Droopy wrote:If you think I've ever touted any "science" that shows conservatives to be somehow innately smarter than leftists, then that's a CFR.
I didn't say anything about anyone being innately smarter, either. You are a very careless reader.
I'll quote the pertinent parts to help you out.
beastie's reference:
But the way the brain processed risk worked differently between the groups, with Republicans showing more activity in an area linked with reward, fear and risky decisions and Democrats showing more activity in a spot related to processing emotion and internal body cues.
Recent investigations into the psychology of liberals and conservatives have found a number of subtle differences, from conservatives exhibiting more squeamishness to liberals paying less attention to negative stimuli or threats.
Republicans showed more activity than Democrats in the right amygdala when making a risky decision. This brain region is important for processing fear, risk and reward.
Meanwhile, Democrats showed more activity in the left posterior insula, a portion of the brain responsible for processing emotions, particularly visceral emotional cues from the body. The particular region of the insula that showed the heightened activity has also been linked with "theory of mind," or the ability to understand what others might be thinking.
droopy's own statistics:
Never mind that this study contradicts a large body of statistical evidence that clearly shows liberals are nowhere near conservatives, on average, in generosity, liberality, quality of personal relationships, or any other fundamental measures of human happiness - including their inner morality structure relative to personal human relations.
The mind boggles. You just criticized "leftists" for claiming that:
Leftists, being innately smarter, more moral, more nurturing, more emotionally open, and more empathic and caring (and hence, leftists) will, of course, have to rule.
Never mind that the study drew no such conclusion, nor did I. Never mind that glaring problem. But while simultaneously criticizing leftists for asserting that they claim to be innately smarter, more moral, etc, etc, and thereby having to rule, you then yourself asserted that conservatives are superior in generosity, liberality, etc etc.
The astounding thing is that you engage in this kind of behavior repeatedly and remain blithely unaware of your own tendencies to do so.
CFR (two: first, that conservatives have ever attempted to demonstrate that philosophical/worldview disagreements are biologically-based, and second, that I've ever so much as implied such a belief about leftists.
Yes, I'm aware that one of your most cherished beliefs is that all human behavior and thought is the result of free CHOICE, and biology has nothing to do with it. I would suggest you read a book or two on the subject, but knowing you, it would be a waste of time. So I'll ask you this, as an exercise in futility.
Do you believe that human behavior and thought are EVER "biologically based", or is all human behavior and thought the result of free will and choice?
Why would I, a modern conservative, embrace this kind of determinist, reductionist scientism? Leftists think and perceive the world differently form conservatives because they choose to do so, just as I am LDS and others not because we choose to accept certain tings and reject others. Liberal and conservatives are very different kinds of people with different views and conceptions at a very fundamental level, and to the degree that biology plays any role, that would be in the realm of bias, predisposition, and susceptibility to certain kinds of thought patterns and/or psychological states, not in any actual belief systems that may eventual arise.
There are far too many variables at work over the course of a real human life to predict any such.
Yes, it's all choice, isn't it? I understand why religionists feel compelled to embrace this belief, despite any contrary evidence. If it's not all choice, then the question of sin and God's rewards or punishments become problematic.
Did you choose to be obsessive compulsive? Why did you make such an odd choice?
For others who are more open to this topic, here's an interesting report on twin studies:
Why do people think and act politically in the manner they do? Despite the foundational nature of this question, answers are unfortunately incomplete and unnecessarily tentative, largely because political scientists do not take seriously the possibility of nonenvironmental influences. The suggestion that people could be born with political predispositions strikes many as far-fetched, odd, even perverse. However, researchers in other disciplines—–notably behavioral genetics—–have uncovered a substantial heritable component for many social attitudes and behaviors and it seems unlikely that political attitudes and behaviors are completely immune from such forces. In this article, we combine relevant findings in behavioral genetics with our own analysis of data on a large sample of twins to test the hypothesis that, contrary to the assumptions embedded in political science
research, political attitudes have genetic as well as environmental causes.1
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewc ... ifacpub%22by the way, I want to make it clear that biology isn't the only factor, of course. But it is a factor.
