Brain ''Wiring''

[CraigD]

For many reasons, I don’t believe that membership in a political party correlates strongly with detectable brain features, including the lateralization of brain function (“left or right brained-ness”).

 

One is that, as the linked wikipedia article summarizes, brain lateralization correlates only weakly to the traits commonly assigned to it by popular psychology authors and enthusiasts. The determination of it by means other than brain imaging or selective anesthesia, when performed by anyone I’ve ever witnessed attempting to do so, appear to me to be so prone to observer bias as to be worse than worthless. My anecdotal experience is that, when interviewed in circumstances such as by social work graduate students who have employed me as a statistician, I’m always determined to be strongly left-brained. When interviewed by social work graduate students who I meet during activities such as singing and playing in a coffee house, I’m always determine to be strongly right-brained.

 

Another is that, within my professional cohort of computer programmers and managers, I find right-wing political views to be more common among the presumably more language-oriented, right-brained managers than among the presumably more left-brained programmers and technicians, which, if I understand HBond’s argument correctly, is the precise opposite of what he predicts.

 

Note that I’m not here presenting more than anecdotal evidence. HBond, if you have some data supporting your claim, substantiated by reliable determinations of brain lateralization, please post it. Without evidence, I’m more strongly convinced of my own conclusion that political ideology are either unrelated brain lateralization, or correlate weakly in the opposite sense of your hypothesis, than I am of your hypothesis, which appears to be supported only by your own personal argument and anecdotes.

Your statement,

''If participants in this discussion intend to seriously explore possible neurological factors that influence political views and behavior, I suggest they avoid political specifics, such as examining and endorsing 2008 US presidential candidates''. I don't quite understand this statement.

My suggestion is intended to encourage objective distancing of participants in this thread from current political issues, which tend to emotionally excite and cognitively impair, from neuroscience, which requires emotional calm and cognitive objectivity. This is a common suggestion concerning scientific and medical issues, typified by such ethics as the commonplace avoidance by medical clinicians of performing diagnosis or therapy on family members or others for whom they have a strong positive or negative emotional attachment.

[questor]

I think there must be a middle connectivity pattern which would speak to those who may consider themselves ''moderates'' or middle of the roaders.

since we don't know the mechanism of how thoughts occur, it may be that

it is not so simple as right brain-left brain, and the whole ''wiring'' set up

may prove to be different from how it appears. I do know and feel confident that people can be divided as liberal or conservative according to their perception or reaction to certain issues and/or events. Calling someone

Democrat or Republican is not descriptive to me because of historical familial influence in picking a party to support. It is much more descriptive of a person's thought pattern to assess their opinions on a variety of issues. Is it not obvious that a large number of people think that goverment, entitlements, and higher taxes are the answer to most social ills, and an equally large number think that smaller goverment, lower taxes and individual initiative are the answer?

I do not consider this as just a question of whom one will vote for in 2008, but the very basis of the type society we will live in and the people who will lead us.

[HydrogenBond]

One difference between Republicans and Democrats can be seen in the labeling of Conservatives and Liberals. The Reps stay the course. While the Demos like change for the sake of change. This can loosely correlate to the brain hemispheres, with the right side a little more creative, implicit of the Demos. The number of new liberal ideas exceeds the scope of the changes coming from the conservatives.

 

Demos are more emotionally driven, and are more likely to worry about the feelings of others, including animals. The Reps are often portrayed as cooler hearted beyond a certain scope. This Demo feeling is also better equated to the right side of the brain, since it is irrational; not irrational in the sense of being crazy, but emotions can't be used for reasoning. The feelings act more like fuel to give their reason a direction. This starts right and then moves into the left and uses those feelings, as fuel for the left side logic. For example, it might start like; "poor whales". Then they get creative using logic to figure out how to make it better for the whales. The L logic is a means to the end, which is to figure out how to appease the feeling.

