The brain structure and political leaning of a person is counter intuitive

[sapphi_snake]

Kasz216 said:

sapphi_snake said:

highwaystar101 said:

In this months Focus Magazine (Page 23: Politics on th brain) there was a stub article that basically summed up some research that had been done regarding brain structure and the political leaning of a person. But the article presented something really counter intuitive to what you expect.

After examining the political leanings and brains structure of 90 adults, they found that liberals tended to have more brain matter in the anterior cinglate cortex, the region of the brain that deals with decision making with conflicting data, and Conservatives have a larger amygdala, the section of the brain responsible for processing emotions.

I thought this was surprising because, at least in Britain, conservatives are generally seen as the ones who are quite cold and clinical when making decisions, and liberals are seen as having an emotional basis for a significant portion of their reasoning.

For example (and forgive me for stereotyping here), if an art gallery were to apply for a government grant for an exhibition, in a typical case a conservative would be likely to weigh the benefits of the exhibition vs the costs and make a decision that way; where as  liberal would be more likely to say that you can't put a price on the benefits expression through art would bring to many people, which is quite an emotive response.

That's how I would see the two sides acting any way and I think this seems really counter intuitive to what the research tells us.

What do you guys think?

Got a link? Is it legal to scan the article?

There are like... a bunch of online articles about it.

This is actually from a study that released 2 months ago.  With hilairous politically motivated statements no less,  for example. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1342239/Brain-study-reveals-right-wing-conservatives-larger-primitive-amygdala.html

 

http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/its-actually-conservatives-vs-liberalsand-liberals/

 

Looks like an ok one.  Such research also suggests Conservatives have more friends than liberals too... which is funny, considering the typical conservative is seen as this lonely miserly fellow.

Having a large amygdala would explain why the Republicans are so much better at politics then the Democrats in the US though.

Doesn't appealing to people's emotions work well in politics in general? Just look at Hitler.