{"id":481,"date":"2007-09-10T17:02:55","date_gmt":"2007-09-10T23:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=481"},"modified":"2007-09-10T17:30:15","modified_gmt":"2007-09-10T23:30:15","slug":"w-and-m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=481","title":{"rendered":"W and M"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the “why do these people get grants when I can’t?” file we get this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Boy, those liberals sure have superior brains! Until you read about how the study was done.<\/p>\n

Participants were college students whose politics ranged from “very liberal” to “very conservative.” They were instructed to tap a keyboard when an M appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a W.<\/p>\n

M appeared four times more frequently than W, conditioning participants to press a key in knee-jerk fashion whenever they saw a letter.<\/p>\n

Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Are you kidding me? We’re supposed to extrapolate from this to how people think about complex issues like taxes and welfare? Politics are not generally decided in a split second. (And to be fair, the authors caution against an overly, um, liberal interpretation of their results).<\/p>\n

I can think of an alternative explanation. Liberals have such tiny brains that they didn’t get terminally bored with the experiment.<\/p>\n

In seriousness, this brain flexibility could explain a lot of the “nuanced” views of liberals. Wealth is bad unless it’s mine; sexual harassment is evil unless it’s a Democrat; unilateral war is bad unless it’s Clinton. Do we finally have proof that ther liberal mind can<\/em> hold completely opposite views at the same time? And I wonder what would happen if you plugged Mitt Romney into one of those things? it would probably explode.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of course, when you read about the details if this study, it seems a lot less meaningful than it claims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BzKF-7L","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}