BobHarris.com - UCLA/NYU Study: "Conservative" and "Liberal" Brains May Simply Function Differently

Books! Actual books!

"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"

-- The Wall Street Journal

"Pulls you in like a good sports story"

-- The New York Times Book Review

"Endearingly frank... jubilant... lighthearted and fast-paced"

-- New York Newsday

"A surprisingly touching memoir"

-- Entertainment Weekly

"Snappy and informative"

-- Associated Press

"Effortlessly funny and informative... tender, human, and very wise... A must for anyone who loves Jeopardy!, or has ever seen it, or is breathing."

-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"I haven't seen Jeopardy! since I was a kid, and yet I was charmed and amused by Bob Harris's fascinating and surprisingly suspenseful book. Through sheer force of personality, he takes this brainy TV show and makes it funny and easy to relate to."

-- Ira Glass, creator and host, This American Life

"A surprisingly intimate, entertaining book."

-- Orson Scott Card, 4-time Hugo Award winner, author of Ender's Game

"Funny, enlightening -- and just might help you win a million bucks on Jeopardy!"

-- A. J. Jacobs, author of The Know-It-All

"A masterful job of describing the feel of Jeopardy! in the heat of battle... I knew Bob was a great guy and a fantastic Jeopardy! player. Now I've found that he's also a wonderful writer. I think I'm starting to hate him."

-- Brad Rutter, top money-winner in Jeopardy! history

Books I'm Getting

Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up —
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

“Revelatory... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”

— Boston Globe

"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."

— New York Observer

"Only Bob could make a user’s guide to our increasingly hostile world this absorbing, this breezy, and—ultimately—this hopeful.”

— Ken Jennings, author of Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING. A gimlet-eyed look at the world we endure that’s also suitable for enjoying with a gimlet.”

— John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
and correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

"All three [presidential] candidates should read all three of these [recommended] books, but McCain gets first crack at Bob Harris's "Who Hates Whom“... a lighthearted overview of the insurrections and civil wars in the world today."

— Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought, in the New York Times Book Review

Main

Juan Cole

UCLA/NYU Study: "Conservative" and "Liberal" Brains May Simply Function Differently

Tag it now -

Monday, 10 September 2007

Apparently it's not just a "set of beliefs" -- it may simply be who we are:

Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.

[snip]

Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.

[however]

Lead author David Amodio, an assistant professor of psychology at New York University, cautioned that the study looked at a narrow range of human behavior and that it would be a mistake to conclude that one political orientation was better. The tendency of conservatives to block distracting information could be a good thing depending on the situation, he said.

Trying to step outside ideology (if that's possible), and leaving aside the loaded words "liberal" and "conservative" for a bit, maybe I'm missing something, but if studies like this keep coming up with the same results, this information may have important practical implications. You need to land a damaged plane, deliver a baby under stress, win a battle on the ground, etc.? A brain that simply does not process distractions, alternatives, and conflicting information might be much better at it. You need to make long-term plans and decisions in a complex and constantly changing world uncharacterizable by singular notions? The all-the-options brains might fare better.

Otherwise, you get policy driven by ideology. And we all see just how peaceful a world that makes.

What leapt out most while working on Who Hates Whom is the symmetrical thinking of reactionaries -- we're completely in the right, the other side consists of lesser beings who do not see the truth and must bend to it and become like us, yadda yadda yadda -- leading both sides of many (certainly not all) conflicts. This is of course a lot less troubling to look at in faraway conflicts than one you're more directly involved in, which is part of what I hope will make the book useful. (Still, you enjoy feeling troubled, Jon makes a bit of a hobby out of finding disturbing parallels between our own unsavory leaders and others. Rainy day fun!) Over and over, extremism -- which is, after all, merely a heightened inability to consider alternatives -- fuels its counterpart on the opposing side, often to the detriment of all.

In short: Barry Goldwater once said, "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice." Maybe not, but it's frequently a direct contradiction in terms.

Not that we aren't all getting a daily lab course in this, if we care to notice.

And of course, the idea that how your brain processes information should somehow largely determine the course of your life (which, of course, it does) in any way other than the sort of self-selecting manner that already exists may run counter to everything a free thinker holds dear. So maybe there's no valid application for the UCLA/NYU findings after all.

Worth thinking about, though.