Brain structure differs in liberals, conservatives: study

[Kadie]

Brain structure differs in liberals, conservatives: study
– 27 mins ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Everyone knows that liberals and conservatives butt heads when it comes to world views, but scientists have now shown that their brains are actually built differently.

Liberals have more gray matter in a part of the brain associated with understanding complexity, while the conservative brain is bigger in the section related to processing fear, said the study on Thursday in Current Biology.

"We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala," the study said.

snip...
People with a large amygdala are "more sensitive to disgust" and tend to "respond to threatening situations with more aggression than do liberals and are more sensitive to threatening facial expressions," the study said.

more...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110407/hl_afp/healthpoliticsusbritain_20110407175825




and one of the first responses to this article...

Alex
Always knew Liberals were brain damaged. Proof


Then Ben replies to Alex

Ben W
Always knew liberal haters were unable to comprehend what the article actually says. Try more reading, less knee-jerk commentary.

:rofl:

[aquart]

1. Which is why we need to develop ads that consider these factors.

None of this is funny, btw. It's the key to a winning strategy if we get off our asses and work on it.

[Ghost Dog]

9. .

[drm604]

29. I wonder how that would work.

Fear of not being able to pay for medical treatment.
Fear of being laid off with no safety net.
Fear of not getting social security in your retirement years.
Fear of you or your children having to go to war to protect corporate profits.
Disgust towards racists.
Disgust towards people like the Koch brothers.
Disgust towards PR firms and front groups.

Hmm... It might work, but it'd be tricky.

[aquart]

33. Very tricky.

One of the problems I notice is that "they" take words literally. They don't factor in body language or nuance. But they can be frightened by images.

It's more than worth studying.

[WildEyedLiberal]

31. This.

I saw an ad for "secular humanism" on the bus the other day, and it struck me as the most pointless waste of money I'd ever seen. It was WORDY - two blocks of text, one an obscure, wordy Bible quote and the other an obscure, uninspiring commentary on genocide from some random diplomatic functionary no one's ever heard of. Seriously: WHO is that ad trying to reach? 80% of people will see a blob of words and won't read it, and of the 20% who do, 15% will lose interest after reading the utter dryness of the words, and of the remaining 5%, 4% probably agreed with the ad to begin with. So why even waste your money?

It should not be hard for liberals to capitalize on this, because God knows the Republicans are certainly terrifying enough.

[KamaAina]

2. Advanced imaging of conservative brain structure

[damntexdem]

3. What? This is amazing! Do you mean that this study showed that ...

conservatives actually HAVE brains?

;-)

[provis99]

4. It has been officially proven, then.

Conservatives have lizard brains.

[FiveGoodMen]

5. This has come around several times and no one seems to consider the implications

If being an evil, rapacious fuck is genetic, then only genocide will save us. (And only if WE win)

So we'd better hope there's more to it.

[Duer 157099]

7. I doubt that it is genetic (did they say that?)

I think that possibly it could be that the amygdala (OMGdala) gets more exercise in conservapigs because they constantly fear and thus their OMGdala grows huge.

Or it could be the other way around. They can test this, of course.

[Ghost Dog]

10. Repeat after me:

E D U C A T I O N

[FiveGoodMen]

19. Education doesn't seem to work on some

And this brain theory suggests that it can't on some.

[Ghost Dog]

18. You refer to the "Carthaginian Solution".

Deep shit.

[FiveGoodMen]

20. Which is why there better be more to it than brain shapes.

[iris27]

39. The mammalian brain is incredibly plastic, especially in childhood. The difference may be

biological, but that doesn't mean it's genetic. Your brain IS shaped at least in part by your environment.

[Duer 157099]

6. What means "more sensitive to disgust" ?

If it means "disgusting" then surely it is true.

[Ghost Dog]

8. Censor this. If we make them feel afraid...

... you know how they're going to (mindlessly) react.

[hayu_lol]

13. Sounds like another well-written Raw Story effort...

if true, then does the brain change when conservatives change to liberals? Do liberal brains change when the owners become conservatives?

Back to the lab folks....

[truebrit71]

11. Conservatives have brains?

..news to me..I thought it was all just a bunch of synaptic reflex actions parrotting one another...

[Ghost Dog]

15. Nicely put.

No. Sorry. I self-censor again. I have always been on the side of intelligent feminism.

[Turbineguy]

12. That helps.

Unfortunately, it's too complicated for conservatives to understand.

Prof T. sez: "Rewrite using smaller words and simpler sentences!"

[pulledpork]

14. Never, ever

Read the comments section on Yahoo news. :nuke:

[Casandia]

16. I never read yahoo news........

[pulledpork]

32. Most of it is AP wire reports

Which granted, does not redeem the content. :-)

[Rage for Order]

17. So then is it bigotry to hate conservatives?

If people are born conservative rather than choosing to be conservative of their own free will does society have to make an effort to accept them?

:shrug:

[Ghost Dog]

21. In a true democracy, yes.

Of course.

-- But, I believe you refer not to, in the traditional sense, "conservatives". No. These are uneducated antediluvian and brainwashed by corporate TV and talk radio propaganda raving extremist fundamentalist revolutionary radicals.

