Posted on 12/30/2010 9:45:27 AM PST by Kaslin
Yet another study says biology may lurk in our political beliefs.
Maybe! There’s another of those studies out there, that purports to show a biological difference between liberals and conservatives.
People normally respond to “gaze cues,” or the direction that another person is looking, by glancing to see what caught that person’s attention. The new study, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, finds that liberals respond much more strongly to such cues than conservatives. The finding is the latest in a series of clues that liberals and conservatives may be subtly different on a biological level, said study researcher Michael Dodd, a psychologist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Liberals will probably take this as a sign of increased empathy and niceness among their kind. But there’s another way to look — see what I did there — I did it again! — at all this. Liberals are liberals because they’re more prone to take stands and state their beliefs as a way of seeking others’ approval, without basing them on any bedrock principles, whereas conservatives tend not to give a rip if their politics make them popular. I’ve certainly seen this in action when I lived up in deep blue Maryland.
“Across a variety of tasks, we are beginning to find a consistent pattern where conservatives are more responsive to threat/disgust, more responsive to angry faces, and less sensitive to gaze cues than liberals,” Dodd wrote in an e-mail to LiveScience. “Liberals, on the other hand, are proving to be more responsive to positive/appetitive stimuli, more responsive to happy faces, and more sensitive to gazes.”
I’m with Ace, basically, that there may well be a heightened tendency among conservatives to perceive and assess threats, whereas liberals just assume everybody’s just got the best of intentions at heart. Which, if it’s true, is among the many reasons liberals should never be elected president. A world full of Kim Jong Ils and Vlad Putins and Osama bin Ladens and ayatollahs, Hugo Chavez’s and Castros and other assorted evils in power and in waiting is no place for a smiley face whose natural tendency is to seek the approval of others. We have that now, and it’s not working out so well. A POTUS needs to be geared to defend to the homeland and citizens against threats, as a default response.
As for my thought, that conservatives may tend not to give a rip for the approval of others, the folks behind the study do concede that that’s a possibility.
There are several possible explanations for the result, Dodd said. One possibility is that liberals are more empathetic and thus more responsive to others. Another theory is that conservatives are better at following instructions and were thus more likely to listen when the researchers said to ignore the face.
Dodd and his colleagues believe that a more likely explanation is that conservatives value personal autonomy more than liberals, making them less likely to be influenced by others.
The “better at following instructions” bit is kind of funny, to me. The old cliche about liberals wanting to change the world but being unable to change a tire comes to mind.
But hey, if there is biology lurking in our politics, then there exists the possibility of a pharmaceutical solution. And there exists one more reason to repeal ObamaCare before libs get their hands all the way around the health care system.
Experience is the cure for liberalism.
There is a reason that the most ardent conservatism often comes from those that experience liberalism in practice — Cuban defectors, former Soviet subjects, the American people after the Carter Administration, etc.
SnakeDoc
Right now I’d settle for a scorched earth containment /decontamination solution.
“You will have to explain the private sector workers here that vote democrat then.”
#####
Kindly note the inclusion of the word “intelligent” in my original post. Anyone that cannot connect the dots on their paycheck stub, lacks that key ability.
Too, there is the “get the rich guy” psychological pathology. I read a study once that concluded (paraphrasing) that people would vote to fiscally punish themselves, if it meant the guy up the financial ladder got hit even harder.
Let’s keep in mind that one of the first liberal ‘environmental’ laws was enacted in 1699...
ANY caliber of lead or a Guillotine
9mm parabellum
It isn't. It is about personalities.
She grew up in the Soviet Union and learned about the personalities of those who ran the place.
She applied what she knew about how those personalities would work here when they gained power.
In the pre-Civil War South, a lot of Southerners were contemptuous of those who worked ‘in trade’ and were skilled laborers. After the Civil War, after losing everything, a lot of Southerners discovered the importance of learning how to survive through hard work and those who didn’t, starved to death.
It’s a matter of facing the experiences of others who share differing beliefs and the results of your actions. Liberals are usually ignorant of the consequences of their actions because someone else is always paying for them.
