fedup Posted March 22, 2023 Share Posted March 22, 2023 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fedup Posted March 22, 2023 Share Posted March 22, 2023 3 minutes ago, fedup said: 3 useless Liberals sucking up your tax dollars with their stupid. MEDIA Published March 22, 2023 4:00am EDT Pentagon doctors claim 7-year-olds can make decisions to be injected with hormones, puberty suppressants The DoD doctors claimed 7-year-olds are capable of 'medical decision-making' https://www.foxnews.com/media/pentagon-doctors-claim-7-year-olds-can-make-decisions-injected-hormones-puberty-suppressants Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fedup Posted March 26, 2023 Share Posted March 26, 2023 Everyday, these wacko dumber than a box of rock's Liberals makes this country worse. These idiots are trying to pass a law that allows the state of Minnesota to tell you how you have to raise your kid in the other 49 states. This legislation is meant to ensure that children undergoing gender transition procedures allowed under Minnesota law cannot be governed by child protection laws of other states. It's a direct response to neighboring South Dakota, where Republican Gov. Kristi Noem signed a law banning puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone treatments, and sex-change operations for transgender individuals under the age of 18. "Gender-affirming care is lifesaving health care," Finke told reporters --------would anyone care to explain how cutting the boobs off of little girls and dicks off of little boys is life saving???? This freak of nature is pure stupid. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/minnesota-advances-trans-refuge-bill-opponents-strip-custody-non-consenting-parents Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petee Posted March 26, 2023 Share Posted March 26, 2023 4 hours ago, fedup said: Everyday, these wacko dumber than a box of rock's Liberals makes this country worse. These idiots are trying to pass a law that allows the state of Minnesota to tell you how you have to raise your kid in the other 49 states. This legislation is meant to ensure that children undergoing gender transition procedures allowed under Minnesota law cannot be governed by child protection laws of other states. It's a direct response to neighboring South Dakota, where Republican Gov. Kristi Noem signed a law banning puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone treatments, and sex-change operations for transgender individuals under the age of 18. "Gender-affirming care is lifesaving health care," Finke told reporters --------would anyone care to explain how cutting the boobs off of little girls and dicks off of little boys is life saving???? This freak of nature is pure stupid. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/minnesota-advances-trans-refuge-bill-opponents-strip-custody-non-consenting-parents Will that state have PLENTY of money for pain and suffering when the kids grow up and hate the change? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fedup Posted March 26, 2023 Share Posted March 26, 2023 53 minutes ago, Petee said: Will that state have PLENTY of money for pain and suffering when the kids grow up and hate the change? Nope, the Liberal state will make the parents pay. Liberals are never wrong, don'tcha know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petee Posted March 30, 2023 Share Posted March 30, 2023 That's my point. Entertain nonsense now and let someone else pay the bill later. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fedup Posted March 31, 2023 Share Posted March 31, 2023 19 hours ago, Petee said: That's my point. Entertain nonsense now and let someone else pay the bill later. Could you ever have imagined what is happening???? Highly educated professionals mutilating children to make more money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petee Posted March 31, 2023 Share Posted March 31, 2023 6 hours ago, fedup said: Could you ever have imagined what is happening???? Highly educated professionals mutilating children to make more money. I can imagine so much more evil in the world that we haven't even seen yet. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Keep ignoring the one thing that can fix it all, and it will also come to pass. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GoodDeal Posted April 1, 2023 Share Posted April 1, 2023 Here is the problem. If you want to remove Liberalism from the face of the earth, you must end Democracy and Freedom of choice. I am not a Liberal, but our Veterans fought for our Freedom and Democracy. I love our country and our freedoms of the 1st and 2nd Amendment. First thing Dictators do is end Liberalism, freedom of choice take away our guns and jail anyone that speaks out against the government or leaders. Name one Communist or Tyrants government that allows Liberalism or Freedom to speak out freely any ideas that are against the Government! Be careful what you wish for! Want to "REMOVE LIBERALISM FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH?" Support Russia, China, North Korea or Iran. You are on your way! For me I don't like crazy extremists on the Left or Right. They are tearing our country apart. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fedup Posted April 2, 2023 Share Posted April 2, 2023 On 3/31/2023 at 8:42 PM, GoodDeal said: Here is the problem. If you want to remove Liberalism from the face of the earth, you must end Democracy and Freedom of choice. I am not a Liberal, but our Veterans fought for our Freedom and Democracy. I love our country and our freedoms of the 1st and 2nd Amendment. First thing Dictators do is end Liberalism, freedom of choice take away our guns and jail anyone that speaks out against the government or leaders. Name one Communist or Tyrants government that allows Liberalism or Freedom to speak out freely any ideas that are against the Government! Be careful what you wish for! Want to "REMOVE LIBERALISM FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH?" Support Russia, China, North Korea or Iran. You are on your way! For me I don't like crazy extremists on the Left or Right. They are tearing our country apart. You do not need to end democracy and freedom of choice. Your listening to Liberal talking points. They need to be the first thing removed. Their lies and those that support their lies. First thing Dictators do is end Liberalism, freedom of choice take away our guns and jail anyone that speaks out against the government or leaders. The first thing liberals do is take away your guns. Go Braindead, GO. The second thing is take away your gas stoves. Go Braindead, GO. The third thing is telling you what you need to know by using their news people to tell you what the news is. SO much for YOUR freedom to speak and be heard. Our military did not fight to allow doctors to cut off little boys Johnsons. Our Military did not fight to open the flood gates for illegal invaders. NO non-Liberal begged to have our energy production shut down. ON AND ON the true Liberalism is marching on removing every right you have. I have no idea what planet you are living on but you might want to quit listening to talking points and open your eyes to the truth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GoodDeal Posted April 2, 2023 Share Posted April 2, 2023 Looks like your perfect world is Russia, China or North Korea. No Liberals there! I am against crazy extremists on the Left or Right. I have no idea what planet you are living on but you might want to quit listening to right wing Qanon talking points and open your eyes to the truth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weirdcritter Posted April 2, 2023 Share Posted April 2, 2023 I am curious how Fedup and others would get rid of the many liberals in this country. One way would be the Imperial way: beatings, imprisonment, exile, execution. Then there is the Communist way: beatings, reeducation camps, imprisonment, execution. Third would be the fascist way: beatings, concentration camps, execution. If not any of the above means, then how? Then many of these people probably have children, grandchildren, siblings, nieces, nephews who are liberal. What would they do with them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petee Posted April 2, 2023 Share Posted April 2, 2023 Like it or not, they're part of the system. However, it seems like the value system they are following isn't favorable to individuals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S_A_Hoov Posted April 2, 2023 Share Posted April 2, 2023 6 hours ago, fedup said: You do not need to end democracy and freedom of choice. Your listening to Liberal talking points. They need to be the first thing removed. Their lies and those that support their lies. First thing Dictators do is end Liberalism, freedom of choice take away our guns and jail anyone that speaks out against the government or leaders. The first thing liberals do is take away your guns. Go Braindead, GO. The second thing is take away your gas stoves. Go Braindead, GO. The third thing is telling you what you need to know by using their news people to tell you what the news is. SO much for YOUR freedom to speak and be heard. Our military did not fight to allow doctors to cut off little boys Johnsons. Our Military did not fight to open the flood gates for illegal invaders. NO non-Liberal begged to have our energy production shut down. ON AND ON the true Liberalism is marching on removing every right you have. I have no idea what planet you are living on but you might want to quit listening to talking points and open your eyes to the truth. Here you go fed fedup 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fedup Posted April 2, 2023 Share Posted April 2, 2023 3 hours ago, GoodDeal said: Looks like your perfect world is Russia, China or North Korea. No Liberals there! I am against crazy extremists on the Left or Right. I have no idea what planet you are living on but you might want to quit listening to right wing Qanon talking points and open your eyes to the truth. I just gave you a short list of the real truth that you never addressed. RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA the Liberal Clintons favorite people. Hell they even gave Russia Money. CHINA CHINA CHINA . Now I suppose you are going to tell us all that your Liberal president and his whole family ain't living in China's back pocket. I have never once listen to, seen or read anything about Qanon. Bet you can't say the same about you and the LIBERAL BLM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fedup Posted April 2, 2023 Share Posted April 2, 2023 3 hours ago, weirdcritter said: I am curious how Fedup and others would get rid of the many liberals in this country. One way would be the Imperial way: beatings, imprisonment, exile, execution. Then there is the Communist way: beatings, reeducation camps, imprisonment, execution. Third would be the fascist way: beatings, concentration camps, execution. If not any of the above means, then how? Then many of these people probably have children, grandchildren, siblings, nieces, nephews who are liberal. What would they do with them? Pure BS. Try again. Not once have I suggested any of that BS you threw at me. Try this solution on for size. Americans can quit listening to the Liberal BS you just typed. We can ignore the liberal noise. Check out your lying liberal news sources. They are all failing cause Americans ain't listening to their lies anymore. Americans can stand up and call out the Liberal lies which is finally happening in the government. You wouldn't know that because CNN gives that Zero coverage. And about your lame sibling BS. Americans can start teaching the liberal brainwashed kids how to be Americans which is already slowly happening. Americans are getting rid of useless liberals ruling the education process. And ON AND ON AND ON IT GOES. