Brains! (Liberal vs. Conservative)

by muon

I read an article a few months ago, the gist of which is just now hatching into share-able graphics on social media. The article told of 13 different scientific studies that show how people calling themselves liberals and people calling themselves conservatives have pathological difference in the brain. (You can read about the studies on the ABC News website.)

Liberals tend to have larger anterior cingulate cortexes, associated with tolerance to uncertainty. Conservatives have larger right amygdalas, the area that governs sensitivity to fear. Conservatives avoid self-harm. Liberals are usually more concerned with harm to their group. Liberals focus on progress and are more likely to take risks to find better ways of doing things. Conservatives will stick to the status quo if it's comfortable for them and poses no immediate danger.

What none of the studies showed was how these two different kinds of brains evolved (yes, I mean evolution. If your sensitivity to fear makes you tremble at that word, better stop reading now). My theory is that families who never had to find creative solutions for their problems probably developed conservative brains.

Say your family has had wealth for generation after generation. Your ancestors could always rely on money to feed, shelter and clothe. They could pay someone to fight enemies. They could buy immediate solutions to problems as they came along. Your family never had to figure a different way of doing anything, and they, of course, never wanted their way of dealing with life to change. But they became very fearful of having their wealth taken from them, because it was their only means of survival.

My family were always great jury-riggers. When you can't afford to buy the means of survival, you have to creatively adapt or die. Duct tape was invented for families like mine. And while our stop-gap measure was buying us more time, we could be planning how to fix the problem for the long-term, in the most cost-efficient way. We have less fear of uncertainty, because we've dealt with it on some level each day, for generations.

Now, I'm not saying that all rich people are conservative. I think that families who have taught creative thinking to their progeny, and passed the teaching down through the generations, are the ones who have developed liberal brains. But I believe ultra-conservatives, either now or at sometime in their families' past, have probably been the "haves" of society, in some way. If not by money, then by strength or charisma or whatever. They never needed to learn adaptation, and so became fearful of it, and fearful of losing their special "have" at any moment.

Then again, if you don't believe in evolution, I guess God simply created conservatives and liberals physically different. So get over it, and quit trying to inflict your fear-mongering right amygdala on society. Or some liberal is apt to get out his duct tape.