Lib/Con: Liberals and Conservatives Don't Just Vote Differently. They Think Differently.

There's now a large body of evidence showing that those who opt for the political left and those who opt for the political right tend to process information in divergent ways and to differ on any number of psychological traits.

Perhaps most important, liberals consistently score higher on a personality measure called openness to experience, one of the Big Five personality traits, which are easily assessed through standard questionnaires. That means liberals tend to be the kind of people who want to try new things, including new music, books, restaurants and vacation spots — and new ideas.

Conservatives, in contrast, tend to be less open — less exploratory, less in need of change — and more conscientious, a trait that indicates they appreciate order and structure in their lives. This gels nicely with the standard definition of conservatism as resistance to change — in the famous words of William F. Buckley Jr., a desire to stand athwart history, yelling ‘Stop!'

Now consider another related trait implicated in our divide over reality: the need for cognitive closure. This describes discomfort with uncertainty and a desire to resolve it into a firm belief. Someone with a high need for closure tends to seize on a piece of information that dispels doubt or ambiguity, and then freeze, refusing to consider new information. Those who have this trait can also be expected to spend less time processing information than those who are driven by different motivations, such as achieving accuracy.

A number of studies show that conservatives tend to have a greater need for closure than do liberals, which is precisely what you would expect in light of the strong relationship between liberalism and openness.

For more, see Liberals and Conservatives Don't Just Vote Differently. They Think Differently. by Chris Mooney, April 12, 2012 at The Washington Post.

Lib/Con: Is Conservatism Our Default Ideology?

A research team led by University of Arkansas psychologist Scott Eidelman argues that conservatism — which the researchers identify as an emphasis on personal responsibility, acceptance of hierarchy, and a preference for the status quo — may be our default ideology. If we don't have the time or energy to give a matter sufficient thought, we tend to accept the conservative argument.

We do not assert that conservatives fail to engage in effortful, deliberate thought, they insist. We find that when effortful thought is disengaged, the first step people take tends to be in a conservative direction.

The researchers describe four studies that provide evidence backing up their thesis. In each case, they used a different method to disrupt the process of deliberation, and found that doing so increased the odds of someone espousing conservative views.

Their first method was a time-tested one: inebriation. Researchers stood outside the exit of a busy New England tavern and offered to measure patrons' blood alcohol level if they would fill out a short survey. Eighty-five drinkers agreed, expressing their opinions of 10 statements such as production and trade should be free of government interference.

Bar patrons reported more conservative attitudes as their level of alcohol intoxication increased, the researchers report.

A second experiment featured 38 University of Maine undergraduates who filled out a similar survey. Half did so while working on a distraction task that required them to listen closely to a tape of tones that varied in pitch.

Those who had to do two things at once, and were thus under a heavier cognitive load, were more likely than their peers to endorse conservative attitudes, and less likely to endorse liberal positions.

In a third experiment, participants under time pressure were more likely to endorse conservative viewpoints than those who were not. In a fourth experiment, those asked to give your first, immediate response were more likely to express support for words and phrases linked to conservatism (such as law and order and authority) than those who were instructed to really put forth effort and consider the issue.

For more, see Is Conservatism Our Default Ideology? by Tom Jacobs, March 29, 2012 at Miller-McCune.

Lib/Con: Across the Aisle

In the month leading up to the 2008 election, researchers led by the University of California, Los Angeles psychologist Emily Falk performed brain scans on self-identified Republicans and Democrats as they considered statements from each Presidential candidate.

As the election neared, brain areas linked to emotion and social cognition were intensely active. Areas linked to logic and rational thought, however, were relatively inactive.

For more, see Human Nature and the Neurobiology of Conflict by Brandon Keim, January 26, 2012 at Wired.com.

Lib/Con: Left versus Right, in the Brain

Research has already shown that, compared to liberals, conservatives display heightened responses to threatening images.

Michael Dodd of the University of Nebraska wanted to explore this in finer detail: He showed 46 left- or right-leaning Nebraskans a series of images alternately disgusting (spiders on faces, open wounds) and appealing (smiling children, cute rabbits.) Dodd's team found that conservatives reacted most strongly to negative images, and liberals most strongly to positive photographs.

Then he showed them pictures of well-known politicians. The same patterns held: Conservatives displayed more distaste than liberals for politicians they disliked, while liberals felt more positive than conservatives about politicians they liked.

Given these and other findings, wrote Dodd's team, "those on the political right and those on the political left may simply experience the world differently."

For more, see Human Nature and the Neurobiology of Conflict by Brandon Keim, January 26, 2012 at Wired.com.