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fedup Posted April 2, 2023 Share Posted April 2, 2023 If it's violence your looking for, try this on for size. Americans can cut the boobs and Dicks off of the adult liberals and ask them "HOW DID THAT FEEL, YOU MUTILATION LOVING SICK PERSON"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weirdcritter Posted April 2, 2023 Share Posted April 2, 2023 6 minutes ago, fedup said: Pure BS. Try again. Not once have I suggested any of that BS you threw at me. Try this solution on for size. Americans can quit listening to the Liberal BS you just typed. We can ignore the liberal noise. Check out your lying liberal news sources. They are all failing cause Americans ain't listening to their lies anymore. Americans can stand up and call out the Liberal lies which is finally happening in the government. You wouldn't know that because CNN gives that Zero coverage. And about your lame sibling BS. Americans can start teaching the liberal brainwashed kids how to be Americans which is already slowly happening. Americans are getting rid of useless liberals ruling the education process. And ON AND ON AND ON IT GOES. Except that millions of Americans are liberals, and none of them are going away soon. And a real American is anyone who is born in this country and it has nothing to do with ideology. Many Americans are rising up against right-wing indoctrination that some are trying to impose on our children. And these Americans are just as American as you are. The only way you can eliminate liberals is through the means that I mentioned. Plus there is evidence that people may be born with a predisposition to be liberal or conservative. If true that means that any baby that is born would have to have its brain evaluated sometime to determine whether that child is liberal and then what to do with it. What to do. What to do. I have no doubt that as time goes on the bulk of this country will become more and more liberal, with rural areas being more conservative than their city cousins. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/conservative-and-liberal-brains-might-have-some-real-differences/\\ SKIP TO MAIN CONTENT SubscribeLatest Issues Scientific American Cart 0 Sign In |Newsletters SHARE LATEST Spring Flash Sale Shop Now BEHAVIOR Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences Scanners try to watch the red-blue divide play out underneath the skull By Lydia Denworth on October 26, 2020 أعرض هذا باللغة العربية Credit: Getty Images In 1968 a debate was held between conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., and liberal writer Gore Vidal. It was hoped that these two members of opposing intellectual elites would show Americans living through tumultuous times that political disagreements could be civilized. That idea did not last for long. Instead Buckley and Vidal descended rapidly into name-calling. Afterward, they sued each other for defamation. The story of the 1968 debate opens a well-regarded 2013 book called Predisposed, which introduced the general public to the field of political neuroscience. The authors, a trio of political scientists at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Rice University, argued that if the differences between liberals and conservatives seem profound and even unbridgeable, it is because they are rooted in personality characteristics and biological predispositions. On the whole, the research shows, conservatives desire security, predictability and authority more than liberals do, and liberals are more comfortable with novelty, nuance and complexity. If you had put Buckley and Vidal in a magnetic resonance imaging machine and presented them with identical images, you would likely have seen differences in their brain, especially in the areas that process social and emotional information. The volume of gray matter, or neural cell bodies, making up the anterior cingulate cortex, an area that helps detect errors and resolve conflicts, tends to be larger in liberals. And the amygdala, which is important for regulating emotions and evaluating threats, is larger in conservatives. ADVERTISEMENT While these findings are remarkably consistent, they are probabilities, not certainties—meaning there is plenty of individual variability. The political landscape includes lefties who own guns, right-wingers who drive Priuses and everything in between. There is also an unresolved chicken-and-egg problem: Do brains start out processing the world differently or do they become increasingly different as our politics evolve? Furthermore, it is still not entirely clear how useful it is to know that a Republican’s brain lights up over X while a Democrat’s responds to Y. So what can the study of neural activity suggest about political behavior? The still emerging field of political neuroscience has begun to move beyond describing basic structural and functional brain differences between people of different ideological persuasions—gauging who has the biggest amygdala—to more nuanced investigations of how certain cognitive processes underlie our political thinking and decision-making. Partisanship does not just affect our