Ugh Say Brain Different
This UCLA/NYU study says lefties and righties think differently. Open-minded lefties, rigid righties use different parts of their brains. Righties, has it happens, get it wrong more. Lefties enlightened, righties … troglodytes.
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.”
Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.
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.
Actually, that was because they saw him as a mountebank and a shameless political opportunist, to put it politely, with a history of checking the wind direction and jumping on and off bandwagons, particularly when the going got tough. But that’s a separate issue.
The study was done among college students. I’d throw out all results on that basis alone. We’re talking about immature people for whom being open to everything is a rigid position, and for whom rigidity represents a form of nonconformity. Study also does not address actual reaction to life experience, which can turn lefties into righties and righties into lefties.
But at the risk of being considered open-minded, I’ll say these are interesting results. But a little too rigid. Let’s make it more interesting. Open it up a little. I’d like to see how it breaks down among, say, union autoworkers and Wall Street executives. Cuban government officials and GOP campaign volunteers. Heck, let’s go all the way. What’s the most progressive country in the world? North Korea! What country is the right-wing den of capitalist evil? Us! Let’s do North Korean party members vs. American Imperialist Running Dogs.
I’d also like to know if having an open mind is more likely to make you trend conservative with age and experience, and if having a rigid one is likely to make you turn left. Let’s see some questionnaires and brainscans on the same people 20 or 30 years from now.
Surber no understand big words.
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Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:15 am on Monday, September 10, 2007
17 Responses to “Ugh Say Brain Different”
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September 10th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Study: Conservatives More Mistake-Prone And Show Less Brain Activity Than Liberals When Exposed To The Letter “W”
Liberals are open-minded “flip-floppers” and conservatives are mindless, “knee-jerk” drones according to a study conducted by scientists from New York University and UCLA:
Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain
Even in hu…
September 10th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Open-minded lefties, rigid righties use different parts of their brains.
Then I really had a profound change in how I think when I shifted from liberal to conservative views over the years. Yes, I used to be a old-fashioned liberal (not one of these newfangled “progressives” or “neo-liberal”).
Which, if one takes this study seriously, implies that brain activity is not static. Which, in turn, implies that some of the studies premises are invalid, let alone the results, even ignoring the population segment the study targeted*.
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*: College students?!?!?!?!?! Before or after weekend binge parties?
September 10th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
They found conservatives on the campuses of UCLA and NYU? How?
September 10th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
[...] THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, The Moderate Voice, Jules Crittenden, Shakespeare’s Sister, DownWithTyranny!, The Mahablog, The Gun Toting Liberal™, Althouse, [...]
September 10th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
[...] 10th, 2007 by Michael van der Galiën Enough already. We get it: conservatives are stupid and stubborn. The LA Times has an article up about a recently [...]
September 10th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Yup. This explains why all the new ideas are on the “rigid” Right these days, and the “open minded” Left keeps flogging the same redistributionist crap that has been failing spectacularly since, heck, 1848.
September 10th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
I know! Let’s do a study on left-wing academic hacks and see if the results show them to be rigidly ideological gasbags who wouldn’t recognize a new idea if it hit them in the smackeroo.
September 10th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Me no understand.
Too many big words.
Ugh.
Me no like.
September 10th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
ugga ugga grunt grunt.
September 10th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
[...] no understand LA Times story on conservative vs. liberal brains. Too many big words. Friend Jules, him understand. Law woman, Ann, her understand. Me, no [...]
September 10th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
I’m left handed, and INTJ personality type. My whole life I’ve been able to visualize viable solutions to technical and mechanical problems that others struggle with terribly.
Lefty’s do see the world differently.
I’ll often look at something a righty is trying to do and just intuitively know “that’s not going to work” because I just know its not going to work. They always get miffed of course and continue the failing path for a few hours/days/weeks. They can’t understand how I can sort of “flash comprehend” their problem in its totality.
September 10th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Look, there was some skewed study out of Berzerkley a few years ago that said conservatives are all fascists, or something like that.
Ohmygod, Frank Sulloway (cited above) is the author of that study.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33714
September 10th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
“academic researchers” are such dorks.
Given the dorki-tude of their own private lives, how DARE they purport to understanding/analyze anything.
Here is representational evidence of the only brain differences that MEAN anything :-)
(it’s a joke people, lighten up)
http://gregladen.com/wordpress/?p=839
September 10th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
I suppose that if it were the case that homo sapiens operate at the perceptual level, this hogwash might work. Since homo sapiens are conceptual beings, by virtue of the rational faculty, this is alas nothing but hogwash, perpetrated by not-fully-formed specimens of homo sapiens who attempt to run the world by the pseudo-scientific use of their feelings and “instincts”. It causes them to interpret data in the silliest, and incredibly shallow, ways. This is the predictable result of conceptual beings trying to act like an animal that lives on the level of percepts. I sometimes think this must be the reason why this type also puts so much store in what children have to say. There are those who seem to believe that childish innocence–borne of inexperience with reality–is graced by some special kind of wisdom. I suppose if you never rise to the conceptual level of an adult, you might have a stake in the sagacity of children.
I would like to ask the professor if he knows the difference between an open mind, you know–like a garbage dump that takes anything–and an rational adult’s critical mind. As an adult, with an adult’s experience with life, there are many ideas that I’ve already grappled with and come to this or that conclusion. Unless I find credible evidence that I’ve erred in my conclusion, I don’t waste my time going over old ground. Tell me the last time you heard anything new come out of these sociology labs? I bet the only thing that might possibly surprise folks would be the amount of grant money that is pored into this quackery standing in for scholarship. It speaks to why the “open-minded” acceptance sans any objective standard (”bias,” “bigotry,” and the now thoroughly corrupted discrimination, in newspeak) is so damned important. The first requirement for them to get away with this sort of thing is for there not to be any standards by which to form judgments–and more, that any sort of standard be perceived as morally suspect.
September 11th, 2007 at 12:10 am
Unless I find credible evidence that I’ve erred in my conclusion, I don’t waste my time going over old ground.
“wisdom” is born of a lifetime of failure and correction. The young haven’t failed enough to become wise yet.
September 11th, 2007 at 10:48 am
This study should actually show how a very simple test can be used to jump to many interesting, but unsupported conclusions. All the test showed was that “liberals” are better than “conservatives” at a rote visual identification procedure. An alternate interpretation could be that liberals are better at following rigid procedures without deviation and are admirably suited for tasks such as quality control at a dry bean processing plant removing the malformed beans. Personally, I have trouble seeing that the results indicate a greater toleration for ambiguity on the part of the liberal rather it would seem to indicate a greater toleration for rote obedience of an essentially boring task.
September 11th, 2007 at 11:29 am
“I have trouble seeing that the results indicate a greater toleration for ambiguity on the part of the liberal rather it would seem to indicate a greater toleration for rote obedience of an essentially boring task.”
That too. I reacted too quickly to even get to the “substance” (what substance ?) of the conclusions.
There is way too much pseudoscience about nowadays (”scientism”) where the conclusions drawn are a function of the agenda held at the outset of “the study”.
Such debates–more about politics and personal agenda than science, of course– dominate the “global warming” discussion.
Anyway, as for the “liberal” brain, I (anyway) am convinced it has few functioning actual neurons :-) and is (in the words of repentant British liberal Andrew Anthony) quite threatened at the idea of abandoning any portion of the wholecloth mantra, the individual’s “identity” being all tied up with the worldview.