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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.