vote; it influences our memory, reasoning and even our perception of truth. Knowing this will not magically bring us all together, but researchers hope that continuing to understand the way partisanship influences our brain might at least allow us to counter its worst effects: the divisiveness that can tear apart the shared values required to retain a sense of national unity. Social scientists who observe behaviors in the political sphere can gain substantial insight into the hazards of errant partisanship. Political neuroscience, however, attempts to deepen these observations by supplying evidence that a belief or bias manifests as a measure of brain volume or activity—demonstrating that an attitude, conviction or misconception is, in fact, genuine. “Brain structure and function provide more objective measures than many types of survey responses,” says political neuroscientist Hannah Nam of Stony Brook University. “Participants may be induced to be more honest when they think that scientists have a ‘window’ into their brains.” That is not to say that political neuroscience can be used as a tool to “read minds,” but it can pick up discrepancies between stated positions and underlying cognitive processes. Brain scans are also unlikely to be used as a biomarker for specific political results because the relationships between the brain and politics is not one-to-one. Yet “neurobiological features could be used as a predictor of political outcomes—just not in a deterministic way,” Nam says. To study how we process political information in a 2017 paper, political psychologist Ingrid Haas of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and her colleagues created hypothetical candidates from both major parties and assigned each candidate a set of policy statements on issues such as school prayer, Medicare and defense spending. Most statements were what you would expect: Republicans, for instance, usually favor increasing defense spending, and Democrats generally support expanding Medicare. But some statements were surprising, such as a conservative expressing a pro-choice position or a liberal arguing for invading Iran. ADVERTISEMENT Haas put 58 people with diverse political views in a brain scanner. On each trial, participants were asked whether it was good or bad that a candidate held a position on a particular issue and not whether they personally agreed or disagreed with it. Framing the task that way allowed the researchers to look at neural processing as a function of whether the information was expected or unexpected—what they termed congruent or incongruent. They also considered participants’ own party identification and whether there was a relationship between ideological differences and how the subjects did the task. Liberals proved more attentive to incongruent information, especially for Democratic candidates. When they encountered such a position, it took them longer to make a decision about whether it was good or bad. They were likely to show activation for incongruent information in two brain regions: the insula and anterior cingulate cortex, which “are involved in helping people form and think about their attitudes,” Haas says. How do out-of-the-ordinary positions affect later voting? Haas suspects that engaging more with such information might make voters more likely to punish candidates for it later. But she acknowledges that they may instead exercise a particular form of bias called “motivated reasoning” to downplay the incongruity. Motivated reasoning, in which people work hard to justify their opinions or decisions, even in the face of conflicting evidence, has been a popular topic in political neuroscience because there is a lot of it going around. While partisanship plays a role, motivated reasoning goes deeper than that. Just as most of us like to think we are good-hearted human beings, people generally prefer to believe that the society they live in is desirable, fair and legitimate. “Even if society isn’t perfect, and there are things to be criticized about it, there is a preference to think that you live in a good society,” Nam says. When that preference is particularly strong, she adds, “that can lead to things like simply rationalizing or accepting long-standing inequalities or injustices.” Psychologists call the cognitive process that lets us do so “system justification.” Sign up for Scientific American’s free newsletters. Sign Up Nam and her colleagues set out to understand which brain areas govern the affective processes that underlie system justification. They found that the volume of gray matter in the amygdala is linked to the tendency to perceive the social system as legitimate and desirable. Their interpretation is that “this preference to system justify is related to these basic neurobiological predispositions to be alert to potential threats in your environment,” Nam says. After the original study, Nam’s team followed a subset of the participants for three years and found that their brain structure predicted the likelihood of whether they participated in political protests during that time. “Larger amygdala volume is associated with a lower likelihood of participating in political protests,” Nam says. “That makes sense in so far as political protest is a behavior that says, ‘We’ve got to change the system.’” ADVERTISEMENT Understanding the influence of partisanship on identity, even down to the level of neurons, “helps to explain why people place party loyalty over policy, and even over truth,” argued psychologists Jay Van Bavel and Andrea Pereira, both then at New York University, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences in 2018. In short, we derive our identities from both