The audience -- right or left
I THINK THIS IS NOT MY ARTICLE
The first question I ask is "who is the audience?" "Who am I speaking to?" Clearly most but certainly not all Hare Krishnas fit into a category that is close to the right-winger stereotype.
There has been quite a bit of public reporting about the difference between people on the right of the political spectrum and those on the left. Mystified Musings on the Ongoing Dumb-pocalypse
Scientists now apply insights from experimental psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience to the differences between liberals and conservatives. Their findings offer some hints to explain why appeals to rage, fear, and conspiracy theories are so effective in attracting political support and in short-circuiting people's critical reasoning processes. Their work also helps explain why some people are liberals and others are conservatives.
They find that liberals are more inclined toward novelty and to cognate over things. They are more tolerant of ambiguity and of different opinions. Conservatives have a greater need for assurance and for cloture of difficulties and crises. They are more resistant of change.
Conservatives are a bit more capable than liberals of working together than liberals, and the latter are inclined to deliberate too long and to dither. Conservatives are far more inclined to develop emotionally moving narratives. Thinking like a liberal requires greater effort and a tolerance for dealing with many variables. Similarly, it is easier to defend the status quo than to envision change. Liberals are tooeasily misled by the old Enlightenment notion that misinformation can be eradicated by using facts and reason.
Behavioral studies link ability to deal with complexity and ambiguity with liberalism, while fear and aggression seem to be more tied to conservatism. It difficult to imagine what a liberal political strategist could gain by knowing that his likely audience can deal with complexity; it is more important that he knows that this puts off most people. On the other hand, it is not difficult to imagine that a conservative strategist has much to gain by knowing how powerful appeals to anger and fear are among the conservatively inclined and and even among those who may not conservatives.1
About six decades ago, Konrad Lorenz wrote that many people—perhaps a majority-- needed comforting illusions and had trouble dealing with ambiguity, complexity and uncertainty. He did not have the advantage of today's knowledge that is based on careful scientific studies and extensive knowledge of brain functions. He reasoned that people took shelter in what we call the conventional wisdom because they feared death. Perhaps it is a desire to resolve things quickly and simply that accounts for the current tendency of conservatives to reject science. Though liberals are more likely to welcome science, they sometimes misuse it.
A recent University of London study showed that there were physical differences between the brains of liberals and conservatives. MRI brain scans were used on 90 subjects. They “found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex.” That is the part of the brain people use to understand complexity and ambiguity. The fact that liberals seem to have better developed anterior cingulate cortexes probably means they have more often attempted to reconcile conflicting pieces of information. David Amodio of New York University and others deployed electroencephalography to study brain activity, and they discovered a correlation between political liberalism and greater activity in region of the anterior cingulate. This does not mean that they are hard wired to become liberals, it just means that people inclined to detecting errors and pursuing complexities have skills that facilitate liberal thinking.
Some investigators have found that people who ended up as liberals were observed as children be curious, interested in verbal novelty, and not particularly inclined toward neatness or obedience. On the other hand, those who ended up as conservatives often tried to control their physical environments by the time they were three.
Long before there was any good brain research, people have known that fear has a way of driving out reason. Scientists found that “greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala,” That is the part of the brain used to process fear and emotions; it is a bundle of neurons close to the center of the brain. It was one of the first parts to evolve, and proto-humans depended on this sense of primal fear to survive. It dictates instant responses to protect the individual and the family, and it overrides the brain's reasoning facilities. For that reason, conservatives have much better startle reflexes.
The subjects with a large amygdala were “more sensitive to disgust” and were likely to “respond to threatening situations with more aggression than do liberals....” They are “are more sensitive to threatening facial expressions.” 2 The scholars, using brain scans, found that they could predict who was liberal and who was conservative with a degree of accuracy approaching 75%, but they insisted that this does not mean that people are hard wired to be liberal or conservative. Fear is directed at people rather than at non-immediate problems. People might get uncomfortable when they hear about global warming or the possibility that Social Security might not be solvent a decade later, but that fear does not do much to motivate them. But a man worrying about putting food on the table for his family can identify an undocumented immigrant as a real enemy and act politically to do something about that. 3
Fear, of course, is not something that only the right generates to activate voters. It is something that is necessary to generate mass support for a society dominated by pathological values, marked by serial wars, a foreign policy designed to serve the needs of corporate America, and a domestic economic system that showers tax benefits on the rich and shifts wealth to the top 1%. To survive, it also spawns “secondary psychopaths,” people who are not psychopaths themselves but who have blunted consciences and are insensitive to the suffering of others.4 The use of fear does not assays produce the results some would expect. Playing the same fear card too long and too crudely can have a reverse effect, as NYU psychologist Joseph Le Doux notes. “ The prefrontal cortex tells the amygdala to step down.” In some matters, like economic distress, the use of the fear argument can become ineffective over time when it is not accompanied with solutions that seem to make sense.
