According to New Scientist, increasing evidence indicates that the sense of disgust is closely aligned with a person’s political orientation. People who land on the conservative end of the spectrum have a more easily aroused sense of disgust than their liberal counterparts.
A team of scientists at Virginia Tech led by researcher Read Montague found that people who are more likely to sit on the right side of the political spectrum have a higher sensitivity to disgusting pictures like bodily waste, gore or the remains of dead animals.….
The team’s findings also indicate that since the structure and function of these areas of the brain are almost entirely determined by genetics, political leanings may be something we mostly inherit from our parents, just as much as height and hair color.…
However, that doesn’t mean a person’s political outlook is determined at birth, he cautioned.
“Genetics predetermines height — but not fully,” he said. “Nutrition, sleep, and starvation can all change someone’s ultimate height. But tall people’s children tend to be tall, and that’s a kind of starting point.…"Raw Story
Sense of disgust is ’95 percent accurate’ predictor of whether you’re liberal or conservative
David Ferguson
3 comments:
This is the old empathy issue linked to attachment theory raising its head. A good attachment process in childhood promotes flexibility in thinking so that you can see things from different perspectives including being able to empathize with other creatures including your fellow human being. A poor attachment process can lead to an avoidant-dismissive outlook which translates to an attitude of belief that your neediness both material and psychological should take priority over that of others wanting the same. A quick rush to feel disgusted reveals rigidity of thinking and ties in to having a low esteem of others which is the habitual "dismissive" mind-set.
In other words 'toddler rules'.
OK, so genetics is a major determinant of political conservatism/liberalism. And a sense of disgust and desire for purity is associated with being conservative. And 95% of the population can be distinguished as liberal or conservative by showing them a single picture and looking at their brain responses.
All of this from a sample of 83 people? In Virginia? Really?
What about Mississippi? The deep South has a lot of Scotch-Irish. Are they genetically conservative? Is Ireland a conservative country? (BTW, liberal and conservative are hardly well defined. What they studied were self reports of their subjects.) Judaism is, at least in its roots, a purity religion. From that we would expect Jews to be genetically conservative. Yet US Jews are considered to be liberal, as a group.
It certainly sounds like the researchers have found some phenomenon, but what it is is another question.
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