Damn! You beat me to it!!

Weird. The study said both groups behaved similarly, but for different reasons. So does that mean anything if both groups are doing the same thing? Does the why matter if the result is the same?

Also, what about political independents? What part of the brain do they typically use?

This reminds me of an article about charitable giving a while ago. Apparently atheists were more likely to give for altruistic reasons than the religious, but assuming both groups gave the same (the article didn't say), then does it matter why someone gives? The recipient doesn't care if you gave because you cared about them, thought it a moral obligation, or were just scared of going to hell.

AG99 "Also, what about political independents? What part of the brain do they typically use?"

Great question!! We use ALL of our brain, not just one part.

" In questions relating specifically to science and logic, a stunning 92% of participants that identified themselves as Republicans exhibited no detectable brain patterns whatsoever. In addition, 47% of this subset had to wear bibs to prevent drool running down their face during the science questions relating to evolution and biology..."

"But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will you vote Republican."

-Yoda (paraphrased)

This article is complete and total BS

Interestingly, this is not the only study that has demonstrated that liberals are more motivated by compassion and conservatives by fear. This finding has held true across a number of studies using different methods.

It accounts for many of the political differences:

It's funny how stories about these studies pop up for the last year and a half anytime there's an election or some flap in Washington like the debt ceiling, fiscal cliff, etc.

One thing Democrats and Republicans have in common: a commitment to their respective status quo and blind devotion
to the party. At least, the Democrats and Republicans around "here" do.

Too bad this study couldn't be bothered with those not identifying themselves in either party. Too bad, but not surprising.

JasonH, have you read the actual peer reviewed paper? Do you know how the authors treated people that self identify as independent? If not, then you have no basis for criticism, any more than one is entitled to critique a movie they've never seen or a book they've never read.

Nice try, Junicon, but I've read the study - Democrat and Republican. I've seen the graphs - red and blue. It smacks of being a self-serving study. I'd love to know the political affiliations of the scientists and researchers involved in the study. That's something I conclusively do NOT know.

Be an independent voter and engage both sides of your brain.

jason has spoken - since he considers it BS, then we must all consider it BS (and frogs will grow wings so they won't bump their tender widdle @$$es when the JUMP, too) Oh well...

And I think that says it all!!!!! End of story.

Because I know when I make decisions based on emotion they always turn out to be the best ones (sarcasm).

Um, Guest? Fear is also an emotion.

MichelleA-3409055

Um, Guest? Fear is also an emotion.

To some an emotion...to others a deciding factor.

guest: When I make decisions based on compassion they are always the right ones............

democrat = empathy

Repulican = control freak (using fear as the method)

Actually, true Tea Party people ( think Jeffersonian Democrat- Republicans) use their frontal lobe. It's the part of the brain that allows people to anticipate future consequences stemming from present day actions. They harness reason to make sound judgements, rather than emotions like greed, fear, or misplaced empathy.

Empathy makes one a Democrat? Since it is accompanied by Emotion, I suggest Wishful Thinking predominates.

And odd how the word "Fear" is singled out for their opponents by Democrats. The entire definition, however, is "fear, reward, and a fight-or-flight response." How many of you here know and understand that Fear is a primal emotion that is the fundamental survival skill we are all blessed with. Nothing wrong with fear if you take the trouble to understand it. Note the "fight-or-flight" response. This is easily translated as a very highly developed gift of recognizing reality.

Some of the suggestions for improving our brains are interesting. Nowhere is "reading books" mentioned in the summation of this article. A pity. Only folks who have the ability to read copiously, whether fiction or non-fiction, get even close to empathy/compassion (which only result from knowledge and experience, btw), and the uses of of fear (you will find that no one is without that quality, although many would like to try defining it differently) makes for strength and a greater ability to achieve objectivity... the ability to understand more effects and solutions to the great numbers of seemingly contradictory events, crises, disappointments, and delights.

Not a word about "reward." Money is a minor "reward" in human behavior. And what we value is helpful with a good education; and good books (not trash) are the only non-human devices that can accomplish that. Top writers allow us to assimilate, painlessly btw, a remarkable vocabulary, and most important of all, effective and appropriate problem-solving.

If those studying are such a minuscule group mentioned in this article (small numbers are not definitive, really) and think they are remotely "experts of the human condition," I suggest they need considerably more research and life experience to get even close to their program.

A whole lot lizard level of mumbo jumbo to here to show that you totally went out of your way to miss the point and demonstrate same. Typical right winger.

Reacting on fear/reward is a lower level of cognitive function than empathy or emotion. Um...think about it.

Unused part of brain -Tea Party? How about unused part of brain--failure to locate any activity inside crainium, or in otther words--NO BRAINS AT ALL=TEA PARTY & REPUBLICANS.