Mind: Republicans like Candidates Who Look Republican

Although they can't put their finger on what a Republican looks like, when GOP voters think someone looks Republican, that candidate gets more votes.

The more Republican politicians seemed to look to people, the more votes they gained in red states at the actual polls. The facial stereotypes, in other words, predicted the outcomes of real elections. But that wasn't the strangest finding. Idea Lobby

Strangely ...

To our even greater surprise, Olivola said, we found no relationship whatsoever for left-leaning states. We certainly hadn't predicted that. That was a big surprise.

They also experimented on individuals (not just surveys of states) and found ...

... conservatives are more likely to be influenced by how Republican they think a candidate looks, whether they live in Massachusetts or Alabama. (It also means, oddly, that a Democratic candidate who looks sort of Republican may actually pick up a couple of Republican voters this way in a right-leaning district.)

And this is all the more mystifying given that voters don't have to size up a politician's cheekbones to figure out who the real Republican is. That information is readily available — right there on the ballot.

Why would a Republican vote for the more Republican-looking candidate if the ballot is telling them, ‘No, the other guys is actually a Republican'? Why would they be swayed to do that? We don't know. It is kind of worrying.

For more, see Republicans like Candidates Who Look Republican by Emily Badger, January 10, 2012 at Miller-McCune.

Mind: I Was Wrong, and So Are You

Back in June 2010, I published a Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing that the American left was unenlightened, by and large, as to economic matters. Responding to a set of survey questions that tested people's real-world understanding of basic economic principles, self-identified progressives and liberals did much worse than conservatives and libertarians, I reported. To sharpen the ax, The Journal titled the piece Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?—the implication being that people on the left were not.

I'm a libertarian, and I found it easy to believe that people on the left had an especially bad grasp of economics.

But one year later, in May 2011, Buturovic and I published a new scholarly article reporting on a new survey. It turned out that I needed to retract the conclusions I'd trumpeted in The Wall Street Journal. The new results invalidated our original result: under the right circumstances, conservatives and libertarians were as likely as anyone on the left to give wrong answers to economic questions. The proper inference from our work is not that one group is more enlightened, or less. It's that myside bias—the tendency to judge a statement according to how conveniently it fits with one's settled position—is pervasive among all of America's political groups. The bias is seen in the data, and in my actions.

Buturovic and I largely refrained from replying to the criticism (much of which focused on myside bias) that followed publication of the article. Instead, we planned a second survey that would balance the first one by including questions that would challenge conservative and/or libertarian positions.

Buturovic began putting all 17 questions to a new group of respondents last December. I eagerly awaited the results, hoping that the conservatives and especially the libertarians (my side!) would exhibit less myside bias. Buturovic was more detached. She e-mailed me the results, and commented that conservatives and libertarians did not do well on the new questions. After a hard look, I realized that they had bombed on the questions that challenged their position. A full tabulation of all 17 questions showed that no group clearly out-stupids the others. They appear about equally stupid when faced with proper challenges to their position.

For more, see I Was Wrong, and So Are You by Daniel B. Klein, December, 2011 at The Atlantic.

Mind: Motivated Skepticism

Psychologists and political scientists talk often of a phenomenon known as motivated skepticism. The idea, basically, is that we believe the evidence and arguments we want to believe, and reject ideas and information that undercut our preferences.

My favorite study in this space was by Yale's Geoffrey Cohen. He had a control group of liberals and conservatives look at a generous welfare reform proposal and a harsh welfare reform proposal. As expected, liberals preferred the generous plan and conservatives favored the more stringent option. Then he had another group of liberals and conservatives look at the same plans, but this time, the plans were associated with parties.

Both liberals and conservatives followed their parties, even when their parties disagreed with their preferences. So when Democrats were said to favor the stringent welfare reform, for example, liberals went right along. Three scary sentences from the piece: When reference group information was available, participants gave no weight to objective policy content, and instead assumed the position of their group as their own. This effect was as strong among people who were knowledgeable about welfare as it was among people who were not. Finally, participants persisted in the belief that they had formed their attitude autonomously even in the two group information conditions where they had not.

For more, see Why Does the GOP Oppose Stimulus? Ask a Psychologist. by Ezra Klein, September 5, 2011 at The Washington Post.

Lib/Con: Left vs Right V1.5

In the US ...

From Left vs Right V1.5 by David Mccandless and Stefanie Posavec, July 22, 2011 at Information Is Beautiful.

