Looks Like Conservatives Are Just Big Scaredy Cats!
I don't know that it's this cut and dried (after all, look how optimistic the neocons were about the results of invading Iraq), but yes, I'd say that on the whole, the conservatives I know seem to be real bedwetters:
Political opinions are considered choices, and in Western democracies the right to choose one's opinions -- freedom of conscience -- is considered sacrosanct.
But recent studies suggest that our brains and genes may be a major determining factor in the views we hold.
A study at University College London in the UK has found that conservatives' brains have larger amygdalas than the brains of liberals. Amygdalas are responsible for fear and other "primitive" emotions. At the same time, conservatives' brains were also found to have a smaller anterior cingulate -- the part of the brain responsible for courage and optimism.
If the study is confirmed, it could give us the first medical explanation for why conservatives tend to be more receptive to threats of terrorism, for example, than liberals. And it may help to explain why conservatives like to plan based on the worst-case scenario, while liberals tend towards rosier outlooks.
"It is very significant because it does suggest there is something about political attitudes that are either encoded in our brain structure through our experience or that our brain structure in some way determines or results in our political attitudes," Geraint Rees, the neurologist who carried out the study, told the media.
Rees, who heads up UCL's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, was originally asked half-jokingly to study the differences between liberal and conservative brains for an episode of BBC 4's Today show that was hosted by actor Colin Firth. But, after studying 90 UCL students and two British parliamentarians, the neurologist was shocked to discover a clear correlation between the size of certain brain parts and political views.
He cautions that, because the study was carried out only on adults, there is no way to tell what came first -- the brain differences or the political opinions.
But evidence is beginning to accumulate that figuring out a person's political proclivities may soon be as simple as a brain scan -- or a DNA test.
As far as the problem with the conservative brain, I've always adhered to the Lou Costello theory that their brains are too tense. Too tenths the size of a normal brain.
"Ironic, isn't it Smithers? This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That's democracy for you." --Mr. Burns
I always thought conservatives were like the Scarecrow, the Tinman and the the Cowardly Lion.
Ok, so science has now proved they have some sort of a brain.
But you can't tell me the have any heart or courage!
Oh, and all of the followers are the Flying Monkey's.
that there appears top be a physiological cause of "conservatism", perhaps they can be quarantined in their own territory. The western halves of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and panhandle Texas would work nicely. Kind of barren and boring. Populated only by cons, they would have no one else to blame for their poverty and ignorance. We could call it Ignorastan. Of course, like all of the red states, they'd need federal welfare, um "subsidies"
Like wanting to beat somebody up or shooting somebody or not liking people who are different than you are. Base instincts. Instincts that bullies act on. Sarah Palin is like this.
Sniffing our own farts while we go on about how our enemies are genetic cowards is so advanced.
got something you want to share with us Tom?
I can't speak to the courage of anyone who posts here but if lack of optimism is the result of smaller than normal anterior singulate it wouldn't be hard to pick out the posters with the weenies. Would it?
Hasa Diga Eebowai
between "lack of optimism" and recognizing bullshit. For instance, when Biden repeats the thoroughly debunked canard that marijuana is a gateway drug, I call bullshit. It's common sense, not pessimism, that tells me we won't get a sane drug policy with this administration. And the same is true for just about every other issue -- Afghanistan, civil liberties, renewable energy, you name it. There's optimism and then there's blind optimism. Many commenters here seem to have pea-sized amygdalas, at least when it comes to assessing Obama's performance.
and shows that you did not read the research, or are a trying to justify your Conservatism?.
When followers cannot see the malfeasance of their leaders, that is because the fear in them produces a cognitive dissonance, they want to believe, that that leader will protect them from the fear, that they are driven to the point of irrationality.
Which proves the research, to be correct.
and I was replying to someone who does, so climb down off that high horse of yours and stop jumping to conclusions.
except for your original premise, that marijuana is not a gateway drug -- of course it is, by design of the Powers That Be.
The same people that supply marijuana to children also supply cocaine, heroin, meth, and PCP. And they don't check ID's to restrict sales to children, either. Of course, the parents' medicine cabinet chock full of prescription medicines are also "gateway" drugs, as well as the parents' liquor cabinet and dresser drawer full of packs of cigarettes. Legalize all drugs the way that Portugal or Switzerland have, and all the profit is removed from both sides of the equation -- the illicit drug trade AND the prohibitionists. Ooh, the horror, the horror!
And every other issue that you mentioned seems to instill a resonance between the Republican and Democratic Parties, and quite a bit less so with those citizens they claim to govern "for their own good".
Good luck trying to illustrate the difference between optimism and blind optimism to the Obamapologists that frequent this blog. (Adverse attack by Obamapologists here in 5, ...4, ...3, ...2, ...)