"lizard brain"

Now, that's not an insult you hear every day on Newsvine.

I suspect Danny McNeal has not been graduated from High School yet. His words are easily googled to make an impressions LOL... but the sources of the article are not adequately examined, defined, nor referenced.

What I find really amusing, though, is the using the Tea Party as imagery for idiocy. Well, I am a staunch Democrat, and am registered as one.

Having attended a number of pre-elections debates, with both Democrats and Republicans represented, I was impressed by the advanced educations by both parties. One Democrat had a Ph.D., and three Republicans had Ph.D.s... This, of course, is not conclusive towards all of either approach, but all there spoke well and more important, persuasively.

Name-calling is, on the other hand, a total fallacy, and actually defines the user not too far beyond the Neanderthal mentality.

"I suspect Danny McNeal has not been graduated from High School yet. His words are easily googled to make an impressions LOL..."

"has not been graduated"? "to make an impressions"? What? What is it you're trying to say? Your grammar is so sophomoric, it's impossible to tell. So who hasn't graduated high school here? Are you suggesting that I cut and pasted someone else's words after having googled around? Well, that's a hefty claim. If the words I wrote are not my own, then why don't you actually back your claim up and tell us where, precisely, on the internet what I wrote has been published by someone else. Go on, put your money where your mouth is, little one. I dare you. The fact that you merely made such a claim without even attempting to back it up speaks volumes about the untenability of your position. <<Danny rolls his eyes>>

"Name-calling is, on the other hand, a total fallacy, and actually defines the user not too far beyond the Neanderthal mentality."

The term "lizard brain" is a well-established term in evolutionary biology. That's not name-calling, it's using the terminology of the subject matter! If you were at all informed about this subject, you would already have known that and would never have made such a comment. Your own words betray your ignorance.

It's funny how it's always the immature and uneducated who accuse others of being immature and uneducated.

You may have graduated from high school, but your English teacher didn't.

Your sentence should have read "So who hasn't graduated from high school here?", not ""So who hasn't graduated high school here?"

Vive le difference.

"You may have graduated from high school, but your English teacher didn't. Your sentence should have read 'So who hasn't graduated from high school here?', not 'So who hasn't graduated high school here?'"

Wrong. It's a perfectly venerable rhetorical construction. The ancient greeks called it ellipsis (google for +"silva rhetoricae" and search for "ellipsis") -- an "omission of a word or short phrase easily understood in context" -- and it was widely used by ancient Greek and Roman orators and by Shakespeare, for instance, as well as being used extensively by modern journalists and authors. Here's a famous example from the Greek philosopher Plato: "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." (There's some food for thought, little one.) According to your incorrect sense of grammar, you would have told Plato, "Your sentence should have read, 'Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools talk because they have to say something.'" Do they not teach figures of rhetorical speech and composition in North Texas high schools? How sad.

My question to you is this: Do you think you're fooling anyone by skirting around the arguments being made by engaging in argumentum ad hominem---attacking the person making an argument for a position you disagree with rather than attacking the argument itself? If someone who hasn't actually graduated from high school were to argue that the sky is blue because of the refractive properties of our planet's atmosphere, would they be automatically wrong for never having graduated high school alone? If you think my argumentation is flawed, then back up your claim of a flaw, rather than changing the subject to something that has no bearing whatsoever on the discussion. (I think we all know why you haven't even attempted to do so.)

actually, you would GRADUATE a CYLINDER ("apply markings indicative of volume"). One "GRADUATES FROM" an educational institution. Of course, "modern" 'Murcun Englush is the reel problum...

put a fork in it: "actually, you would GRADUATE a CYLINDER ('apply markings indicative of volume'). One 'GRADUATES FROM' an educational institution. Of course, 'modern' 'Murcun Englush is the reel problum..."

Ummm, no. Number one, see above; and number two, even if rhetorical ellipsis didn't cover my usage, according to Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, Oxford, and both Webster 1913 and 1828 online dictionaries, the verb "to graduate" is properly used both transitively (taking a direct object, as in, "He graduated high school.") and intransitively (not taking a direct object, "He graduated from high school.")---both in American English and British. The reason some of you think it's incorrect is because of what you're used to hearing colloquially in your region. If someone uses language in a way that, though grammatically correct according to numerous definitive sources, is nonetheless unfamiliar to you, then it's going to hit your ear wrong. That doesn't make it incorrect, just unfamiliar to you. Now please stop beating this dead horse. It has nothing to do with the discussion, is quite tiresome, and beating dead horses is a touchy subject right now because we don't know just how the horse meat has been getting into the beef supply...