our individual characteristics, such as being a parent, and our group memberships, such as being a New Yorker or an American. These affiliations serve multiple social goals: they feed our need to belong and desire for closure and predictability, and they endorse our moral values. And our brain represents them much as it does other forms of social identity. Among other things, partisan identity clouds memory. In a 2013 study, liberals were more likely to misremember George W. Bush remaining on vacation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and conservatives were more likely to falsely recall seeing Barack Obama shaking hands with the president of Iran. Partisan identity also shapes our perceptions. When they were shown a video of a political protest in a 2012 study, liberals and conservatives were more or less likely to favor calling police depending on their interpretation of the protest’s goal. If the objective was liberal (opposing the military barring openly gay people from service), the conservatives were more likely to want the cops. The opposite was true when participants thought it was a conservative protest (opposing an abortion clinic). The more strongly we identify with a party, the more likely we are to double down on our support for it. That tendency is exacerbated by rampant political misinformation and, too often, identity wins out over accuracy. If we understand what is at work cognitively, we might be able to intervene and try to ease some of the negative effects of partisanship. The tension between accuracy and identity probably involves a brain region called the orbitofrontal cortex, which computes the value of goals and beliefs and is strongly connected to memory, executive function and attention. If identity helps determine the value of different beliefs, it can also distort them, Van Bavel says. Appreciating that political affiliation fulfills an evolutionary need to belong suggests we should create alternative means of belonging—depoliticizing the novel coronavirus by calling on us to come together as Americans, for instance. And incentivizing the need to be accurate could increase the importance accorded that goal: paying money for accurate responses or holding people accountable for incorrect ones have been shown to be effective. It will be nearly impossible to lessen the partisan influences before the November 3 election because the volume of political information will only increase, reminding us of our political identities daily. But here is some good news: a large 2020 study at Harvard University found that participants consistently overestimated the level of out-group negativity toward their in-group. In other words, the other side may not dislike us quite so much as we think. Inaccurate information heightened the negative bias, and (more good news) correcting inaccurate information significantly reduced it. “The biology and neuroscience of politics might be useful in terms of what is effective at getting through to people,” Van Bavel says. “Maybe the way to interact with someone who disagrees with me politically is not to try to persuade them on the deep issue, because I might never get there. It’s more to try to understand where they’re coming from and shatter their stereotypes.” ADVERTISEMENT Rights & Permissions ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S) Lydia Denworth is an award-winning science journalist and contributing editor for Scientific American. She is author of Friendship:The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life's Fundamental Bond (W. W. Norton, 2020) and several other books of popular science. Credit: Nick Higgins Recent Articles by Lydia Denworth U.S. Kids Are Falling behind Global Competition, but Brain Science Shows How to Catch Up People in Republican Counties Have Higher Death Rates Than Those in Democratic Counties A Single, Quick 'Mindset' Exercise Protects against Adolescent Stress NEWSLETTER Get smart. Sign up for our email newsletter. Sign Up SCROLL TO TOP Support science journalism. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Knowledge awaits. See Subscription Options Already a subscriber? Sign in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BEHAVIOR Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences Scanners try to watch the red-blue divide play out underneath the skull By Lydia Denworth on October 26, 2020 أعرض هذا باللغة العربية
weirdcritter Posted April 2, 2023 Share Posted April 2, 2023 55 minutes ago, S_A_Hoov said: Here you go fed ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? William Casey was an archconservative cold war hawk. He hated liberals and had nothing to do with them. John D. Rockefeller was a conservative businessman who fought the government bitterly when it broke up his oil monopoly. Sure his foundation is liberal, but so is the Carnegie Foundation and the Annenberg Foundation, despite both being formed by staunch conservative businessmen. If Peter Thiel and Elon Musk formed foundations to live on after their deaths, their foundations would likely soon become liberal as well. There may be a few exceptions to this, but for the most part this is the pattern that is followed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weirdcritter Posted April 2, 2023 Share Posted April 2, 2023 39 minutes ago, fedup said: If it's violence your looking for, try this on for size. Americans can cut the boobs and Dicks off of the adult liberals and ask them "HOW DID THAT FEEL, YOU MUTILATION LOVING SICK PERSON"? As I said before, I oppose this procedure for anyone under 18, but adults should have that right. Why, you ask? Well, OUR BODIES ARE OUR ULTIMATE PROPERTY. WE ADULTS SHOULD MAKE THE