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
-- John F. Kennedy
Yes, context matters. I must remember to qualify my statements, and to qualify the qualifications. If "A" is in place, then "B" is true, unless of course, "C" is present, in which case...
In the future, I shall try to avoid splitting hairs, especially with those with whom i agree.
Have a happy and more prosperous new year, BDM. ;)
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
-- John F. Kennedy
"But evidence is beginning to accumulate that figuring out a person's political proclivities may soon be as simple as a brain scan -- or a DNA test."
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
Study says marijuana no gateway drug
Marijuana may not be the gateway drug some think it is, study finds
Marijuana Not A Gateway To Hard Drug Use, Rand Study Says
Conclusions Raise Serious Doubts Regarding The Legitimacy Of U.S. Drug Policy
And this study supports your premise:
The Limited Relevance of Drug Policy: Cannabis in Amsterdam and in San Francisco
This study compared marijuana users in San Francisco and Amsterdam (where pot is legal for adults). The results found that, compared with their counterparts in Amsterdam the San Francisco cannabis users were significantly more likely to use cocaine, crack, amphetamines, ecstasy, and opiates despite similar cannabis use patterns and a more permissive drug policy in the Netherlands.
And happy New Year to you, too.
the same study to justify their criticisms of the left. But if one wants to claim expertise in bullshit detection the substance of this study would be a good place to start. To be fair though, popular journalistic write ups of scientific studies are almost always so sensationalized as to make the researchers actual claims unrecognizable. Also I'm not attributing the bullshit to Susie since her first sentence has a proper disclaimer.
Now to the res. From a statistical point of view the claims made by the journalist attempting to interpret this data or perhaps even more frighteningly, possibly by the researcher himself are ridiculous. The population chosen for study, while convenient for the researcher, is ill-chosen and too small to support any of the claims. Furthermore it conflates two vague characteristics, courage and optimism, without any justification that I can see. One could certainly pose a set of questions that might determine whether or not a person has an optimistic outlook but how do you measure courage? As far as I can see this based on a seriously flawed premise: that the anatomical size of a portion of the brain correlates to its functionality. Well there is no more common failing in humans, including scientists than confusing correlation and causation. I'll ask parenthetically if any of the ladies present think overall brain size correlates with intelligence. Philip Rushton thinks so, as do many others.
Let us consider the methodology. There are many professions that require the practitioner to consider the worse case scenario. I'm in one, engineering. The military would be another very important example. Now how do you suppose the relative size of that organ in people in such professions would stack up against the general population. You might actually be able to extract some useful data from such a study. It would be interesting to see how the conflation between optimism and courage stacks up in a group selected from active military personnel. I'd love to see that one. Selecting a small and relatively homogeneous group of students with pretty similar socio-economic backgrounds is probably the least effective group on which to base such a study. But that is what professors with limited budgets have ready access to. Hence crappy science.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
chief among them, I think, is your observation that newspaper articles often bear little resemblance to the actual data. This can be, as you suggest, because the publication is after mouse clicks, so it sensationalizes certain aspects of the study. It can also be an unintentional consequence of condensing complicated data into an easily digested bit of infotainment.
As you also note, there are many situations that are better suited to those who are pre-disposed to caution. It could be that in hunter/gatherer societies, having some individuals who were hard-wired for fear and others who were hard-wired for courage and optimism was helpful for adequately debating the proper course of action. But in our ideologically based society, it seems that those who are hard-wired for fear are too easily manipulated by Machiavellian interests to make useful contributions to our decision making. But this is the fault of the Machiavellians, not the fault of the individuals in question. Also, if people with enhanced amygdalas are too easily manipulated by the Karl Roves of the world, it could also be that people with enhanced anterior cingulates are too easily manipulated by, say, the Deepak Chopras of the world. There is a nearly infinite number of permutations. We haven't even touched upon the phenomenon of people who self identify as liberal, but who adhere to an authoritarian follow-the-leader mentality.
with that. The human brain is too subtle for such broad generalizations.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
And what about that part of the brain controlling our "sense of humor"? It must be underdeveloped in conservatives because they are not funny . . at all.
an 'Irony Deficiency.'
they find degredation, vulgarity and death, like the toy story "sid", subjects of mirth, clearly indicating a laughing in the face of fear, which to most would appear ghoulishly bizarre but is a shared f@#! y*& at horror to them.
wem
Comedy is peeing on a homeless vet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvliUuXjbL4
Why is this man not in jail?
That's true: unfunny and terrible decorators. Although bad decorating seems somehow attached the the 'straight gene'.
far left loon >.<
I'll wager a certain percentage of them purposefully decorate badly in so they don't out themselves :)
Blind optimism in the face of facts proving it wrong means you have no brain at all; only faith. I don't live by faith.
far left loon >.<
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5fHpC4Wux8&fe...
