Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences:
The story of the 1968 debate opens a well-regarded 2013 book called Predisposed,
which introduced the general public to the field of political
neuroscience. The authors, a trio of political scientists at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Rice University, argued that if the
differences between liberals and conservatives seem profound and even
unbridgeable, it is because they are rooted in personality
characteristics and biological predispositions.
On the whole, the research shows, conservatives desire security,
predictability and authority more than liberals do, and liberals are
more comfortable with novelty, nuance and complexity. If you had put
Buckley and Vidal in a magnetic resonance imaging machine and presented
them with identical images, you would likely have seen differences in
their brain, especially in the areas that process social and emotional
information. The volume of gray matter, or neural cell bodies, making up
the anterior cingulate cortex, an area that helps detect errors and
resolve conflicts, tends to be larger in liberals. And the amygdala,
which is important for regulating emotions and evaluating threats, is
larger in conservatives.
Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences: The story of the 1968 debate opens a well-regarded 2013 book called Predisposed,
which introduced the general public to the field of political
neuroscience. The authors, a trio of political scientists at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Rice University, argued that if the
differences between liberals and conservatives seem profound and even
unbridgeable, it is because they are rooted in personality
characteristics and biological predispositions.On the whole, the research shows, conservatives desire security,
predictability and authority more than liberals do, and liberals are
more comfortable with novelty, nuance and complexity. If you had put
Buckley and Vidal in a magnetic resonance imaging machine and presented
them with identical images, you would likely have seen differences in
their brain, especially in the areas that process social and emotional
information. The volume of gray matter, or neural cell bodies, making up
the anterior cingulate cortex, an area that helps detect errors and
resolve conflicts, tends to be larger in liberals. And the amygdala,
which is important for regulating emotions and evaluating threats, is
larger in conservatives.Read More