Well, I still have my doubts that brain science can explain the current extreme Republican behavior, but another neuroscience study has come up with more supporting evidence for a correlation between brain activity and political party affiliation.
The latest has to do with how people's brains reflect their handling of risk. The researchers observed functional MRI's of brains of people tasked with making decisions that involve risk. There was no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in the study as to how much risk they would take, but there were differences in how their brains processed the decision.
Republicans' brains showed more activity in a brain area linked with reward, fear
and risky decisions, while Democrats' brains showed more activity in a brain area related to processing emotion and internal body cues.
What does this mean? It's still in the murky area of small sample size, playing with statistics, and research design. But several studies now point in the same direction. The researchers were able to predict a person's political party by looking at their brain function 82.9 percent of the time.
Actually, I think it's more accurate to say that the brain activity is associated with particular values and ideology, and that those are what determine the political party. That doesn't change anything -- just makes it more understandable. The correlation is the same.
Oh, Brave New World. Perhaps one day we'll have to confront the ethics of drug companies marketing pills to make people more compassionate or, worse, more selfish.
Ralph
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