It's important to remember that the brain can change in its own structure as needed by the environment and experience or even direction of the user. I remember seeing a study of cab drivers who enhanced parts of their brain that rely on memory and sense of direction, because their jobs exercised such traits. Studies have also shown higher rates of dementia among retirees who are not active vs. those who are.
Bottom line is the brain is a muscle.
...so atrophy is the only explanation for Conservative paranoia?
Lower the retirement age.
Perhaps it's also an issue of some areas enlarging, squeezing out others.
The paranoia part of the brain could be growing from constant exercise, causing the neighboring long-term memory functions to be strangled out. This might be why conservatives can't remember that two years ago we were having a total meltdown because of their policies and the sluggish growth now really is better. Or how they keep trying the tax-cut, trickle-down strategy despite the fact that it hasn't worked for 30 years.
I used to be a conservative that absolutely worshiped Reagan. I look back on those years and wonder what the hell I was thinking. Just goes to prove my point that the brain can be restructured over time.
Maybe my story can also offer some hope that no one is a lost cause to reason.
The brain is a muscle??!!
Then one could say, "Conservatives ingest talking point instead of thinking so their brains have atrophied through disuse."
far left loon >.<
in the future a cotton swab may replace a paper trail to verify voting results..... but the article doesn't explain the conservatives propensity to lie and steal other than possibly the fear of not having enough or winning at all costs.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
tends to explain the con's obsession with the angry, vengeful, drunken father-like god figure they're enthralled with. Also the use of guns as a multi-purpose problem "solver".
Roving bands of disaffected voters equipped with torches and pitchforks are just too messy, and there will not be enough guillotines around to eliminate the long lines of oligarchs waiting for their measure of "social justice". Sometimes the use of firearms can be the problem solver.
;^)
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
-- John F. Kennedy
FA Hayek, "Why I am not a Conservative"
http://www.fahayek.org/index.php?option=com_c...
By definition conservatives are neophobes, liberals are neophiles.
where he develpoed the RWA scale, a test to measure one submission to authority, and one attitudes towards authority. In his study (free at the link below) he shows how he came to develop this test, and what the RWA scale and the SDO scale mean to Authoritarian behavior, and how they have interacted throughout history to societys' detriment.
Hers is a paragraph from the Introduction.....
"Don’t think for a minute this doesn’t concern you personally. Let me ask you, as we’re passing the time here, how many ordinary people do you think an evil authority would have to order to kill you before he found someone who would, unjustly, out of sheer obedience, just because the authority said to? What sort of person is most likely to follow such an order? What kind of official is most likely to give that order, if it suited his purposes? Look at what experiments tell us, as I did."
There is a huge body of evidence now proving the connection between Conservatism and Authoritarian behavior. And it turns out, fear of amiguity is highest amongst Conservatives.
In fact on our google "The Authoritarians" discussion group, we have seen this brain research as it develpoed, I first read about this last year.
We have also started a petition to get APS (Authoritarian Personality Syndrome) declared a recognized mental disorder.
It is so good that we are proving, with hard data, that this is not a conspiracy theory, nor a "class war".
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
quipped Groucho Marx, and in fact it turns out that personality differences between liberals and conservatives are evident in early childhood. In 1969, Berkeley professors Jack and Jeanne Block embarked on a study of childhood personality, asking nursery school teachers to rate children's temperaments. They weren't even thinking about political orientation.
Twenty years later, they decided to compare the subjects' childhood personalities with their political preferences as adults. They found arresting patterns. As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient. People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics.
As I have said all along Conservatives are Bigots. Religious, Racial, , Moral, and Political Bigots.
Conservative/Bigots live in FEAR of anybody or anything that doesn't look, think, believe or act like they do.
Fox News and the Republican Party promote that Fear (so they stay loyal to the Republican party) which explains why good people will vote against their best interest.
A simple example is Conservatives will vote against a solid, beneficial and helpful Social Security program because they fear Liberals, Gays , or Colored people (thanks to the constant lies promoted by Fox News and the Conservative Media) will steal their money or their wives.
Conservative/Bigots want to believe the lies because it helps control their psychotic Fears. They don't want to look at themselves sooo they blame others.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFb3Nf6rKM0
Science - what is that?
withered pears?
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
I'm feeling some cognitive dissonance here:
http://healthland.time.com/2010/12/28/how-to-...
when their network of friends seek admission to their bomb shelters.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
and it is fear based.Authority offers sameness and inside the box thinking.They are the ones now still making thaty house payment to that criminal bank-who is foreclosing on them. They follow the rules in lock step without question-even when the rules are destroying them.