Caution is needed in using these physical studies because the regions of the brain being discussed have other functions that those discussed here. Not everyone who has a great capacity for fear and anger is a conservative, and those given to complex thinking are not all liberals. In time of crisis, in which multiple fears are aroused, it is not unlikely that circumstances lend themselves to building support for conservative movements.
Political decisions flow from how people see morality. Liberals are mainly concerned about fairness and justice, or looking out for the weak. Conservatives take into account many other things, but the the key may be in the idea that they do not see morality as essentially about how we treat one another. They see it as being "about binding groups together and supporting essential institutions." They may occasionally complain about Wall Street and even "blue bloods," but in the end they find no alternative but to accept economic hierarchy that was installed by the socioeconomic system they so revere. Above all their "in group" would be the people who support the conventional wisdom of American exceptionalism, unrestrained capitalism, Social Darwinism, and opposition to social and political pluralism.
In Righteous Mind, place prime importance upon sanctity, loyalty, and respect for authority. These primary concerns under-gird their morality. When they talk about purity, they did not define it in sexual terms. Hence John Ensign and David Vitter are very pure because they are ideologically pure; the same is true of the governor-elect in South Carolina, whose sexual dalliances were pretty well proven. Conservatives do not consciously devalue caring for the poor and weak, liberty, and fairness. These just are not their main values and they might define them very differently than liberals, who build their moral thinking around these values.5
John Just noted that conservatives have a greater need than liberals for structure and order and they also have a need to feel comfortable with their culture and customs. They have real problems with feelings of disillusionment about their society and institutions. This could help explain why they seem so interested in defending what they think is conventional wisdom, tradition, and established social hierarchy. They are less inclined than liberals to live with ambiguity and be open and tolerant of those with very different ways of seeing things. But these conservative positions probably have “natural psychological advantages over liberalism.”
The idea of being tolerant is does not have a long history; and the opposite may be more natural. The conservative has a way of quickly reducing stress levels due to threats. For example, he may deal with global warming by just saying the market will handle it. He might deal with terrorism by saying he will kill all the terrorists. The liberal will stew more and come up with solutions that take too much time or might be too involved. 6
There is no way of proving this, but one would suspect that conservative strategists probably understand a great deal more about the science of the mind than do liberals. Given what goes on these days, it appears that some of these principles are being applied to the benefit of rightist causes.
They find that liberals are more inclined toward novelty and to cognate over things. They are more tolerant of ambiguity and of different opinions. Conservatives have a greater need for assurance and for cloture of difficulties and crises. They are more resistant of change.
Conservatives are a bit more capable than liberals of working together than liberals, and the latter are inclined to deliberate too long and to dither. Conservatives are far more inclined to develop emotionally moving narratives. Thinking like a liberal requires greater effort and a tolerance for dealing with many variables. Similarly, it is easier to defend the status quo than to envision change. Liberals are tooeasily misled by the old Enlightenment notion that misinformation can be eradicated by using facts and reason.
Behavioral studies link ability to deal with complexity and ambiguity with liberalism, while fear and aggression seem to be more tied to conservatism. It difficult to imagine what a liberal political strategist could gain by knowing that his likely audience can deal with complexity; it is more important that he knows that this puts off most people. On the other hand, it is not difficult to imagine that a conservative strategist has much to gain by knowing how powerful appeals to anger and fear are among the conservatively inclined and and even among those who may not conservatives.1
About six decades ago, Konrad Lorenz wrote that many people—perhaps a majority-- needed comforting illusions and had trouble dealing with ambiguity, complexity and uncertainty. He did not have the advantage of today's knowledge that is based on careful scientific studies and extensive knowledge of brain functions. He reasoned that people took shelter in what we call the conventional wisdom because they feared death. Perhaps it is a desire to resolve things quickly and simply that accounts for the current tendency of conservatives to reject science. Though liberals are more likely to welcome science, they sometimes misuse it.
A recent University of London study showed that there were physical differences between the brains of liberals and conservatives. MRI brain scans were used on 90 subjects. They “found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex.” That is the part of the brain people use to understand complexity and ambiguity. The fact that liberals seem to have better developed anterior cingulate cortexes probably means they have more often attempted to reconcile conflicting pieces of information. David Amodio of New York University and others deployed electroencephalography to study brain activity, and they discovered a correlation between political liberalism and greater activity in region of the anterior cingulate. This does not mean that they are hard wired to become liberals, it just means that people inclined to detecting errors and pursuing complexities have skills that facilitate liberal thinking.