“liberals respond much more strongly to such “gaze” cues than conservatives.
Wouldn’t manipulative people do that? Or dependent people? I’m trying to picture a panhandler standing on a busy street trying to spot the next sucker. Or a mugger on the lookout for his next victim.
“Dodd and his colleagues believe that a more likely explanation is that conservatives value personal autonomy more than liberals, making them less likely to be influenced by others.”
He got it right that time. Conservatives, almost by definition, deal with things the way they see them, not the way some “authority” says they are.
Short of suicide, no.
Thank you for the Ping.
In the book, I maintain that the adoption of Warfare is what created Humans. It made us as great as we are today, because it selected for intelligence, loyalty, honor, teamwork, creativity, adaptability - every great aspect we embody. If we could travel the universe, and find other intelligent, highly advanced species, they would be Warrior species as well. In this scheme, the Liberal Anticompetitor is an evolutionarily programmed traitor/appeaser, as a means of avoiding free competition in battle, which childhood experiences indicate to them, they would likely lose. They adopt this behavior as a means of trying to win Darwinian advantage without competing freely. However, I point out, this is a dangerous road to travel, especially when thwarting group competition (warfare) through treason. If their own society’s Competitors catch on that the Appeaser is trying to bring foreign Hordes in to oppress all free competition and thwart the indigenous Competitor, the Appeaser will likely be killed by his own people. As I point out, if a soldier catches an enemy soldier trying to kill him in battle, the enemy soldier will be treated with respect, and taken prisoner. Let the soldier catch a traitor passing a slip of paper to the enemy, however, and the traitor will be executed. As Competitors, Warriors are programmed to eradicate Anticompetitors where they find them, and this is how it manifests.
Thus in the section on psychologically manipulating Liberals, I maintain one of the psychological wedges which affects Liberals, but not Conservatives, is being potentially alienated from their peers. It affects them in a way we cannot imagine, as when the populace was about to turn on the Appeaser, they were about to die. Let me put a Black Mamba between your sheets, and you try to go to bed. Pull back the sheets. See that snake about to bite you, and kill you? That’s how a Liberal feels if the populace is about to turn on them. They evolved to sense it, and feel a panic we cannot feel. I point out that Conservatives are always Conservatives, and proud of it, whether we are winning elections, or losing elections. Our values guide us. Let Liberals find themselves on the outside, however, and suddenly, they are all denying they are Liberal, and changing their ideology’s name to “Progressive.” Or, once a War is being won, the Antiwar Liberals will retreat from the landscape, and disappear. They are not suddenly pro-war. They are just picking up on cues which evolution designed them to pick up on, as a means of furthering their own survival. These cues drive them to hide.
The Liberal will prove to be acutely sensitive to any cue which might indicate that their own population is about to turn on them. Evolution programmed them this way, so they might best function within their society walking the fine line of a treasonous subversive. I even show where a Liberal Appeaser speaks in an interview of how, after being castigated daily in a court trial, he fell apart mentally and could not function. In his words, he was not just hopeless, he was copeless. This was a guy who found his own son’s dead body, and apparently experienced no such effect from that. But let a lawyer tell a jury he’s a bad person, and he falls apart.
The important take home point is to never debate a Liberal on facts, or seek to educate them. Facts and truth mean nothing to them, as they are merely executing an imbued behavioral drive to betray, appease, and stifle free competition. Bring up the contemptible urges underlying their position, and castigate them in front of their peers. They will rapidly retreat from the debate, as that is a programmed reflex for them, and this will leave Conservatives to claim control.
Liberalism is a Darwinian strategy, designed to allow the uncompetitive to compete, by stifling free competition. You see it all throughout nature, though in more primitive form. That is why someone would fiscally punish themselves, to see a richer guy punished more. The urge is imbued in childhood, triggered by subtle cues which indicate the child will be uncompetitive as an adult.
I wrote a whole book about it, but rather than spend time reading 700 pages on it, just read my profile page, which explains the theory, and then spread the theory around. It explains every facet of Liberal psychology, from sexual promiscuity, to tax policy.
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