Want to Understand Republicans? First Understand Evolution

[Lakhota]

By Chris Mooney

Earlier this week, yesterday's Republican primary champ Rick Santorum called global warming a "hoax." Yes, a hoax. In other words, apparently scientists are in a global cabal to needlessly alarm us about what's happening with the climate -- and why would they do such a thing?

Well, presumably to help advance an economy-choking agenda of global governance -- or perhaps, to line their own pockets with government research grants. Seriously.

Santorum's absurd global warming conspiracy theory is the kind of thing that absolutely outrages liberals -- but to my mind, they really ought to be getting used to it by now. From global warming denial to claims about "death panels" to baseless fears about inflation, it often seems there are so many factually wrong claims on the political right that those who make them live in a different reality.

So here's an idea: Maybe they actually do. And maybe we can look to science itself -- albeit, ironically, a body of science whose fundamental premise (the theory of evolution) most Republicans deny -- to help understand why it is that they view the world so differently.

In my last piece here, I commented on the growing body of research suggesting that the difference between liberals and conservatives is not merely ideological in nature. Rather, it seems more deeply rooted in psychology and the brain -- with ideology itself emerging as a kind of by-product of fundamentally different patterns of perceiving and responding to the world that spill over into many aspects of life, not just the political.

To back this up, I listed seven published studies showing a consistent set of physiological, brain, and "attentional" differences between liberals and conservatives. Later on my blog, I listed no less than eleven studies showing genetic differences as well.

Last month, yet another scientific paper on this subject came out -- from the National Science Foundation-supported political physiology laboratory at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The work, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (free version here), goes further still in helping us understand how biological and physiological differences between liberals and conservatives may lead to very different patterns of political behavior.

As the new research suggests, conservatism is largely a defensive ideology -- and therefore, much more appealing to people who go through life sensitive and highly attuned to aversive or threatening aspects of their environments. By contrast, liberalism can be thought of as an exploratory ideology -- much more appealing to people who go through life trying things out and seeking the new.

All of this is reflected, in a measurable way, in the physiological responses that liberals and conservatives show to emotionally evocative but otherwise entirely apolitical images -- and also to images of politicians, either on their own side or from across the aisle.

Much More: Chris Mooney: Want to Understand Republicans? First Understand Evolution

Related Links

The Left and the Right: Physiology, Brain Structure and Function, and Attentional Differences

The Left and the Right, Part II: Eleven Genetic Studies

The Left Rolls with the Good; The Right Confronts the Bad Physiology and Cognition in Politics

PLoS ONE: The Automatic Conservative: Ideology-Based Attentional Asymmetries in the Processing of Valenced Information​

 

[Lakhota]

The Tea Party hates President Obama much more intensely than liberals love him.
Or to state things less judgmentally, there is an "intensity gap," as the Pew Research Center puts it, between the right's political base and that of the left.

As of last May, for instance, 84 percent of staunch conservatives strongly disapproved of Obama's job performance, but only 64 percent of solid liberals approved of it. Meanwhile, 70 percent of staunch conservatives viewed Obama very unfavorably, but only 45 percent of solid liberals had very favorable views of him.

What's going on here? To conservatives, the new research implies, President Obama may literally be an aversive and threatening stimuli (or, perhaps, a disgust-evoking one). They fixate on him, and respond to him, physiologically, in a defensive fashion.

For liberals, in contrast, Obama was surely once very appealing, perhaps circa 2008, and excited positive and appetitive emotions. But they've since grown bored or disillusioned with him and gone on to sample many other things in the environment -- like Occupy Wall Street -- always exploring and searching for the new. (All of which, incidentally, may translate into a very serious electoral disadvantage this fall.)

Conservatives opt for Fox News much more strongly than liberals opt for any single outlet.
In a 2007 "selective exposure" study by Stanford researcher Shanto Iyengar, it was found Republicans overwhelmingly chose to read fake articles labeled with the "Fox News" logo, but chose a story running under a CNN or NPR logo just 10 percent of the time. By contrast, Democrats in the study didn't like Fox, but also didn't show a strong affinity for a particular alternative news source -- they seemed to sample information sources more widely.

What's going on here? One possibility is that in a political environment filled with perceived threats, Fox helps conservatives feel secure by giving them ideologically consistent and reassuring information. Alternatively, perhaps Fox's constant negative framing of liberals, and of other news sources, appeals to or even excites conservatives, whipping them up for political battle.