 

Both parties use both sides of the brain, just the Demo's are more likely to add creative impulse and emotion from the right to fuel the left. The Reps tend to use the beaten path of tradition which is more easily focused in the left due to training, without wanting to add a lot of changes. They tend to go left to right using this logic system for the fuel of their emotions. The emotion is used to reinforce the well traveled conservative path. The strong emotion is there as a means to an end, which is their system.

 

Let me give an example of these two dynamics, L-R and R-L. If you just got a new job in a company, it is often very conservative. Management does not want someone new to rock the boat. The establishment knows the system and is very functional within the left hemisphere, i.e., rational. To make a change could create gaps in their well organized logic system. Based on that system, they could get emotional resisting any form of change. It is the well tuned L machine, generating a supporting R side emotion, that is used to make sure the L machine stays the course and doesn't change.

 

The person trying to make that change, if he goes L-R, he may fight a few battles but will give up since he is no match for the machine. The better way is to go R-L. What this does is give him an emotional fuel, i.e., eye of the tiger. The emotion just keeps on pushing, almost irrationally. The emotion is driving left side reason. One not may see the logical implications of their short term actions. Their emotions may fluctuate, fluctuating the left output both in a negative and positive way.

 

You sort of have to hand it to the liberals in that they just keep pushing with their R side emotional fuel. Not all their ideas are logical, but the emotions causes the tide to turn. It is sort of the party that keeps emotionally pushing for change and slowly chips away.

.

[charles brough]

What's ridiculous is this whole thread's attempt to split and categorize people, their priorities, and their political affiliations solely on assumed and unsubstantiated hemispherical dominance.

 

I agree totally. This guy is way out, rude, argumentative, qubbles, judgemental, etc I'm not responding to anything he writes any more.

[questor]

''You sort of have to hand it to the liberals in that they just keep pushing with their R side emotional fuel. Not all their ideas are logical, but the emotions causes the tide to turn. It is sort of the party that keeps emotionally pushing for change and slowly chips away.''

 

This is definitely one of liberalism's big problems. They have to continue inventing the wheel at great cost to the citizens. There is a constant social

experiment being conducted that is frustrating and expensive. Our school system is an excellent example. Washington D C spends about $17,000. per year per student and yields a product that can neither read nor write at the level of kids from other schools that spend less than $15,000. This has been the case for many years and they can't figure out what to do about it. Why could they not study the successful schools and follow their lead? The reason is that R-brainers cannot easily understand cause and effect. The same thing with taxes. The liberals cannot grasp the fact that lower taxes allow people more money in their pockets which they can spend to keep our economy moving or to create small businesses. They constantly talk about ''change''.

What would they like to change? Do they want more taxes to pay for social

experiments? Do thay want more liberal judges? Do they want a socialistic society which have proved to be failures?

In my social encounters with R-brainers, I have perceived certain traits:

1. They do not understand cause and effect.

2. They do not easily change their minds when presented with facts when the facts are contrary to their beliefs.

3. They are generally ego centric.

4. It is difficult for them to have a discussion without shouting.

5. They live in the now- lessons learned by experience of others or history

does not impact their thinking.

6. It is difficult for them to verbalize a sensible solution to a complex problem.

Some may say this is generalization, but I would point you to the current political candidates to see if you can see these traits for yourself.

The bottom line to this dicussion is that it would seem that the best leader would be someone who is rational, able to understand the future effects of his actions, able to calmy discuss options and has the best interest of the country at heart.

[CraigD]

In my social encounters with R-brainers, I have perceived certain traits…

Questor, what is your criteria for determining that a person you encounter socially is an “R-brainer”? What technique, if any, have you used to measure or obtain measurements of the actual brain activity of people on whom you’ve applied this criteria, to validate it’s accuracy?

 

Please refer to an accepted encyclopedic article on the subject of right and left-brainedness, such as the previously linked-to wikipedia article “Lateralization of brain function”, especially the cautions concerning “pseudoscientific exaggerations”. If you disagree with these articles, please state so.