Lib/Con: Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology

For much more, see Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology, May 4, 2011 at Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Lib/Con: Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology

For much more, see Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology, May 4, 2011 at Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Lib/Con: Political Ideology Linked to Food Choices

The way you vote may reflect the way you eat. Liberals prefer thin-crust pizza, hard to pronounce pastas, such as gnocchi and fusilli, and a glass of wine with dinner, while conservatives enjoy deep-dish pizza, McDonald's French fries and a can of coke with their meal.

A new study by Hunch.com — a site that makes recommendations based on preferences, ranging from which car you should drive to which vacation or college choice is best for you — suggests your political views say a lot about the food choices a person makes.

However, the web-based survey is not as scientific as truly objective polls because, among other limitations, it was not based on a representative sample of the population.

Some other findings from the survey include:

• Liberals are 28% more likely than conservatives to eat fresh fruit daily, and 17% more likely to eat toast or a bagel in the morning, while conservatives are 20% more likely to skip breakfast.
• Ten percent of liberals surveyed indicated they are vegetarians, compared with 3% of conservatives.
• Liberals are 28% more likely than conservatives to enjoy beer, with 60% of liberals indicating they like beer.

For more, see Political Ideology Linked to Food Choices by Samantha Murphy, May 24, 2011 at LiveScience.

Lib/Con: Conservative or Liberal? Workspace Reveals All

While political conservatives tend to keep a tidy, organized office, political liberals favor colorful, more stylish but cluttered spaces.

Liberals' offices were judged as significantly more distinctive, comfortable, stylish, modern, and colorful and as less conventional and ordinary, in comparison with conservatives' offices, Jost said.

"Conservative rooms tended to be cleaner, more brightly lit, better organized, less cluttered, and also more conventional and ordinary in terms of decoration," Jost said during a panel discussion on "The Neuroscience of Elections and Human Decision-Making" at NYU, adding: "Conservatives' rooms were rated by independent raters as better organized and tidier in general."

Specifically, individuals who reported a more conservative ideology also had bedrooms that contained more organizational and cleaning supplies, including calendars, postage stamps, ironing boards and laundry baskets.

Liberals' rooms on the other hand were marked by more clutter, including more CDs, a greater variety of CDs, a greater variety of books and more color in the room in general.

In personality tests of thousands of college students, Jost found that liberals tended to score higher than conservatives on one key measure called openness to experiences, which includes holding wide interests, and being imaginative and insightful.

Conservatives showed higher scores for conscientiousness, which measures a person's need for order, discipline, achievement striving and rule following.

"I think it's a truly fascinating possibility that the left-right distinction, which emerged over 200 years ago in response to the French Revolution and continues to be the single best way of understanding ideological differences today, may be rooted in fundamental human needs for stability vs. change, order vs. complexity, familiarity vs. novelty, conformity vs. creativity, and loyalty vs. rebellion," Jost told LiveScience.

For more, see Conservative or Liberal? Workspace Reveals All by Jeanna Bryner, September 25, 2008 at LiveScience.

Lib/Con: The Mental Roots of Racial Prejudice

Strange ...

Presented with a series of facts about members of two groups, Conservatives developed more negative impressions towards the minority group, which were reinforced by consistent memory biases, they report in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Strikingly, the researchers found this effect without making reference to race, religion or sexual orientation. All it needs to be activated, it seems, is the presence of a larger group and a smaller one.

In their first experiment, 234 students read a series of 39 sentences, each of which described an action of some sort. The person engaging in this behavior was identified as either a member of Group A or Group B.

Twenty-seven of the sentences described positive behavior (Jim gives up his seat on the bus to an elderly woman), while 12 described negative behavior (James often tells many lies).

Twenty-six of the sentences referred to someone from Group A, while only 13 referred to a member of Group B. The ratio between positive and negative behavior was the same for each group: 18 positive and 8 negative for Group A, 9 positive and 4 negative for Group B.

After reading the sentences, participants evaluated the two groups, rating the applicability of such adjectives as intelligent, sociable and lazy. They were then provided with all the sentences and asked to estimate how many of the described actions were performed by members of each group, and how many of each group's actions were negative.

Finally, the students' level of social conservativism was measured by having them give their views on five hot-button topics, including immigration and gay marriage.

The researchers found an illusory association between Group B and negative behaviors. Specifically, the perceived proportion of negative behaviors was significantly higher for Group B, although in fact the two groups were identical in this regard.

Increased levels of social conservativism were associated with more negative evaluations of Group B as compared to Group A, the researchers add. The illusory correlation between Group B and negativity was accentuated among conservatives.

[Emphasis added].

