Political neuroscience is an emerging field of science that has recently received some recognition. It questions whether people of different political beliefs have brains that work differently and/or if their genes are different.
A study focusing on gambling compared registered democrats to registered republicans and showed that the republicans’ brains had more activity in the right amygdala, which is linked with reward, fear, and risky decisions, whereas the democrats experienced more activity in the left posterior insula, which processes emotion and internal body cues. These differences suggest that there are basic neural differences between voters. By looking at brain scans and these two areas for activity, researchers were able to
These studies can be related to Dane Wendell’s findings that there are clusters of attitudes and within each cluster, people are more likely to be against and in favor of the same things. These would be taking either liberal or conservative positions on issues.
Dr. Wendell also discussed the political ideology. It is this concept that we have many political attitudes, and these attitudes are often related to each other. Also, holding a position on one topic often constrains a position we’d have on a similar topic. What we see is ideological clustering in the form of two large camps: the liberals and the conservatives.
These ideas support the possibility of political beliefs being hardwired. Further questions and research must go into how political attitudes form (or are held) based on the biological, physiological, and cognitive dispositions of liberals and conservatives before coming to more conclusions.
Pappas, Stephanie. "Brain Scans Can Predict Your Political Ideology." LiveScience.com. N.p.,
19 Feb. 2013. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
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