Either way, liberals just don't seem to need an outlet like Fox. Again, they're busy chasing after the new and different -- out exploring, rather than hunkering down.

From the OP link.

 

[HUGGY]

Want to Understand Republicans? First Understand Evolution


Want to understand Sanitarium? First understand that he brought a dead fetus home and gave it to his children to hug.

That's all you need to know. He is certifiably insane. A team of psychiatrists couldn't understand Ricky.

 

[free_speech]

Lakhota:

You sure like listening to yourself! LOL! What a twit you are.

 

[Billy000]

Current Biology - Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults

Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent

In short, these studies support the theory that Liberals are not only more empathetic than conservatives, but they are, on average, smarter. The first study also indicates that conservatives cannot handle cognitive dissonance as well as liberals can.

 

[PredFan]

Wow, a liberal columnist/blogger writes a bull shit column about Republicans and all you lefties are eating it up like blind writhing worms in a new shit pile.

Supposedly we're less intelligent be cause we're too intelligent to believe in the stupid things the left does? That is exactly what a less intelligent person would write about.

 

[editec]

The Republicans don't have the monopoly on fear and stupidty.

If you really doubt that come to some meetings of LEFTIES and you will see the same kind of people whose POVs are different but whose modus operandi are virtually identical to the mindless stupidity one often finds in the conservative community.

 

[FA_Q2]

Modern Liberalism Is A Form Of Mental Illness :: Political News and commentaries :: Hyscience

See, I can post bullshit hyper partisan crap too. Isn't it FUN

 

[Billy000]

Modern Liberalism Is A Form Of Mental Illness :: Political News and commentaries :: Hyscience

See, I can post bullshit hyper partisan crap too. Isn't it FUN

One partisan book cannot counter 4 independent studies confirming the same thing.

 

[Old Rocks]

Any ideology, right or left, that demands strict adherance, and has no room for contrary opinions, will lead to the reduction of freedom. To measure, without referance to the handedness of the ideology, an ideologies worth, take a look at it's no-no's. Far right wants complete control over individuals private lives, and no controls on economic organizations. Far left wants complete control over individuals economic lives, and no controls on governmental organizations. Both are against freedom for the individual.

 

[FA_Q2]

Modern Liberalism Is A Form Of Mental Illness :: Political News and commentaries :: Hyscience

See, I can post bullshit hyper partisan crap too. Isn't it FUN

One partisan book cannot counter 4 independent studies confirming the same thing.

One partisan book written by a PHD can counter a hundred partisan hack sites written by equally idiotic bullshit partisan PHD hacks because thinking people realize it is bullshit. There are a hundred asinine people on both sides that will tell you the other side is mental. Those of us with a brain can tell that it is all bunk but go on, we already know that you are a partisan hack. This just puts icing on that cake.



I do love how the hack discounts anything that shows the opposite stance though because their sources must be the correct ones. Characterizing a political ideology as a mental issue is asinine.

 

[Billy000]

Modern Liberalism Is A Form Of Mental Illness :: Political News and commentaries :: Hyscience

See, I can post bullshit hyper partisan crap too. Isn't it FUN

One partisan book cannot counter 4 independent studies confirming the same thing.

One partisan book written by a PHD can counter a hundred partisan hack sites written by equally idiotic bullshit partisan PHD hacks because thinking people realize it is bullshit. There are a hundred asinine people on both sides that will tell you the other side is mental. Those of us with a brain can tell that it is all bunk but go on, we already know that you are a partisan hack. This just puts icing on that cake.



I do love how the hack discounts anything that shows the opposite stance though because their sources must be the correct ones. Characterizing a political ideology as a mental issue is asinine.

Political Psychology is a real field. Is it really so hard to believe that there are physiological brain differences between liberals and conservatives? The ideologies are very different.

I mean, sure, it's a possibility that the authors are liberal, but when it comes to science, there must be objectivity. Because these studies made it to publication, you can believe they have objectivity.

 

[peach174]

Let's just forget that socialism always fails throughout history.
I would rather have freedom than a big government who is telling us all what we can and cannot do.
Conservative polices do work.
Conservative President Calvin Coolidge policies worked and so has Puerto Rico's conservative polices.
The left live in a fantasy world, they keep trying over and over again and it never works because it always costs too much money.