 

I fear that you are a victim of popular pseudoscience equating brain development and anatomy with behavior, and using poorly controlled, anecdotal “statistics” to support these claims. Historically, such misguidance has had very dire social consequences – a well-know example is the pseudoscientific theory of Phrenology. Influential in the 19th centuries, it became notorious when it was revived by Nazi scientists in the 1940s to support claims of racial superiority and inferiority instrumental in the Holocaust.

 

The idea that a well-known self-identifying terms, such as “liberal” and “conservative”, can be mapped to measurable anatomical and physiological traits is an intriguing one, but without the support of objective scientific experiments, such speculation is baseless.

[charles brough]

It is really convenient to have a couple of catagories you can put people in like that. All who don't think like you go in one and all those who you do like go in the other. That makes it real scientific!

[questor]

Maybe someone would answer these questions:

1. Why is the US educational system falling behind?

2. Does political correctness help or hurt our society?

3. Who or what is impeding the progresss of African Americans?

4. Will tax cuts help or hurt our economy?

5. Who should pay the higher taxes?

6. Will you pay 10% higher taxes to help pay the national debt?

7. Under what circumstances should we fight a war?

8. Should the US government be allowed to fire incompetent workers?

9. Should unions be allowed to collect money from their members for PAC's?

10. Should legal and illegal immigration to the US be halted or continued?

[InfiniteNow]

The answers to your questions have no relevance to the neural circuitry of the homo sapien brain, nor you or Pioneer's/HydrogenBond's presumed and subjectively interpreted dominance of one of it's hemispheres among various members of the population. This entire thread ignores the impact of the corpus callosum and the varying sizes and impact thereof, and my statement regarding the corpus callosum doesn't even begin to reference the rest of the logical fallacies and false premises you and HB are guilty of in this thread.

[questor]

I really don't care where the thoughts originate, and I daresay no one else

understands this arcane science at this point. What I am interested in is how two people can view the same event and come up with two different perceptions of the event. The questions I posed would demonstrate to me

how there may be people reading this thread who be interested in this exercise. If you have some information that would shed light on this, I would be happy to read it.

[InfiniteNow]

I really don't care where the thoughts originate, and I daresay no one else

understands this arcane science at this point. What I am interested in is how two people can view the same event and come up with two different perceptions of the event.

 

If you are "truly" interested in this, then I advise you let go of your preconceived notions of left and right brainedness, and explore each interpretation at the level of the individual.

 

 

No matter what you read and see, it first passes through your own perceptual and experiential filters... as it does for every other being on the planet.

[questor]

Infy, I started this thread because I have observed that liberals and conservatives can view the same problem or event and their brains interpret

the event with opposite conclusions. This should be obvious when one reads a newspaper or views one of the political debates. I do not think every

individual interprets this way, but I think a majority do. Easy proof of this would be gained by attending the web-sites Daily Kos and Red State. Why is this important? Because we elect leaders to rule our lives and would like to have the best qualified to do the job. I am going to repost the brain characteristics from this site:

Right Brain Left Brain Inventory

 

Right Brain Inventory

• Visual, focusing on images, patterns

• Intuitive, led by feelings

• Process ideas simultaneously

• 'Mind photos' used to remember things, writing things down or illustrating them helps you remember

• Make lateral connections from information

• See the whole first, then the details

• Organisation ends to be lacking

• Free association

• Like to know why you're doing something or why rules exist (reasons)

• No sense of time

• May have trouble with spelling and finding words to express yourself

• Enjoy touching and feeling actual objects (sensory input)

• Trouble prioritising, so often late, impulsive

• Unlikely to read instruction manual before trying

 

Left Brain Inventory

• Verbal, focusing on words, symbols, numbers

• Analytical, led by logic

• Process ideas sequentially, step by step

Words used to remember things, remember names rather than faces

• Make logical deductions from information

• Work up to the whole step by step, focusing on details, information organised

• Highly organised

• Like making lists and planning

• Likely to follow rules without questioning them

• Good at keeping track of time

• Spelling and mathematical formula easily memorised

• Enjoy observing

• Plan ahead

• Likely read an instruction manual before trying

In reading these two lists I see some very undesirable traits for a right brain person who is to lead the largest business and the most powerful country in the world. I am not an expert on neural activity or thought production, but these characteristics are repeated in quite a bit of literature on the internet.