[Wait Wut]

36. Way to make us feel like crap.

You're screwing with the Dem mind by coming up with this. Shame on you. But...yeah, we should probably have special classes for them. And, this also means we'll be giving them subsidies. :banghead:

Screw it. Let's call it a virus and have it eradicated. :bounce:

[One_Life_To_Give]

22. Did each evolve to require the other?

Perhaps the scariest part is that we didn't all evolve to be Liberals. Thereby indicating that at some point there was an evolutionary advantage to having both Libs and Cons living together.

[Ghost Dog]

24. ? I just need somewhere to sleep tonight.

Preferably, in the arms of one i love.

:dunce:

[themadstork]

34. Maybe....

But the hateful regressives that have come to prominence lately are not part of that balance, I don't think. They live on because brute force and tyranny works, and while that may be an evolutionary advantage it's not a social one.

[iris27]

42. Just because differences have been noticed, doesn't mean that those differences are the result of

natural selection.

Evolutionary suppositions are the worst kind of armchair quarterbacking.

Not everything has to be evolutionarily advantageous, just not disadvantageous enough to have been weeded out. See: any of a host of horrible diseases that tend not to strike until after one's average child-bearing years have begun.

[BrklynLiberal]

23. Republicans and Nazis have very similar brain structures.

[Ghost Dog]

25. Olé

:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExAOTMLzwEo

[ddeclue]

26. Well to begin with.. liberals actually HAVE brains..

:rofl:

[deutsey]

27. And yet they keep whooping our asses

Yeah, they lie, cheat, pander, distort, and bully, but that vicious lizard brain of theirs (along with deep corporate pockets) seem to beat our evolved grey matter more often than not these days.

[FiveGoodMen]

30. Because we're outnumbered.

Look to one side...

Look to the other...

Who did you see?

Traitors.

[themadstork]

35. Being stupid is easy. Requires no effort. Much easier to build mass movements around principles that

require nothing of the person living by them.

[lumberjack_jeff]

28. My Mama says that alligators are ornery because they got all them teeth and no toothbrush.

Amydyla? Huh.

[Kip Humphrey]

37. its all in what you exercise... critical thinking or fear mongering.

[Curmudgeoness]

38. So they are exercising fear mongering successfully, and

critical thinking just goes over their heads, shouldn't we be working on their level? Then we can play on their fear and knock their leaders on their asses.

I have said for a long time that this critical thinking emphasis is why we are considered elitist by the Repugs.

[themadstork]

41. When you dance wilth the devil....

The price of doing that is that your movement eventually goes sour in the same way the Republican party has. They live in their own paranoid reality. Do you really want a leftist FOX news, and the deluded behavior that comes with?

[Curmudgeoness]

43. Maybe fear mongering is a little hasty, but

it is apparent that the Repugs and many Independents are not doing the critical thinking thing. There has to be a way to "dumb down" our messages without dancing with the devil. Like I was always told, when writing for the general public, write at a 6th grade level. We are asking too much of many in the electorate. (I really really hate saying that.)

[themadstork]

45. I don't think it's a matter of dumbing anything down.

The poor and the working class understand that they're getting screwed, but GOP propaganda and the DLC-Dems' wavering loyalty led to a decline in support for labor.

I don't think it's all that hard to understand why one would want to support labor. Where we're losing is in making our ideology feel "real" to the electorate. The GOP's ability to plug Christian values when doing their cultural-warrior schtick is part of it. But as more people lose jobs and homes we need to keep asking why workers and poor people always get the shaft, why the rich have more money than ever. I think it's more a matter of keeping our economic complaints at the forefront of the electorate's consciousness, and refusing to cede ground on this to the cultural-issue GOP bait-and-switch.

Maybe we need to re-think our overall strategy. What can we do to make labor more appealing, more directly linked to the individual voter's struggles in life?

[Cali_Democrat]

40. K&R

[backscatter712]

44. Reframe it: Conservatives born with brain defect.

I think they should all be institutionalized...

[themadstork]

46. I sincerely do think extreme socially regressive conservatism is a character flaw.

Moderate levels of conservatism--those of the "let's make sure it's actually broke before we fix it" level--not so much. Of course I'm not sure if that even exists anymore in the current Republican party.

[JesterCS]

47. So Republicans are more prone to fear things. Since

the amygdala is associated with fear. lol. makes sense!

[Old and In the Way]

48. Fear of change.

Conservationism, in a word, is pro-status quo, even backwards looking. The future is hard to deal with. It's an unknown reality and the nature of reality is to be always changing. There's no way of knowing the future, but it probably isn't going to be better than the our immediate past or present as long as conservatives call the shots. That's why Republican politicians are always selling the way life used to be. The term "traditional family values" comes to mind. In what universe did this concept exist? There never was a traditional family value...but the concept is a powerful phrase to attract a conservative who yearns to find and live in this mythical world. Republicans have no solutions to deal with the future, so what they pitch is a return to the past, a fixed reality that never changes. Conservatives eat this shit up.

Liberals, OTOH, are always forward thinking. They want change because we know there was never 'the good old days' and the present isn't particularly satisfying. The future represents hope and the opportunity for a better reality.

Liberals embrace the uncertainty and possibilities of the future - conservatives yearn for the stability and predictability of the past. We butt heads in the present.

[grahamhgreen]

49. Kick

[grahamhgreen]

50. Growth of the brain occurs in child development in particular. That is why Cons want to PEPPER SPRAY

children, and the like.

The more fear that is instilled in a child, the more likely it is that their brain development will move in a direction that favors conservative thinking.

It's the same reason they like to put people in jail, have wars, and a YOYO (Your On Your Own) economy.