For more, see The Mental Roots of Racial Prejudice by Tom Jacobs, April 11, 2011 at Miller-McCune.

Mind: Death Anxiety Shapes Views on Evolution

It may be the foundation of modern biology, but fewer than 40% of Americans say they believe in the theory of evolution. While frustrated scientists sometimes blame religion for this knowledge gap, newly published research suggests the key factor isn't faith per se but rather a benefit it provides that Darwin does not: A sense that our all-too-short lives have meaning.

Reminders of death tend to evoke enthusiastic adherence to our religious and political belief systems, since they are the mechanisms that promise us either literal or symbolic immortality.

As Tracy and her colleagues note, evolutionary theory, which views human life as the product of a lengthy chain of natural events, seems existentially bleak to many people. In contrast, the relatively new notion of intelligent design theory implies there is a purpose to the human enterprise.

Although there is little evidence to back it up, intelligent design has a strong emotional pull: It may calm existential concerns through the implication of its assertion that human life was intentionally created, rather than resulting from seemingly random and meaningless forces of nature, they write.

In five experiments, the researchers presented participants with a passage arguing for evolutionary theory and/or a passage arguing for intelligent design theory, then assessed their views of the concepts and the author of each statement. For each study, half of the participants were asked at the outset to imagine their own death, while the others were asked to imagine dental pain (a control condition chosen to elicit negative feelings but not life-threatening ones).

Those who had been contemplating their own mortality expressed relatively more positive reactions to intelligent design theory and its proponent, Michael Behe, and significantly greater negativity toward evolutionary theory and its proponent, Richard Dawkins.

In one of their experiments, featuring 269 psychology students, half of the participants read a passage by cosmologist and science writer Carl Sagan.

In it, he argued that humans can attain meaning and purpose by seeking to understand the natural origins of life. Even if we are merely matter, he wrote, we can still find purpose, but it must be one that we work out for ourselves.

Reading that passage produced the opposite result of the earlier studies. Among those who were exposed to Sagan's notions, thoughts of mortality produced a negative reaction to intelligent design theory and a positive one toward evolution.

It seems the study participants were still looking for meaning in response to an existential threat. But after being told by a trusted source that scientific study can satisfy this longing, they found Darwin's concepts surprisingly appealing.

For more, see Death Anxiety Shapes Views on Evolution by Tom Jacobs, March 30, 2011 at Miller-McCune.

Lib/Con: Cleanliness Cues Activate Conservative Attitudes

... three interesting threads of recent psychological research:

• The notion that environmental cues can influence political attitudes. One recent study found people who cast ballots in a church were more likely to support an initiative endorsed by social conservatives.
• The deep symbolic nature of hand washing. Studies have found cleaning our hands helps us emotionally disconnect from past decisions, as well as increase feelings of moral superiority.
• The strong link between social conservatism and the concept of purity. Studies have found conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals, and that people who feel disgust tend to judge the moral transgressions of others more harshly.

For more, see Cleanliness Cues Activate Conservative Attitudes by Tom Jacobs, April 4, 2011 at Miller-McCune.

Mind: Political Views Are Reflected in Brain Structure

Individuals who call themselves liberal tend to have larger anterior cingulate cortexes, while those who call themselves conservative have larger amygdalas. Based on what is known about the functions of those two brain regions, the structural differences are consistent with reports showing a greater ability of liberals to cope with conflicting information and a greater ability of conservatives to recognize a threat, the researchers say.

There had also been many prior psychological reports showing that conservatives are more sensitive to threat or anxiety in the face of uncertainty, while liberals tend to be more open to new experiences. Kanai's team suspected that such fundamental differences in personality might show up in the brain.

It's possible that brain structure isn't set in early life, but rather can be shaped over time by our experiences. And, of course, some people have been known to change their views over the course of a lifetime.

For more, see Political Views Are Reflected in Brain Structure by Cell Press, April 7, 2011 at Physorg.com.

Also see Mind: Conservatives & Liberals -- M's & W's, March 25, 2010 at NewsAndOld.

Mind: Supersized Amygdalas Linked to Sprawling Social Circles

Lisa Feldman Barrett and colleagues sought to find out whether size matters in the amygdala, and according to their study in Nature Neuroscience, there is a connection between people having big amygdalas and having big, complex social networks.

The researchers measured two social network factors in 58 adults. First, they calculated the size of a participant's network, which is simply the total number of people that are in regular contact with the participant. Second, they measured the network's complexity, based on how many different groups a participant's contacts can be divided into. … Linear regression revealed a positive correlation in amygdala size with both social network size and complexity. [Ars Technica]

...