My personal contacts and conversations with many people lead me to believe these characteristics are accurate.

[freeztar]

A major hole, if not gaping abyss, in your argument, Questor, is that brain hemispheres are not binary. For example, I have tested to be close to the middle with a slight leaning to the left brain. People exhibit a full spectrum of the extremes.

[questor]

I made it clear from the start that there is a crossover with a sizable percentage in the middle. Furthermore, it is not just ''my'' argument. If you GOOGLE left brain right brain, you will encounter a number of articles supporting my position on characteristics. You say you have been tested- by whom? What was their expertise? Why do you think that your single test proves anything? How do you account for the difference in tax philosophy of Romney and Clinton? They are both observing the same problem, how do they arrive at different solutions? Do you support higher taxes on yourself?

[charles brough]

Maybe someone would answer these questions:

1. Why is the US educational system falling behind?

2. Does political correctness help or hurt our society?

3. Who or what is impeding the progresss of African Americans?

4. Will tax cuts help or hurt our economy?

5. Who should pay the higher taxes?

6. Will you pay 10% higher taxes to help pay the national debt?

7. Under what circumstances should we fight a war?

8. Should the US government be allowed to fire incompetent workers?

9. Should unions be allowed to collect money from their members for PAC's?

10. Should legal and illegal immigration to the US be halted or continued?

 

All those are good questions! I believe I can answer every one of them, but instead of doing that, let me explain the criteria or basic assumptions I go by that I would build my explanation on:

 

I figure that everything we do is dictated by our world-view and way of thinking which is, in our case, our religious-secular belief system. I went back in history and found that all such great mainstream systems began in some sort of relative unity and created civilizations. At some point, the ideological system began to divide at an accelerating rate. That enabled a flowering of science and culture, but as it continued, the cohesion of the society deteriorated, people cared less and less about the future and more about their individual welfare.

 

So, it is with us. Our ideological system began to split in about 1500, then we had the beginning of our great cultural-scientific age based, partially, on our secular ideology. But Christianity has continued to divide and even our secular beliefs have divided and in many cases, become extreme. We have the extremes in the animal rights groups, anti-abortion, put-spikes-in-the-logging-trees conservationists, pay tribute to former slaves, gay rights parades, etc. People pay the same lip service to the old secular ideals, but their "spirit" isn't in it anymore. So, our whole society and civilization is in decline.

 

there is a lot more to that in HOME PAGE

[freeztar]

I made it clear from the start that there is a crossover with a sizable percentage in the middle.

 

Ok, forgot/missed that, my bad.

 

Furthermore, it is not just ''my'' argument. If you GOOGLE left brain right brain, you will encounter a number of articles supporting my position on characteristics.

 

Care to post some credible sources?

 

You say you have been tested- by whom? What was their expertise?

 

I was tested by a psychiatrist.

 

Why do you think that your single test proves anything?

 

It doesn't prove anything. By the same token, making sweeping generalizations based on the same data, proves nothing.

 

How do you account for the difference in tax philosophy of Romney and Clinton? They are both observing the same problem, how do they arrive at different solutions?

 

That's just ludicrous. My father and I are both left-brained but we have vastly different views on every thing from taxation to the environment. For every example such as Romney/Clinton that you give, I can find an example showing the opposite. How does your theory account for this?

 

Do you support higher taxes on yourself?

 

ummm....no?

I'm not sure what you're asking exactly. :applause:

[questor]

Freez, if you disagree with your dad and he is left brained, then one of three things:

1. you are not left brained

2. you are left brained but haven't gained maturity. when you do, you will agree with your father

3. the left brain-right brain research means nothing

At this point in your life you are thinking right brained, meaning you will vote Democrat, since they will be raising your income taxes.

If you want to learn more about this subject, Google the subject as I mentioned earlier.