Some investigators have found that people who ended up as liberals were observed as children be curious, interested in verbal novelty, and not particularly inclined toward neatness or obedience. On the other hand, those who ended up as conservatives often tried to control their physical environments by the time they were three.
Long before there was any good brain research, people have known that fear has a way of driving out reason. Scientists found that “greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala,” That is the part of the brain used to process fear and emotions; it is a bundle of neurons close to the center of the brain. It was one of the first parts to evolve, and proto-humans depended on this sense of primal fear to survive. It dictates instant responses to protect the individual and the family, and it overrides the brain's reasoning facilities. For that reason, conservatives have much better startle reflexes.
The subjects with a large amygdala were “more sensitive to disgust” and were likely to “respond to threatening situations with more aggression than do liberals....” They are “are more sensitive to threatening facial expressions.” 2 The scholars, using brain scans, found that they could predict who was liberal and who was conservative with a degree of accuracy approaching 75%, but they insisted that this does not mean that people are hard wired to be liberal or conservative. Fear is directed at people rather than at non-immediate problems. People might get uncomfortable when they hear about global warming or the possibility that Social Security might not be solvent a decade later, but that fear does not do much to motivate them. But a man worrying about putting food on the table for his family can identify an undocumented immigrant as a real enemy and act politically to do something about that. 3
Fear, of course, is not something that only the right generates to activate voters. It is something that is necessary to generate mass support for a society dominated by pathological values, marked by serial wars, a foreign policy designed to serve the needs of corporate America, and a domestic economic system that showers tax benefits on the rich and shifts wealth to the top 1%. To survive, it also spawns “secondary psychopaths,” people who are not psychopaths themselves but who have blunted consciences and are insensitive to the suffering of others.4 The use of fear does not assays produce the results some would expect. Playing the same fear card too long and too crudely can have a reverse effect, as NYU psychologist Joseph Le Doux notes. “ The prefrontal cortex tells the amygdala to step down.” In some matters, like economic distress, the use of the fear argument can become ineffective over time when it is not accompanied with solutions that seem to make sense.
Caution is needed in using these physical studies because the regions of the brain being discussed have other functions that those discussed here. Not everyone who has a great capacity for fear and anger is a conservative, and those given to complex thinking are not all liberals. In time of crisis, in which multiple fears are aroused, it is not unlikely that circumstances lend themselves to building support for conservative movements.
Political decisions flow from how people see morality. Liberals are mainly concerned about fairness and justice, or looking out for the weak. Conservatives take into account many other things, but the the key may be in the idea that they do not see morality as essentially about how we treat one another. They see it as being "about binding groups together and supporting essential institutions." They may occasionally complain about Wall Street and even "blue bloods," but in the end they find no alternative but to accept economic hierarchy that was installed by the socioeconomic system they so revere. Above all their "in group" would be the people who support the conventional wisdom of American exceptionalism, unrestrained capitalism, Social Darwinism, and opposition to social and political pluralism.
In Righteous Mind, place prime importance upon sanctity, loyalty, and respect for authority. These primary concerns under-gird their morality. When they talk about purity, they did not define it in sexual terms. Hence John Ensign and David Vitter are very pure because they are ideologically pure; the same is true of the governor-elect in South Carolina, whose sexual dalliances were pretty well proven. Conservatives do not consciously devalue caring for the poor and weak, liberty, and fairness. These just are not their main values and they might define them very differently than liberals, who build their moral thinking around these values.5
John Just noted that conservatives have a greater need than liberals for structure and order and they also have a need to feel comfortable with their culture and customs. They have real problems with feelings of disillusionment about their society and institutions. This could help explain why they seem so interested in defending what they think is conventional wisdom, tradition, and established social hierarchy. They are less inclined than liberals to live with ambiguity and be open and tolerant of those with very different ways of seeing things. But these conservative positions probably have “natural psychological advantages over liberalism.”
The idea of being tolerant is does not have a long history; and the opposite may be more natural. The conservative has a way of quickly reducing stress levels due to threats. For example, he may deal with global warming by just saying the market will handle it. He might deal with terrorism by saying he will kill all the terrorists. The liberal will stew more and come up with solutions that take too much time or might be too involved. 6
There is no way of proving this, but one would suspect that conservative strategists probably understand a great deal more about the science of the mind than do liberals. Given what goes on these days, it appears that some of these principles are being applied to the benefit of rightist causes.
Comments