Puerto Rico's Unemployment Rate Plummeting: Proof that Conservative Fiscal Policy Can Quickly Turn an Economy Around? | Fox News Latino

 

[Billy000]

Let's just forget that socialism always fails throughout history.
I would rather have freedom than a big government who is telling us all what we can and cannot do.
Conservative polices do work.
Conservative President Calvin Coolidge policies worked and so has Puerto Rico's conservative polices.
The left live in a fantasy world, they keep trying over and over again and it never works because it always costs too much money.

Puerto Rico's Unemployment Rate Plummeting: Proof that Conservative Fiscal Policy Can Quickly Turn an Economy Around? | Fox News Latino

Some of you cons see so much in black and white. "Like my signature says, somewhere between Fox News and MSNBC lies the honest truth."

Liberalism is NOT socialism

 

[FA_Q2]

One partisan book cannot counter 4 independent studies confirming the same thing.

One partisan book written by a PHD can counter a hundred partisan hack sites written by equally idiotic bullshit partisan PHD hacks because thinking people realize it is bullshit. There are a hundred asinine people on both sides that will tell you the other side is mental. Those of us with a brain can tell that it is all bunk but go on, we already know that you are a partisan hack. This just puts icing on that cake.



I do love how the hack discounts anything that shows the opposite stance though because their sources must be the correct ones. Characterizing a political ideology as a mental issue is asinine.

Political Psychology is a real field. Is it really so hard to believe that there are physiological brain differences between liberals and conservatives? The ideologies are very different.

I mean, sure, it's a possibility that the authors are liberal, but when it comes to science, there must be objectivity. Because these studies made it to publication, you can believe they have objectivity.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

By Chris Mooney

Earlier this week, yesterday's Republican primary champ Rick Santorum called global warming a "hoax." Yes, a hoax. In other words, apparently scientists are in a global cabal to needlessly alarm us about what's happening with the climate -- and why would they do such a thing?

Well, presumably to help advance an economy-choking agenda of global governance -- or perhaps, to line their own pockets with government research grants. Seriously.

Santorum's absurd global warming conspiracy theory is the kind of thing that absolutely outrages liberals -- but to my mind, they really ought to be getting used to it by now. From global warming denial to claims about "death panels" to baseless fears about inflation, it often seems there are so many factually wrong claims on the political right that those who make them live in a different reality.

So here's an idea: Maybe they actually do. And maybe we can look to science itself -- albeit, ironically, a body of science whose fundamental premise (the theory of evolution) most Republicans deny -- to help understand why it is that they view the world so differently.

In my last piece here, I commented on the growing body of research suggesting that the difference between liberals and conservatives is not merely ideological in nature. Rather, it seems more deeply rooted in psychology and the brain -- with ideology itself emerging as a kind of by-product of fundamentally different patterns of perceiving and responding to the world that spill over into many aspects of life, not just the political.

To back this up, I listed seven published studies showing a consistent set of physiological, brain, and "attentional" differences between liberals and conservatives. Later on my blog, I listed no less than eleven studies showing genetic differences as well.

Last month, yet another scientific paper on this subject came out -- from the National Science Foundation-supported political physiology laboratory at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The work, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (free version here), goes further still in helping us understand how biological and physiological differences between liberals and conservatives may lead to very different patterns of political behavior.

As the new research suggests, conservatism is largely a defensive ideology -- and therefore, much more appealing to people who go through life sensitive and highly attuned to aversive or threatening aspects of their environments. By contrast, liberalism can be thought of as an exploratory ideology -- much more appealing to people who go through life trying things out and seeking the new.

All of this is reflected, in a measurable way, in the physiological responses that liberals and conservatives show to emotionally evocative but otherwise entirely apolitical images -- and also to images of politicians, either on their own side or from across the aisle.

Much More: Chris Mooney: Want to Understand Republicans? First Understand Evolution

Related Links

The Left and the Right: Physiology, Brain Structure and Function, and Attentional Differences

The Left and the Right, Part II: Eleven Genetic Studies

The Left Rolls with the Good; The Right Confronts the Bad Physiology and Cognition in Politics

PLoS ONE: The Automatic Conservative: Ideology-Based Attentional Asymmetries in the Processing of Valenced Information​

My guess is you don't understand evolution either.