[NYTr] Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

LA Times - Sep 10, 2007 via rick kissell
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-politics10sep10,1,7735909.story?coll=la-headlines-nation


Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain

Even in humdrum nonpolitical decisions, liberals and conservatives 
literally think differently, researchers show.

By Denise Gellene
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that 
liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives 
because of how their brains work.

In a simple experiment reported today in the journal Nature 
Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that 
political orientation is related to differences in how the brain 
processes information.

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.

The results show "there are two cognitive styles -- a liberal style and 
a conservative style," said UCLA neurologist Dr. Marco Iacoboni, who
was not connected to the latest research.

Participants were college students whose politics ranged from "very 
liberal" to "very conservative." They were instructed to tap a keyboard 
when an M appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping 
when they saw a W.

M appeared four times more frequently than W, conditioning participants 
to press a key in knee-jerk fashion whenever they saw a letter.

Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded 
activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that 
detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a 
more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more 
brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw 
a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate 
in recognizing M.

Researchers got the same results when they repeated the experiment in 
reverse, asking another set of participants to tap when a W appeared.

Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at UC Berkeley's Institute of 
Personality and Social Research who was not connected to the study,
said the results "provided an elegant demonstration that individual 
differences on a conservative-liberal dimension are strongly related to 
brain activity."

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.

Sulloway said the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated 
a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people
perceived Sen. John F. Kerry, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat who
opposed Bush in the 2004 presidential race, as a "flip-flopper" for
changing his mind about the conflict.

Based on the results, he said, liberals could be expected to more 
readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.

"There is ample data from the history of science showing that social
and political liberals indeed do tend to support major revolutions in 
science," said Sulloway, who has written about the history of science 
and has studied behavioral differences between conservatives and
liberals.

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.

Political orientation, he noted, occurs along a spectrum, and positions 
on specific issues, such as taxes, are influenced by many factors, 
including education and wealth. Some liberals oppose higher taxes and 
some conservatives favor abortion rights.

Still, he acknowledged that a meeting of the minds between
conservatives and liberals looked difficult given the study results.

"Does this mean liberals and conservatives are never going to agree?" 
Amodio asked. "Maybe it suggests one reason why they tend not to get 
along."