DECISION OF WHAT WE DO WITH OUR OWN BODIES AND THE GOVERNMENT, THE CHURCH, FEDUP, ANYONE, HAD JUST BETTER F--- OFF. I have no desire to transition to a woman, but I fully support anyone who does. Because it is THEIR LIFE and THEIR BODY to do with as they please. I myself believe that tattoos are stupid and so is piercing anything but the ear, but I have no problem with someone getting those adornments. Care to guess why? FORCING somone to go through any of these procedures is barbaric and totalitarian. Sorry you think the government should have the right to tell other people what they can do with their bodies because it makes you nervous when you learn about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weirdcritter Posted April 2, 2023 Share Posted April 2, 2023 1 hour ago, weirdcritter said: Except that millions of Americans are liberals, and none of them are going away soon. And a real American is anyone who is born in this country and it has nothing to do with ideology. Many Americans are rising up against right-wing indoctrination that some are trying to impose on our children. And these Americans are just as American as you are. The only way you can eliminate liberals is through the means that I mentioned. Plus there is evidence that people may be born with a predisposition to be liberal or conservative. If true that means that any baby that is born would have to have its brain evaluated sometime to determine whether that child is liberal and then what to do with it. What to do. What to do. I have no doubt that as time goes on the bulk of this country will become more and more liberal, with rural areas being more conservative than their city cousins. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/conservative-and-liberal-brains-might-have-some-real-differences/\\ SKIP TO MAIN CONTENT SubscribeLatest Issues Scientific American Cart 0 Sign In |Newsletters SHARE LATEST Spring Flash Sale Shop Now BEHAVIOR Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences Scanners try to watch the red-blue divide play out underneath the skull By Lydia Denworth on October 26, 2020 أعرض هذا باللغة العربية Credit: Getty Images In 1968 a debate was held between conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., and liberal writer Gore Vidal. It was hoped that these two members of opposing intellectual elites would show Americans living through tumultuous times that political disagreements could be civilized. That idea did not last for long. Instead Buckley and Vidal descended rapidly into name-calling. Afterward, they sued each other for defamation. The story of the 1968 debate opens a well-regarded 2013 book called Predisposed, which introduced the general public to the field of political neuroscience. The authors, a trio of political scientists at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Rice University, argued that if the differences between liberals and conservatives seem profound and even unbridgeable, it is because they are rooted in personality characteristics and biological predispositions. On the whole, the research shows, conservatives desire security, predictability and authority more than liberals do, and liberals are more comfortable with novelty, nuance and complexity. If you had put Buckley and Vidal in a magnetic resonance imaging machine and presented them with identical images, you would likely have seen differences in their brain, especially in the areas that process social and emotional information. The volume of gray matter, or neural cell bodies, making up the anterior cingulate cortex, an area that helps detect errors and resolve conflicts, tends to be larger in liberals. And the amygdala, which is important for regulating emotions and evaluating threats, is larger in conservatives. ADVERTISEMENT While these findings are remarkably consistent, they are probabilities, not certainties—meaning there is plenty of individual variability. The political landscape includes lefties who own guns, right-wingers who drive Priuses and everything in between. There is also an unresolved chicken-and-egg problem: Do brains start out processing the world differently or do they become increasingly different as our politics evolve? Furthermore, it is still not entirely clear how useful it is to know that a Republican’s brain lights up over X while a Democrat’s responds to Y. So what can the study of neural activity suggest about political behavior? The still emerging field of political neuroscience has begun to move beyond describing basic structural and functional brain differences between people of different ideological persuasions—gauging who has the biggest amygdala—to more nuanced investigations of how certain cognitive processes underlie our political thinking and decision-making. Partisanship does not just affect our vote; it influences our memory, reasoning and even our perception of truth. Knowing this will not magically bring us all together, but researchers hope that continuing to understand the way partisanship influences our brain might at least allow us to counter its worst effects: the divisiveness that can tear apart the shared values required to retain a sense of national unity. Social scientists who observe behaviors in the political sphere can gain substantial insight into the hazards of errant partisanship. Political neuroscience, however, attempts to deepen these observations by supplying evidence that a belief or bias manifests as a measure of brain volume or activity—demonstrating that an attitude, conviction or misconception is, in fact, genuine. “Brain structure and function provide more objective measures than many types of survey responses,” says political neuroscientist Hannah Nam