This section from the same article helps to clarify this:
Still, the connection is rarely so simple that a given genetic allele can be seen as causing a certain behavior. More typically, findings in modern behavioral genetics reveal the effect of genes to be interactive rather than direct, let alone determinative. To provide one illustration, in humans there is a gene on chromosome 17 involved with serotonin reuptake (5-HTT). As is often the case with genes, 5-HTT has a long allele and a short allele. Mice have a parallel gene, and in that species the short form had previously been connected to listless, depressive behavior. Scientists were eager to
determine if such a correlation between the short form of 5-HTT and depression was present in humans. In a long-term study of the health records of nearly 1,000 New Zealanders whose 5-HTT alleles were known, it was found that major episodes of depressive behavior were not much more prevalent among those with the short form. But then the researchers combined genetics and the environment; specifically, they interacted each subject’s 5-HTT allele with the number of high-stress events (romantic calamities, bankruptcies, deaths of loved ones, etc.) experienced in that individual’s life. They found that those who had a high number of such events and who had the short form of 5-HTT were significantly more likely to display behaviors associated with depression compared to either those experiencing few high stress events or those with the long form who suffered through a comparably large number of high stress events (see Caspi et al. 2003).
In this particular case, genotype did not make people behave a certain way; rather, it influenced the extent to which their behavior was contingent on the environment—–and this pattern likely will apply to all sorts of other human activities. Whether the behavior of interest is depression, cooperation, fear response, or susceptibility to drug addiction, some people are more sensitive than others to particular features of their environment, and genetics, far from determining behavior, influences its sensitivity. Genetics makes the mood of some people far more dependent on the extent to which their lives have been beset with difficulties and it likely makes some people’s political attitudes far more contextually dependent than others. In other words, the connection between genes and attitudes may not involve specific attitudes as much as the flexibility of those attitudes (Is abortion always wrong, or does it depend?). The issue is not nature versus nurture but the manner in which nature interacts with nurture (see Marcus 2004 and Ridley 2003).
To directly contradict droopy's dismissive reaction that this is determinism, also from the article:
The possibility that attitudes and behaviors are influenced by genetic variables is an emotionally charged topic so it is important that readers understand the claims being made. Partitioning the origins of human traits, whether they be physiological or behavioral, into the discrete, quantifiable components of genetic inheritance, shared environment, and unshared environment should not be taken to imply that these components work separately. Rather these numbers only provide a rough indication of the influence of three categories of independent variables that are intimately intertwined.
(Moreover, they are estimates of the ability of independent variables to account for variance in the dependent variables not for the variables themselves.) As mentioned earlier, gene–culture interaction is the key to understanding the source of political attitudes and behaviors, just as it is the key to understanding most physical and behavioral aspects of the human condition. Genes do not work in isolation and instead generally influence the extent to which organisms are responsive to particular environmental conditions (see Boyd and Richerson 1985 and Masters 1993).
And this conditioning influence of genetics on complex social behaviors is not the product of a single gene but rather numerous genes that, to make matters more complicated, appear to combine in configural as opposed to additive ways. The same set of multiple genes may influence behavior in different ways depending on the order in which they express themselves and the manner in which they interact with other genes. Recent discoveries also suggest that biological markers of phenotypic manifestations include the manner in which DNA is packed in the nucleus, particularly the physical location of genes relative to other genes and to the histones that help to give DNA its structure. An accurate understanding of gene expression appears
to require knowledge not just of the sequence of nucleotides (e.g., ATCAGG) that constitutes the gene itself but also of the context in which each gene resides, thus forming an interesting parallel to the way we must try to understand the organisms (e.g., human beings) genes help to construct (for a good summary, see Kosack and Groudine 2004; also see Lykken 1999).