People who have large amygdalas may have the raw material needed to maintain larger and more complex social networks, said Barrett. That said, the brain is a use it or lose it organ. It may be that when people interact more their amygdalas get larger. That would be my guess. [The Guardian]

For more, see Supersized Amygdalas Linked to Sprawling Social Circles by Andrew Moseman, December 27, 2010 at Discover Magazine blogs.

Mind: Political Leanings Revealed by the Eyes

72 undergraduate students sat at a computer screen displaying a drawing of a face. The volunteers were instructed to keep their eyes on the face, but were told that the face was irrelevant.

Initially, the face had no pupils, but shortly after the experiment began, pupils appeared and started moving left or right. Just after that, a target image showed up on either the left or right side of the screen, unrelated to the angle of the pupils. The volunteers' job was to press the spacebar key the instant they saw the target image appear.

Despite being told to ignore the face, the participants were generally 10 to 15 milliseconds faster at responding to the target if the pupils appeared to be looking at the spot where the target image would appear. That's a standard result and not so surprising, Dodd said. But when the researchers divided the students by their political beliefs, they found that liberals responded 20 milliseconds more quickly to gaze cues than did conservatives, who didn't show any indication that the face's gaze affected them.

There are several possible explanations for the result, Dodd said. One possibility is that liberals are more empathetic and thus more responsive to others. Another theory is that conservatives are better at following instructions and were thus more likely to listen when the researchers said to ignore the face.

Dodd and his colleagues believe that a more likely explanation is that conservatives value personal autonomy more than liberals, making them less likely to be influenced by others.

For more, see Political Leanings Revealed by the Eyes by Stephanie Pappas, December 27, 2010 at Live Science.

Mind: Researchers Find the 'Liberal Gene'

Don't hold liberals responsible for their opinion -- they can't help themselves.

A new study has concluded that ideology is not just a social thing; it's built into the DNA, borne along by a gene called DRD4. Tagged "the liberal gene," DRD4 is the first specific bit of human DNA that predisposes people to certain political views, the study's authors claim.

And the key to it all: Liberals are more open, said lead researcher James H. Fowler, a professor of both medical genetics and political science at the University of California, San Diego.

"The way openness is measured, it's really about receptivity to different lifestyles, for example, or different norms or customs," he told FoxNews.com. "We hypothesize that individuals with a genetic predisposition toward seeking out new experiences [a measure of openness] will tend to be more liberal" -- but only if they had a number of friends when growing up, Fowler cautioned.

By matching genetic information with maps of each individual's social network, the researchers were able to show that people with a specific variant of the DRD4 gene were more likely to be liberal as adults -- though only if they had an active adolescent social life.

"Ideology is about 40 percent heritable. It's almost half genes and half environment," Fowler told FoxNews.com.

For more, see Researchers Find the 'Liberal Gene' by Jeremy a. Kaplan, October 28, 2010 at FoxNews.com.

Mind: For Elderly, Conservative Beliefs Buffer Self-Esteem

Newly published research suggests senior citizens have a strong unconscious incentive to embrace culturally conservative values: Turning to the right apparently bolsters their self-esteem.

The researchers found growing older was associated with lower levels of self-esteem among those on the liberal side of the scale. But conservatives were spared that decline, leading them to conclude that conservatism buffers the negative effect of age on self-esteem.

Van Hiel and Brebels note this confirms the results of their 2009 study, which found that for the elderly, an authoritarian attitude appears to buffer the harsh effect of negative life events on mental distress.

Right-wing beliefs are good for old people, they write. Conservatism predicts healthy self-esteem above and beyond narcissism among the oldest.

Why would this be? Van Hiel and Brebels argue that old age is a time to take stock of your life and attempt to find meaning. For most, this means looking back at your experiences and accomplishments in the context of your social environment. A social-conservative belief system, which values your culture or society above others, would elevate your own personal status, thus propping up your self-esteem.

Ego-integrated individuals have a strong sense of being part of a given culture and tradition that is rooted in the past and should be preserved in the future, they write. Hence, adherence to culture and traditions might be considered a means of granting significance to oneself as a person.

The down side of this, of course, is that people favoring their own group tend to derogate out-groups and to reject everyone who threatens their world view, the researchers write. This results in higher levels of prejudice among the elderly — a phenomenon widely noted in the U.S., but usually ascribed to a reduced ability to repress implicit biases, including those acquired during their formative years in the pre-Civil Rights era.

For more, see For Elderly, Conservative Beliefs Buffer Self-Esteem by Tom Jacobs, October 7, 2010 at Miller-McCune.