...but only in the context of mediating social aggression/passivity and fight-or-flight responses to negative stimuli---associating negative stimuli to "long term memories" in tandem with the hippocampus (fear conditioning), "learning" to quickly recognize and respond semi-automatically to similar situations in the future (classically, to enhance survival advantage in fearsome/threatening circumstances), and encoding critical information about aggression and passivity dynamics of "social interaction" within the social hierarchies of which one is a part.

The amygdala does not take general part in the formation of long-term memories, in mediating learning or general intelligence, or in empathetic social interaction.

I'm with George Washington: Political parties should be eliminated altogether.

Wishful thinking, unfortunately. Tribalism is in our nature.

even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious...

Yes, definitely my main concern is making sure my grandkids breath as much smog as possible ... you idiot. Demcrats want to make sure their grand kids have trillions of dollars of debt with no jobs so they live off welfare, true story right??

Guest,

Debt you can survive, I can attest to that as I have had debt most of my adult life. Smog on the other hand and a polluted earth, not so much!

Republicans don't think that far ahead - it scares them too much.

FYI... the American Psychiatric Association has OFFICIALLY classified Conservatism as a Mental Disorder.

Here's a few articles that back up this study.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-entertainment/201206/conservatism-mental-illness

In reference to CREATIONISTS :

". Signs of psychopathology can also be seen among their political bedfellows, conservative Republicans, especially when you consider a wide range of illness indicators. In his award-winning 2005 book Dr. James Whitney Hicks discusses 50 signs of mental illness including denial, delusion, hallucination, disordered thinking, anger, anti-social behavior, sexual preoccupation, grandiosity, general oddness, and paranoia. "

What does Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Rush Limbaugh all have in common?

"Mental illness."


A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/aug/13/usa.redbox

I would agree with your post... The conservative fear of things that are different or non-traditional can mainifest into anger and can lead to violence..I know from experience that for them violence is a perfectly acceptable option. They have an instinctive pure visceral hate of Liberals such as our president. They are all really rattled now after their election loss. They have had this belief that they are morally superiior and if they just become more conservative i.e. (Move further to the right) things would take care of themselves. They are slowly realizing that most of the country see them as extremists and reject their values and vision for America..Thank God for that

When Barack Obama began to pull ahead of Hilary Clinton in 2008, many (incipient Tea Party) conservatives expressed FEAR that his election would lead to "Black revenge".

Why do conservatives perceive a need for military style weaponry? Because they FEAR some future hypothetical "tyrannical government" or an apocalypse followed by anarchy.

Many conservatives FEAR Islamic imposition of Sharia Law (in THIS country).

Since many conservatives believe homosexuality is a choice, they FEAR (overt homosexuals in their midst) will influence THEM to make that "choice".

and....on and on. Many of us knew this (about conservatives) intuitively. Still, it's nice to have it supported by research.

This obsession with fear coincides with their declarations of christianhood, which is not surprising, since the churches have always ruled through fear. When everything you do has a fear factor built in, it's impossible to react any other way.

America1: Thank God for that

Why are you bringing your "imaginary man in the sky" into the discussion?

Most "studies" are bogus. Huh?

Republicans don't EVOLVE and PROGRESS like the rest of the human race.... they DEVOLVE and REGRESS. That's why when they say they want to "Take their country BACK".... they are referring to the DARK AGES while the rest of us want to take our country FORWARD into the FUTURE.

I don't interpret this article to imply we're born with any particular beliefs; rather, these are simply areas of the brain that have had more vigorous use than others, resulting in a 'default' usage determined by one's background and learning. Those raised in an atmosphere of fear will naturally be afraid of change, while those raised to be independent thinkers embrace it, so it's a matter of nurture, not nature.

If you are really as open minded as you claim, why not try a different route - try to find the good things about others and circumstances, and you will be a happier person.

Love and praise do a lot toward making life better and the planet a better place to live. Or are you so insecure that you are afraid of loving and praising someone who is not exactly like you? The fear factor is not limited to any one party, sex, religion, age, nationality or circumstance.

If you Indies are so smart then why can't your candidates win very many elections? I'm just messing with you, I understand your point , but value own votes too much to throw them away.

That is a choice between authoritarianism (Singapore) or socialism (Denmark).

I know and live around lots of Repubs. I have Repub friends. Your statement about Repubs only spending money on logical issues is beyond outrageous. I know 2 Repub families who lost their homes due to living paycheck to paycheck and never planning for a Bush economy. You can bet your life that these families spent money nonstop like drunken virgin sailors on their first shore leave.

Ask yourself, would you really want to live in a land where everyone is well armed and afraid of everybody? And you can't drink the water or breath the air. Yeah that would be Repub Utopia. You would need to be the fittest or you would need to be rich enough to hire the fittest to protect you while you live large in your bunker buried in the ground