So many I have encountered STILL think they are middle class-even though they have an under water mortgage-no retirement-no savings and work less hours.But because they still have that credit card to lean on they carry on like good consumerist soldiers and think they are still on top.
You can't reason with insanity-and they are really going to fall hard.When conservatives finally see that playing by the rules all of those years does not mean you are better than the next guy-boy will they be pissed! I get a tremendous chuckle watching their little worlds crumble.
Being able to adapt to ever changing circumstances-is our strength.
and in context to conservative values enforced at an early age, and based upon a closed social system, there is a rather simple anthropological explanation as to why adult conservatives have these (emotional abnormalities) and that is, I believe, due to child rearing. Most of my relatives are conservative and when one compares the upbringing and/or rearing of the children in relation to how their parents were reared (that is, little or no maternal nurturing, strict early competition in sports, excellence in education, personal relationships based upon competition and/or opportunity, church associations and/or affiliations as reaffirmations of academic/career/business advancement; associations with like motivated families and/or friends, or no associations other than direct family relationships; taught at early age to show little or no emotion. In short, a very close-knit family/social/career oriented structure where the early developmental years are focused entirely on competition and/or excelling in all things deemed appropriate for eventual money, career, family, etc., it is not surprising that many of the children in these familes are emotionally (if not mentally) damaged, because fear of not succeeding is taught at a very early age in lieu of nurturing, i.e., it's not ok to be who you are; it's not ok to feel the way you do; it's not ok to think what you think, in short: it's not ok if, money, career, family (success) are not achieved first. To put this another way, and due to the competitiveness of american society, the above mentioned personal needs are outweighed entireley by the societal/family/class needs, so emotional/mental issues which are, in effect, never actually addressed, eventually are manifest in bizarre, feelings and/or perceptions which result in more associations with others like oneself which only serves to reinforce those kinds of behaviors as appropriate but which seem bizarre to people outside of that norm. People of priviledge, really do live on another planet, mentally and emotionally.
wem
here is another piece to the nature v nurture argument, courtesy of Dr Altemeyer,
please read Chapter 2 of the study, as it addresses, in depth, the exact dynamic you mention in your post.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
After watching my majority democrats fearfully sloshing around in chronically wet underwear for the past two years while caving on so many issues to the minority right, I just don't buy the premise of this research. The difference in the size of any brain structure between liberals and conservative may exist, but I see no difference in courage and optimism. With a few glorious exceptions they are all lacking in both qualities and wet themselves at the slightest threat of losing their jobs. There may well exist differences but not in the traits suggested.
The people we elected were closeted conservatives.
That's the problem with liberalism: while we may not fear change as much as conservatives, we tend to be far too trusting. We would benefit from excercising a healthy amount of skepticism when dealing with anybody seeking public office.
That may be part of it, but it's also in the liberal nature to be cooperative. Conservative nature on the other hand is inherently sociopathic. To them cooperation and laws are not objectives, they are barriers.
Their mouths are mighty but that's it , loud mouth , tough talking cowards . It's a good thing for the surviving women and children that the men on the Titanic were not today's neoconservatives / Republicans .
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
Care to come in for some coffee? I have an enormous anterior cingulate.
far left loon >.<
with a large hippocampus myself.
me-oww!
...penis?
That's where us guys keep our brains anyway.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
What kinda coffee ya got?
far left loon >.<
I lust after Colin Firth. It's the size of his....brain. :)
The problem not only with fundamentalist Christians but with Republicans in general is not that they act on blind faith without thinking. The problem is that they are incorrigible doubters with an insatiable appetite for Evidence.
What they get off on is not Believing, but in having their beliefs tested. That's why their conversations and their media are so completely dominated by implacable bogeymen: marrying gays, liberals, the ACLU, Sean Penn, Europeans and so on. Their faith both in God and in their political convictions is too weak to survive without an unceasing string of real and imaginary confrontations with those people -- and for those confrontations, they are constantly assembling evidence and facts to make their case.
But here's the twist. They are not looking for facts with which to defeat opponents. They are looking for facts that ensure them an ever-expanding roster of opponents. They can be correct facts, incorrect facts, irrelevant facts, it doesn't matter. The point is not to win the argument, the point is to make sure the argument never stops. Permanent war isn't a policy imposed from above; it's an emotional imperative that rises from the bottom. In a way, it actually helps if the fact is dubious or untrue (like the Swift-boat business), because that guarantees an argument. You're arguing the particulars, where you're right, while they're arguing the underlying generalities, where they are.
Once you grasp this fact, you're a long way to understanding what the Hannitys and Limbaughs figured out long ago: These people will swallow anything you feed them, so long as it leaves them with a demon to wrestle with in their dreams.
I was once the lead piano player in a whorehouse.
don't they mean fantasize worst case scenarios and act as if they are real?
Comments are closed on this entry