Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
So, in the spirit of the Great Political Discussion Experiment of 2015, and in advance (slightly) of the bi-annual shouting matches about politics that Americans get into, here's why you shouldn't spend a lot of time demonizing people who disagree with you politically:
A lot of it simply isn't your choice. Attitudes toward the world, and thus politics, are in large part a function of your brain structure and, apparently, your genes.
A lot of it simply isn't your choice. Attitudes toward the world, and thus politics, are in large part a function of your brain structure and, apparently, your genes.
So the next time someone is sharing a hi-larious meme on Facebook mocking people they disagree with politically for their moral turpitude or their general stupidity, remember that they're essentially demonizing people for something that they have as much control over as their height or eye color.Virginia Tech said:In a brain scanner, participants were shown disgusting images, such as dirty toilets or mutilated carcasses, mixed with neutral and pleasant images, such as landscapes and babies.
Afterward, the subjects took a standard political ideology inventory, answering questions about how often they discuss politics and whether they agreed or disagreed with hot-button topics such as school prayer and gay marriage.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, scientists from the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute — in collaboration with researchers from University College London, Rice University, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and Yale University — recorded brain activity of the subjects responding to the images.
Responses to disgusting images could predict, with 95 percent to 98 percent accuracy, how a person would answer questions on the political survey.
The results suggest political ideologies are mapped onto established neural responses that may have served to protect our ancestors against environmental threats, Montague said. Those neural responses could be passed down family lines — it’s likely that disgust reactions are inherited.
“We pursued this research because previous work in a twin registry showed that political ideology — literally the degree to which someone is liberal or conservative — was highly heritable, almost as heritable as height,” said Montague, who directs the Computational Psychiatry Unit at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute.