It is verified: the right and left live in different worlds
In a simple experiment reported today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information.
That is right. There is a reason political opponents find each other completely incompetent - they literally process information differently. Oh, the irony of the terms left and right.
From this report it becomes apparent that liberals are more comfortable with 'ambiguity and conflict.' The liberal mind pattern is also more likely to support scientific revolutions and religious dissent.
It is nice to know there is a biological explanation for the gulf that exists between right and left these days, and that it is directly related to neuroscience and how people perceive their reality.
Sulloway said the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat who opposed Bush in the 2004 presidential race, as a "flip-flopper" for changing his mind about the conflict.
Don't worry, they aren't ready to blame everything on someone's brain usage. Instead, they admit that political liberals and conservatives often live in a grey area when it comes to specific things like taxes that are influenced by larger factors such as education and wealth.
Now, they were careful not to pick a favorite in terms of brain power - let the results speak for themselves:
Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.
Well, then W is 4.9 times less likely than a liberal to deal with conflict. Could explain a few things...
Lead author David Amodio, an assistant professor of psychology at New York University, cautioned that the study looked at a narrow range of human behavior and that it would be a mistake to conclude that one political orientation was better. The tendency of conservatives to block distracting information could be a good thing depending on the situation, he said.
Trust me Mr. Amodio, it is more than obvious conservatives are excellent at blocking out distracting information.
In the end, it is just a test that tells us what we all know: there is no way the left and right are looking at the same reality. right, left, brain, politics amodio
