but what am I?"
Please confess that you were simply being bitchy and actually did understand the concept. I don't know that I can take many more disappointments from you.
Roxxy
I forgot about my reference to my Australian friends, but obviously you did not.
How gratifying.
Almost as much so as you adopting my sig-line.
Quote:Can you contribute with more than glib versions of "I know you are but what am I?"
I wouldn't dream of trying to top this version of it...
Quote:I think most Libs quietly recognize the vapid nature of their swollen sense of self. How else can we explain their need to cast the issues and times - and most importantly, their personal role therein - in tones and terms of such High Drama?
parados wrote:Quote:Can you contribute with more than glib versions of "I know you are but what am I?"
I wouldn't dream of trying to top this version of it...
Quote:I think most Libs quietly recognize the vapid nature of their swollen sense of self. How else can we explain their need to cast the issues and times - and most importantly, their personal role therein - in tones and terms of such High Drama?
Actually, it is not a pathology, instead it is the greatest gift the Ancient Greeks gave us. The sense of the individual as the center of the World. It is the bedrock, the foundation of civilization West of Suez. It is also the center of what drives economic Conservatives.
No person steeped in the cultural pyschology of the West has ever been content to be a spectator or a brick in the wall. We "make" history, we are not simply players in it and we are the heroes of our own lives.
Ridiculing individualism is pretty insane for a Conservative to do. Its like stabbing yourself in the eyeball because you don't like what you see.
Finn sniffed:
Quote:
I forgot about my reference to my Australian friends, but obviously you did not.
How gratifying.
Almost as much so as you adopting my sig-line.
I adopted
your sig-line? WTF?
And BTW, I have 94% recall, I've been tested.
