Friday, April 15, 2011

Political Views Reflected in Brain Structure?

This is another interesting study I found. The main difference between liberals and conservatives may be brain structure. This is interesting for a number of reasons but mostly because of the inability for one side to convince the other. This confirms a lot I thought about politics. It isn't about debate or finding the best solutions - it is about whose team is winning.


Political views are reflected in brain structure

April 7th, 2011 in Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
We all know that people at opposite ends of the political spectrum often really can't see eye to eye. Now, a new report published online on April 7th in Current Biology reveals that those differences in political orientation are tied to differences in the very structures of our brains.
Individuals who call themselves liberal tend to have larger anterior cingulate cortexes, while those who call themselves conservative have larger amygdalas. Based on what is known about the functions of those two brain regions, the structural differences are consistent with reports showing a greater ability of liberals to cope with conflicting information and a greater ability of conservatives to recognize a threat, the researchers say.
"Previously, some psychological traits were known to be predictive of an individual's political orientation," said Ryota Kanai of the University College London. "Our study now links such with specific brain structure."
Kanai said his study was prompted by reports from others showing greater response to conflicting information among liberals. "That was the first neuroscientific evidence for biological differences between liberals and conservatives," he explained.
There had also been many prior psychological reports showing that conservatives are more sensitive to threat or anxiety in the face of uncertainty, while liberals tend to be more open to new experiences. Kanai's team suspected that such fundamental differences in personality might show up in the brain.
And, indeed, that's exactly what they found. Kanai says they can't yet say for sure which came first. It's possible that brain structure isn't set in early life, but rather can be shaped over time by our experiences. And, of course, some people have been known to change their views over the course of a lifetime.
It's also true that our political persuasions can fall into many more categories than liberal and conservative. "In principle, our research method can be applied to find differences in political dimensions other than the simplistic left- versus right-wingers," Kanai said. Perhaps differences in the brain explain why some people really have no interest in politics at all or why some people line up for Macs while others stick with their PCs. All of these tendencies may be related in interesting ways to the peculiarities of our personalities and in turn to the way our brains are put together.
Still, Kanai cautioned against taking the findings too far, citing many uncertainties about how the correlations they see come about.
"It's very unlikely that actual political orientation is directly encoded in these ," he said. "More work is needed to determine how these brain structures mediate the formation of political attitude."
Provided by Cell Press
"Political views are reflected in brain structure." April 7th, 2011. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-political-views-brain.html

23 comments:

  1. interesting, i guess it assumes theres a set number of political views thoguh.

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  2. That's interesting. I wonder which trait is dominant when getting children :)

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  3. I wonder if it's always like that, or just in most cases.

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  4. Everything leads back to the brain and mind :D

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  5. Very smart post, i found it very interesting and it was a really good read! Keep it up!

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  6. It would be interesting if political opinion came from a side of the brain, or different areas depending on the view, but I don't seen how that proves anything other than that politics would be inherently flawed and biased.

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  7. this is so interesting, great read, thaught provoking ;D

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  8. i knew it was all biology all along

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  9. Wow man, long time ago I did take a look at your blog. Looks awesome! Sorry for lacking attention.

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  10. That's interesting, guess I should be good at recognizing threats.

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  11. So that means we can't change our own political opinion or personality?

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  12. well I think this certainly explains a lot...

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  13. It's like any brain debate though, there would always be environmental factors to skew the results. I do think it's true, to some extent, though.

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  14. most of our patterns are probably encoded

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  15. yeah it does explain why my decisions are alwyas so odd. My brain is broke :)

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  16. Interesting our brains dictates our behavior including politics

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  17. Yeah, this whole political thing is BS...good read though.

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  18. Interesting. Though I don't believe any of it!

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  19. They should make surgeries to change political views:P

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  20. I like reading about studies like this. it's only natural that our brain would, over time, show different patterns representing our progressive thoughts.

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