Biological Basis for Political Positions

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Registered: 03-18-2000
Biological Basis for Political Positions
1
Fri, 10-10-2008 - 4:24pm
Interesting that explains why fear works so well on some groups & how politicians are able exploit these fears.

Study Finds Possible Biological Basis for Political Positions


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/18/AR2008091802265.html?nav=hcmodule


People who startle easily in response to threatening images or loud sounds seem to have a biological predisposition to adopt conservative political positions on many hot-button social issues, according to unusual new research being published today.


The finding -- certain to stir debate in the middle of a presidential campaign -- suggests that people who are particularly sensitive to signals of visual and auditory threats also tend to adopt a more defensive stance on political issues, from immigration and gun control to defense spending and patriotism. People who are less sensitive to potential threats, by contrast, seem predisposed to adopt more liberal positions on those issues.


The new study takes the research a step further than psychology by suggesting that innate physiological differences between people might help shape both their startle responses and their political inclinations.


The study is part of a growing research effort to uncover the often hidden factors that go into people's political make-up. In recent years a variety of studies have shown, for example, that voters are subtly biased in favor of attractive political candidates. Other research has probed how subconscious attitudes among undecided voters can predict whom they will eventually support, and how the speed with which voters answer a pollster's questions can predict their depth of their commitment to one candidate or another.


"I was quite struck watching the conventions by the different tones," said John Hibbing, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, about the recent Republican and Democratic conventions. "The Republicans are waving placards saying, 'country first.' Democrats are not saying, 'country last,' but there is a concern that is visceral in one group but not another."


Hibbing and the other researchers who conducted the study stressed that physiology is only one factor in how people come to their political views -- and it is far from being the most important factor. Startle responses, moreover, cannot be used to predict the political views of any one individual -- there are many liberals who startle easily and many conservatives who do not. What the study did find is that, across groups of people, there seems to be an association between people's sensitivity to physical threats and their sensitivity to threats affecting their social groups and social order.


"We are not saying if you sneak up on someone and say, 'Boo!' and see how hard they blink, that tells you what their political beliefs are," said Hibbing.


Nor is there the slightest implication that either liberals or conservatives are somehow abnormal for being less or more sensitive to threat: "We could spin a story saying it is bad to be so jumpy, but you can also spin a story saying it is bad to be naive about threats," Hibbing said. "From an evolutionary point of view, an organism needs to respond to a threat or it won't be around for very long. We are not saying one response is more normal than another."


Indeed, Hibbing and other researchers hope their study might help lower the volume of partisan invective in the presidential campaign: The research suggests that people who adopt political views you disagree with may not be stupid or irrational. Rather, they may arrive at their positions in part because they are predisposed to be more or less worried about risk.


The study, published in the journal Science, recruited 46 white, partisan Republicans and Democrats in Nebraska. The volunteers were quizzed on their views on a variety of topics -- ranging from the war in Iraq to gay marriage, from the importance of school prayer to pacifism. All the questions were designed to test how strongly people felt the need to guard against various internal and external threats. None of the questions focused on economic issues.


Two months later, researchers brought the volunteers into a laboratory and hooked them up with monitors that measure a physiological factor that has long been known to be linked to threat response: Moisture on the skin. When people are threatened, more moisture is released -- and this can be picked up by sensors that measure skin conductance. The release of moisture does not involve conscious thought and is an automatic response of the sympathetic nervous system, which controls many of the body's "fight or flight" reactions.


The researchers then showed the volunteers a number of images. Among them were images of a very large spider on the face of a terrified person, a person whose face had been bloodied, and an open wound filled with maggots. Compared to when they saw three placid images -- a happy child, a bowl of fruit and a bunny -- people who held more conservative political attitudes had a larger startle response.


In a second experiment, the researchers startled volunteers by playing a loud noise through headphones. This time, they measured how hard people blinked -- blinking is an automatic reflex to startling sounds. Again, people who startled more strongly tended to be those who held more conservative positions on political issues.


"There is some sort of broad left-right orientation that pervades not only our politics, but politics across the world and across time," said John Alford, a political scientist at Rice University and a study co-author. "This variation could have biological underpinnings. We are interested in not just the genetics of ideology, but the physiology of ideology, the pharmacology of ideology -- there could be neurotransmitters involved."


"If there is a physiology to this, heated arguments at family reunions about who supports whom for president can be tempered with , 'maybe you are just biologically predisposed to view these things differently, and we don't have to argue about it.'"


But Alford ruefully conceded the study could also have precisely the opposite effect -- if its results were misinterpreted: Partisans could end up using the study to think of their political opponents as not just ideologically wrong, but physiologically deficient.

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Registered: 08-31-2003
Fri, 10-10-2008 - 4:44pm
Oh, yes, very reliable study with 46 participants.
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