Study: Brains of liberals & Conservatives may work differently

[AlexM]

So... liberals are more likely to suffer from cognitive dissonance?

[AlexM]

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And FWIW, this board immediately and unequivocally pounces on any viewpoint that can even be construed as consversative.

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This board is full of ancaps. That's so far right, you can't see FreeRepublic from there.

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I'm further left than I am right and I'm an ACist. Don't try to put ACism on a left/right one dimensional scale, because it just doesn't work and it only makes you look foolish.

[valenzuela]

I agree with Adanthar, Im far right, I may happen to disagree with the religious, anti-freedom turn the right has taken recently( when did it happen anyway [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]? ) but if they ever get back to the way theyre supposed to be,where do I sign up to vote for them? ( In fact many USA libertarians are going to vote for Ron Paul , a candidate that belongs to the Republican party)

[Borodog]

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I agree with Adanthar, Im far right, I may happen to disagree with the religious, anti-freedom turn the right has taken recently( when did it happen anyway [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]? ) but if they ever get back to the way theyre supposed to be,where do I sign up to vote for them? ( In fact many USA libertarians are going to vote for Ron Paul , a candidate that belongs to the Republican party)

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Regardless, libertarianism is traditionally left wing, no matter to where modern leftists choose to displace it.

[BCPVP]

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And FWIW, this board immediately and unequivocally pounces on any viewpoint that can even be construed as consversative.

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This board is full of ancaps. That's so far right, you can't see FreeRepublic from there.

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I'm further left than I am right and I'm an ACist. Don't try to put ACism on a left/right one dimensional scale, because it just doesn't work and it only makes you look foolish.

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Thuggery<--------------------->Freedom (AC)
[img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[ALawPoker]

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I agree with Adanthar, Im far right, I may happen to disagree with the religious, anti-freedom turn the right has taken recently( when did it happen anyway [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]? ) but if they ever get back to the way theyre supposed to be,where do I sign up to vote for them? ( In fact many USA libertarians are going to vote for Ron Paul , a candidate that belongs to the Republican party)

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I'm basically the same way as you, but I don't consider this "far right." And I think this highlights why the study OP talks about is so absurd.

"Right" and "Left" are transient terms. They change as the strategies of the rival political parties change to encompass what they hope is a majority of voters.

So how does this study define "liberal" and "conservative"? What the hell does that mean? The two parties' ideologies are just a compromise of a bunch of unrelated issues, and there's no reason to think the brains of a Democrat would be any different than the brains of a Republican. So if this study shows that there is, to me it's more likely that the study is just flawed.

For example, two people who think exactly the same might vote for different people just because one person likes to smoke pot and really enjoys it (so he picks a Dem and considers himself a "liberal"), and the other person is having financial trouble and the tax money he'd save is really important to him (so vice versa).

If you just focused the study on "What's the best possible solution to X issue?" and included only people who have thought about it deeply (and not just people who label themselves some loose term), then I'd be willing to buy the idea that people who reach different conclusions have different innate brain structures. This study just reads as if it's comparing chocolate ice cream lovers vs. vanilla. It's meaningless.

[Kaj]

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This study just reads as if it's comparing chocolate ice cream lovers vs. vanilla. It's meaningless.

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Yet if the study showed that the way brains function between chocolate and vanilla lovers were different, then it wouldn't be meaningless anymore. So all of what you say is fine, and thus you'd expect the study to show no differences if what you say is true. But the study (allegedly) has shown differences in the two populations, which sort of makes it silly to merely assert that there cannot be differences.

[ALawPoker]

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This study just reads as if it's comparing chocolate ice cream lovers vs. vanilla. It's meaningless.

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Yet if the study showed that the way brains function between chocolate and vanilla lovers were different, then it wouldn't be meaningless anymore. So all of what you say is fine, and thus you'd expect the study to show no differences if what you say is true. But the study (allegedly) has shown differences in the two populations, which sort of makes it silly to merely assert that there cannot be differences.

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So, like I said, I just tend to think it's much more likely that the study is flawed (since the idea that choco and vanilla lovers' brains are actually different seems so far-fetched to me).

I understand your point though. If the study is legit then it's legit. I just don't see any one study, no matter how sound, as something that would open my mind to the idea that people who label themselves liberal or conservative have some innate difference to them.

I mean, it just seems like something that can't be tested for. So since error is a possibility (and I guess to some extent an inevitability, depending how you look at it), I assume that's what we're seeing here. But sure, this study is apparently a small indication that maybe there is a flaw in one of my assumptions. I'll admit that.

[Howard Beale]

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Thanks for posting Howard, this kind of stuff is so funny. Wonder how this study got funded? I need to contact these guys and find out how to get some of that dough coming my way. Basically it's about as valuable as building a bridge to nowhere.

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Adios: Predictably open minded about the studies conclusions.

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Adios: YW.

All: A flame-war is good to get a nice, long thread going. How hot are things allowed to get in the Politics forum before someone (not me plz) gets hit w/ the ban-stick?

[Copernicus]

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Here's something different, fwiw

Quoting a bit:

.....In a study likely to raise the hackles of some conservatives, scientists at New York University and the University of California, Los Angeles, found that a specific region of the brain's cortex is more sensitive in people who consider themselves liberals than in self-declared conservatives.The brain region in question helps people shift gears when their usual response would be inappropriate, supporting the notion that liberals are more flexible in their thinking...........The work, to be reported today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, grew out of decades of previous research suggesting that political orientation is linked to certain personality traits or styles of thinking. A review of that research published in 2003 found that conservatives tend to be more rigid and closed-minded, less tolerant of ambiguity and less open to new experiences........Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times more likely than conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts and were 2.2 times more likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.

As an aside, I'd think that this would also make Liberals better poker players.

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Since most conservatives start out as liberals when they are young and move to the right as they gain real world experience I would say that the study is nonsense, unless brain development changes the factors they studied.