If you follow political debates in the media these days, you might have noticed something — it’s nasty out there. Right-wing commentators on radio and TV blame the left for undermining the very fabric of society, while liberal activists bemoan what they see as the heartless determination of conservatives to preserve old, harmful cultural patterns. Even on the internet, discussion forums allow people to bash those with opposing political views anonymously and ruthlessly, without much consequence. The worldviews and problem-solving approaches they have are so different, it sometimes seems like there are two different species of humans, each with totally different ways of processing information from the world around them.
Can it be possible that people with different political philosophies have different kinds of brains? Well, we know for sure that there are no obvious anatomical differences. In other words, as likely as it may seem to you, people with obnoxious opinions contradicting your own are not missing parts of their brains. However, there do seem to be distinct ways in which people use their brains, and these unique cognitive styles may account for political differences.
It’s a question that psychologists began to investigate in the early 1970s, as the United States was embroiled in the Watergate scandal and the aftermath of the Vietnam War. The earliest observations did not look good for people who described themselves as “politically conservative.” Study after study correlated higher degrees of conservatism with low IQs and low educational achievement. Psychologists described conservatives as highly fear-based and heavily authoritarian by nature.
Neuroscientists noted lower density of brain matter in the prefrontal cortex of conservatives, a physical symptom consistent with lower cognitive ability. They also noticed that the brains of people with right-wing tendencies tend to default more easily toward a fear response in difficult situations than “liberal” brains. It were these findings that led the researchers to suggest that conservatives cling to old models of social structure because they simply lack the intellectual capacity for understanding complex social problems, or to concoct solutions for these problems.
More recently, however, some psychologists and neuroscientists have begun to question these data, finding them a little too black-and-white to be scientifically comfortable. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt conducted an informal poll that indicated a potential bias problem — 80 to 90 percent of his colleagues in the institutions he polled identified themselves as “liberal.”
After delving into the question more deeply, Haidt wrote the book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.” In it, he postulates that both “liberal” and “conservative” brains have a role to play in society, and that demonizing either side is not constructive. Society, he speculates, is comprised of a push and pull between the two forces, and either way of thinking can lead to despotism if allowed to thrive unchecked.
In his book, Haidt contends that conservatives may possess a kind of intelligence that is not reflected in IQ scores — intuitive understanding of human nature. He believes that an idealized concept of human nature is the fundamental blind spot of the liberal mind, and he cites a number of failed social programs as evidence of that fact. The “blind spot” of the conservative mind, on the other hand, is the tendency to cling to traditional social structures, even when they’ve proven to be dysfunctional or irrelevant.
Neurologists agree that there are indeed two distinct cognitive styles that could be classified as “liberal” and “conservative.” In one study, college students were instructed to tap a keyboard when an “M” appeared on a computer screen, and not to tap if a “W’ appeared. Four out of every five letters was an “M,” so participants were conditioned to tap most of the time. During the activity, an electroencephalography (EEG) machine recorded activity in the students’ anterior cingulate cortex, a part of the brain that helps us choose between habitual tendencies and appropriate responses.
Students who identified as “liberal” had significantly more activity in that brain region and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when recognizing the letter “W,” the letter that appeared less frequently. However, both were equally able to identify the letter “M.” The researchers suggested that this reflects the liberal brain’s ability to recognize and accept new patterns more easily. However, the conservative brain’s ability to block out novel information (“W”) in favor of the tried and true (“M”) may have its evolutionary advantages.