Individual genes for behaviors do not exist and no one denies that humans have the capacity to act against genetic predispositions. But predictably dissimilar correlations of social and political attitudes among people with greater and lesser shared genotypes suggest that behaviors are often shaped by forces of which the actors themselves are not consciously aware, a point that is made with some force by Bargh and Chartrand (1999), Marcus (2002), Marcus, Neuman, and MacKuen (2000), McDermott (2004), and Wegner (2002). It is not biological determinism to posit the existence of complex collections of genes that increase the probability that certain people will display heightened or deadened response patterns to given environmental
cues. And it is not antibehavioralism to suggest that true explanations of the source of political attitudes and behaviors will be found when we combine our currently detailed understanding of environmental forces with a recognition that genetic variables subtly but importantly condition human responses to environmental stimuli.
I'll also share this final portion of the article, not for droopy's sake (actually, I know droopy well enough to not have shared any of this information for his sake) but for other who share an interest in this topic:
If, as our results suggest, there is a genetic basis for the varying political views people hold, and if, as seems probable, genetic transmission frequently affects clusters of political attitudes, we are likely to observe broad but distinct political phenotypes. The number of these phenotypes may vary, but for purposes of illustration we discuss two probable orientations. One is characterized by a relatively strong suspicion of out-groups
(e.g., immigrants), a yearning for in-group unity and strong leadership, especially if there is an out-group threat (“Do not question the President while we are at war with terrorists”), a desire for clear, unbending moral and behavioral codes (strict constructionists), a fondness for swift and severe punishment for violations of this code (the death penalty), a fondness for systematization (procedural due process), a willingness to tolerate inequality (opposition to redistributive policies), and an inherently pessimistic view of human nature (life is “nasty, brutish, and short”).
The other phenotype is characterized by relatively tolerant attitudes toward out-groups, a desire to take a more context-dependent rather than rule-based approach to proper behavior (substantive due process), an inherently optimistic view of human nature (people should be given the benefit of the doubt), a distaste for preset punishments (mitigating circumstances), a preference for group togetherness but not necessarily unity (“We can all get along even though we are quite different”), suspicion of hierarchy, certainty, and strong leadership (flip-flopping is not a character flaw), an aversion to inequality (e.g., support for a graduated income tax), and greater general empathic tendencies (rehabilitate, don’t punish).
Common political usage would call the first phenotype conservative and the second liberal, but we seek phrases that are less connected to political ideologies and that indicate that these two phenotypes run to the very orientation of people to society, leadership, knowledge, group life, and the human condition. Thus, we label the first “absolutist” and the second “contextualist.” This fundamental dimension offers a credible precursor to basic cleavages manifested in a broad range of human social activity: politics (conservatives/liberals), religion (fundamentalists/secular humanists), law procedural/substantive due process), education (phonics/whole language), art (traditional form-based realism/modern free-form impressionism), sports (football/frisbee), medicine (traditional AMA/wholistic), morality (enduring standards/situational ethics), and scientific inquiry (formal/empirical). In our view, all of these vexing perennial dichotomies are related cultural expressions of a deep-seated genetic divide in human behavioral predispositions and capabilities. We certainly are not asserting that everyone holds one of these two orientations. Even if the individual genes involved with absolutism or contextualism tend to move together, this does not mean they always do. Some individuals may carry, say, an absolutist’s aversion to out-groups but a contextualist’s rejection of a universalistic behavioral code. Moreover, genes not included in these central packages, perhaps those related to extroversion, ambition, and intelligence, often muddy the waters.
More importantly, let us not forget that a heritable component of 50% for political ideology and probably somewhat higher for the absolutist-contextualist
dimension still leaves plenty of opportunity for the environment to alter attitudes and behaviors—–and even orientation. An individual with a contextualist genotype who has been repeatedly victimized by out-group members, or who has simply spent a great deal of time listening to persuasive absolutists, may adopt attitudes that run against type. Thus, even if a political system started with two pure genotypes, it would soon display a fascinating array of expressed orientations and beliefs, intensity levels, and degrees of involvement even as the system would continue to revolve around the central division between absolutists and contextualists.
