Neurobiological Associations of Political
Ideologies
Within the last decade,
neuroscientific researchers have broken the boundaries of the traditional neuroscience
field, venturing into the unfamiliar territory of political neuroscience.
Political neuroscience is a budding area of research investigating the neurological
basis of political thought. The field essentially hopes to answer the
questions: why are conservatives conservative, and why are liberals liberal? While
the scientific literature is still developing, studies conducted thus far are
coming to the conclusion that we may indeed be hardwired for our political ideologies
and candidacy loyalties.
A recent article published in
Science Daily reports a political neuroscience research study conducted at the
University of South Carolina that explored the possibility of a connection
between the neural network of social connectedness and political
self-identities. The study used MRI scans to view the brains of 24 USC
students. The researchers focused on the brain’s mirror neuron system, a
neurological network involved in social connectedness. Interestingly enough,
for those participants who identified themselves as liberal, the researchers
found greater activity in regions associated with “broad social connectedness,”
such as friends and the greater world. The neural activity of conservatives
suggested “tight social connectedness,” including family and country. The
researchers of this study believe that the differences in neural activity that
they found in conservatives and liberals may help to explain why conservatives
tend to be oriented more towards America, and liberals more towards the globe.
Dane Wendell, a political science
graduate student at Loyola University Chicago, is currently conducting his own
political neuroscience research at Loyola’s Cognitive and Affective
Neuroscience Laboratory. In a recent neuroscience talk Wendell gave at the
university, Wendell discussed his fascination for the extent to which
conservatives and liberals become so passionate about their political
ideologies when engaged in debate with an opposing viewpoint. Wendell explained
that for whatever reason, the beliefs and values that conservatives and
liberals hold seem to cluster within two distinct poles- those held by
liberals, and those held by conservatives. In other words, the presence of one
political attitude tends to be associated with another political attitude.
Wendell hopes to be able provide a neurological reason as to why the
ideological clustering of the two political poles leads to such fundamental
disagreements.
Wendell’s research uses
electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate differences in regional electrical
activity of the brains of self-identified conservatives and liberals. Like the
study previously cited, Wendell based his research on the stark personality
differences that we tend to encounter in the two political groups.
Specifically, conservatives are known to have aversive personality styles,
meaning that they tend to avoid threatening or dangerous outcomes. Based on
these differences, Wendell uses the “Go/No-Go” task, a task believed to measure
the brain’s Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS), the neurological network
responsible for making inhibitory actions against negative outcomes. Conservatives,
having aversive personalities, should perform better on the task than liberals.
Wendell’s results, however, do no indicate any robust differences between
conservatives’ and liberals’ neurological activity in their behavioral
inhibition systems. Wendell believes that the lack of neurological differences
he found may be due to a misinterpretation of the “Go/No-Go” task, which other
researchers argue may be more of a measure of cognitive flexibility.
Research within the political
neuroscience field is still in the process of forming the foundation about what
we know concerning the neurobiological basis of political ideologies. Definitive answers
have yet to be formed, but research is clearly on its way towards explaining why
people identify themselves as conservative or liberal.
References
University of
South Carolina. “This is your brain on politics: Neuroscience reveals brain
differences
between Republicans and Democrats.” Science
Daily, 1 Nov. 2012. Web 12
Dec.
2013.
Wendell, Dane.
Neuroscience Seminar. Loyola University Chicago. Chicago, IL. 29 Oct. 2013.
Lecture.
No comments:
Post a Comment