{"id":3749,"date":"2010-12-30T10:56:43","date_gmt":"2010-12-30T18:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3749"},"modified":"2010-12-30T10:56:43","modified_gmt":"2010-12-30T18:56:43","slug":"is-being-republican-a-brain-defect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/12\/30\/is-being-republican-a-brain-defect\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Being Republican a Brain Defect?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republican policy always seems to depend on numerous thinking errors<\/em>, misinformed attitudes that result in antisocial behavior.  One common one is the concrete thinking error<\/em>, the belief all things occur in black or white, that there is no middle ground for compromise.  In my volunteer work, I help prisoners and former prisoners learn  to recognize and avoid a couple dozen of these thinking errors.  People often develop thinking errors as a response to fear.  The Republican leadership recognizes this and bombards their base with lies specifically designed to invoke fear.  Within the human brain is a structure called the amygdala that triggers the fight or flight reaction as a response to fear by dumping a hormone cocktail into the bloodstream, one of whose effects is interference with rational thought.  I have often wondered why Republicans, especially the InsaniTEA wing of the party, seem so vulnerable to the obvious propaganda from the likes of Beck, Limbaugh and Palin, and science just may have an answer.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"30amygdala\"Political opinions are considered choices, and in Western democracies the right to choose one’s opinions — freedom of conscience — is considered sacrosanct.<\/p>\n

But recent studies suggest that our brains and genes may be a major determining factor in the views we hold<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

A study at University College London in the UK has found<\/a> that conservatives’ brains have larger amygdalas than the brains of liberals<\/strong>. Amygdalas are responsible for fear and other "primitive" emotions<\/strong>. At the same time, conservatives’ brains were also found to have a smaller anterior cingulate — the part of the brain responsible for courage and optimism<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

If the study is confirmed, it could give us the first medical explanation for why conservatives tend to be more receptive to threats of terrorism, for example, than liberals<\/strong>. And it may help to explain why conservatives like to plan based on the worst-case scenario, while liberals tend towards rosier outlooks\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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I have notices that as people learn to recognize and manage the fight or flight response through stress reducing techniques, their political views often shift to the left in the process. I\u2019m not sure how this can help the left in the short term, but at least it does give us some insight to why presenting rational ideas presented to many Republicans can be like talking to a wall.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republican policy always seems to depend on numerous thinking errors, misinformed attitudes that result in antisocial behavior.  One common one is the concrete thinking error, the belief all things occur in black or white, that there is no middle ground for compromise.  In my volunteer work, I help prisoners and former prisoners learn  to recognize […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}