Such an account is speculative at this point but is fully consistent with the findings presented here, with previous research on the durability of political ideologies, and with recent events in the United States. Accounts of the 2004 election, for example, that do not invoke this fundamental difference in orientation have fallen flat. Issues did not determine vote choice for the many citizens who expressed disagreement with existing economic policies and/or the war in Iraq yet still voted for the incumbent president, George W. Bush. Indeed, if the focus remains on issues, the resultant description of the American public is grossly at odds with reality. Morris Fiorina’s (2005) creative analysis of survey responses indicates that Americans can be placed in the middle on many important issues, but if this is true, then what explains the vitriol and intensity of feeling displayed by so many ordinary Americans in
2004?
Issues do not explain Americans’ politics. Many Americans admit that they do not follow or understand the issues (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 2002), and
to the extent they do, they support whatever their preferred politician and party seems to support (Page and Jones 1979). In the 1990s, a Democratic president (Bill Clinton) transformed welfare to workfare; then in the 2000s, his Republican successor (George W. Bush) greatly expanded federal involvement in both education and the provision of prescription drugs for senior citizens. If the enactors of these policies were reversed, the groups of citizens displaying support for the policies also would have reversed. Similarly, if a Republican president had committed adultery with a young intern
or if a Democratic president had dramatically worsened the deficit and taken the country to war in a far-off land on the basis of undeniably incorrect beliefs about the opponents’ nuclear and chemical weapons capabilities, the positions of most voters on the acceptability of these conditions would be completely reversed. Issue positions generally reflect divisions; they do not create them.
Instead, the most accurate account of voting behavior in 2004 moves beyond issues to the basic, partially genotypic orientations described above. This sort of broad orientation is not far removed from what most commentators are trying to capture by reference to a “moral” division in the electorate, but without tying it to specific moral issues such as gay rights. The chasm inspiring so much hostility between citizens of the United States in the early twenty-first century did not divide supporters and opponents of privatizing Social Security; it did not even divide supporters and opponents of gun control. Rather, as has typically been the case, it divided absolutists and contextualists.
And the prospects for eliminating this divide are not promising. Since mate choice appears to be heavily tilted toward those with similar social and political attitudes, no genetic melting pot exists for these traits. Thus, the evidence presented here on assortative mating should be quite sobering to those in search of unity and togetherness. If anything, the heritability of orientation in combination with assortative mating may exacerbate the current divide. But admitting that genetics influences political attitudes could actually help to mute societal divisions. Currently, absolutists and contextualists simply do not connect, and the result is frustration. To contextualists, absolutists appear simplistic and selfish; to absolutists, contextualists appear naïve and indecisive. Each side talks past, and is authentically miffed by, the other. Recognizing that our political antagonists probably have a different genetic predisposition to people, life, human nature, and politics may serve to ease frustrations and, eventually, to improve communications across the chasm. If absolutists spent more time trying to think like contextualists and contextualists trying to think like absolutists, understanding would be increased and debates could become more constructive. As frustrating as it may be to debate with someone who holds such different orientations, value exists in recognizing that intransigence is not the result of willful bullheadedness but, rather, genetically driven differences in orientation.
(all emphasis is mine)
It would be interesting to evaluate droopy's response,versus mine, to these sort of studies using the absolutist/contextualist framework. I tend to think it has to do with this in particular:
a desire for clear, unbending moral and behavioral codes
in combination with this
a fondness for swift and severe punishment for violations of this code
I'm going to guess that an absolutist would be uncomfortable with these sort of studies because it muddies the water in regards to the clarity of moral and behavioral codes. After all, if our beliefs and behavior are heavily influenced by factors completely out of our control, then the ability to judge said beliefs and behaviors based on a code of morality becomes more problematic. It requires contextualism instead of absolutism. And, of course, the punishment for violation of the code is rendered problematic, as well.
Personally, I think droopy's knee-jerk reaction to the fairly innocuous study I cited in the OP provides support for these theories. After all, one could interpret the findings in the OP in a less negative light in regards to conservatives. As I mentioned, conservatives have long disparaged liberals as "bleeding hearts". Doesn't this correlate with the study in the OP? Yet droopy's automatic reaction was dismissive and negative. I conclude that his reaction was dismissive and negative not so much due to the content of the study and its findings, but rather due to the idea that genetics has possibly significant role to play in this question.