of Stony Brook University. “Participants may be induced to be more honest when they think that scientists have a ‘window’ into their brains.” That is not to say that political neuroscience can be used as a tool to “read minds,” but it can pick up discrepancies between stated positions and underlying cognitive processes. Brain scans are also unlikely to be used as a biomarker for specific political results because the relationships between the brain and politics is not one-to-one. Yet “neurobiological features could be used as a predictor of political outcomes—just not in a deterministic way,” Nam says. To study how we process political information in a 2017 paper, political psychologist Ingrid Haas of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and her colleagues created hypothetical candidates from both major parties and assigned each candidate a set of policy statements on issues such as school prayer, Medicare and defense spending. Most statements were what you would expect: Republicans, for instance, usually favor increasing defense spending, and Democrats generally support expanding Medicare. But some statements were surprising, such as a conservative expressing a pro-choice position or a liberal arguing for invading Iran. ADVERTISEMENT Haas put 58 people with diverse political views in a brain scanner. On each trial, participants were asked whether it was good or bad that a candidate held a position on a particular issue and not whether they personally agreed or disagreed with it. Framing the task that way allowed the researchers to look at neural processing as a function of whether the information was expected or unexpected—what they termed congruent or incongruent. They also considered participants’ own party identification and whether there was a relationship between ideological differences and how the subjects did the task. Liberals proved more attentive to incongruent information, especially for Democratic candidates. When they encountered such a position, it took them longer to make a decision about whether it was good or bad. They were likely to show activation for incongruent information in two brain regions: the insula and anterior cingulate cortex, which “are involved in helping people form and think about their attitudes,” Haas says. How do out-of-the-ordinary positions affect later voting? Haas suspects that engaging more with such information might make voters more likely to punish candidates for it later. But she acknowledges that they may instead exercise a particular form of bias called “motivated reasoning” to downplay the incongruity. Motivated reasoning, in which people work hard to justify their opinions or decisions, even in the face of conflicting evidence, has been a popular topic in political neuroscience because there is a lot of it going around. While partisanship plays a role, motivated reasoning goes deeper than that. Just as most of us like to think we are good-hearted human beings, people generally prefer to believe that the society they live in is desirable, fair and legitimate. “Even if society isn’t perfect, and there are things to be criticized about it, there is a preference to think that you live in a good society,” Nam says. When that preference is particularly strong, she adds, “that can lead to things like simply rationalizing or accepting long-standing inequalities or injustices.” Psychologists call the cognitive process that lets us do so “system justification.” Sign up for Scientific American’s free newsletters. Sign Up Nam and her colleagues set out to understand which brain areas govern the affective processes that underlie system justification. They found that the volume of gray matter in the amygdala is linked to the tendency to perceive the social system as legitimate and desirable. Their interpretation is that “this preference to system justify is related to these basic neurobiological predispositions to be alert to potential threats in your environment,” Nam says. After the original study, Nam’s team followed a subset of the participants for three years and found that their brain structure predicted the likelihood of whether they participated in political protests during that time. “Larger amygdala volume is associated with a lower likelihood of participating in political protests,” Nam says. “That makes sense in so far as political protest is a behavior that says, ‘We’ve got to change the system.’” ADVERTISEMENT Understanding the influence of partisanship on identity, even down to the level of neurons, “helps to explain why people place party loyalty over policy, and even over truth,” argued psychologists Jay Van Bavel and Andrea Pereira, both then at New York University, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences in 2018. In short, we derive our identities from both our individual characteristics, such as being a parent, and our group memberships, such as being a New Yorker or an American. These affiliations serve multiple social goals: they feed our need to belong and desire for closure and predictability, and they endorse our moral values. And our brain represents them much as it does other forms of social identity. Among other things, partisan identity clouds memory. In a 2013 study, liberals were more likely to misremember George W. Bush remaining on vacation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and conservatives were more likely to falsely recall seeing Barack Obama shaking hands with the president of Iran. Partisan identity also shapes our perceptions. When they were shown a video of a political protest in a 2012 study, liberals and conservatives were more or less likely to favor calling police depending on their interpretation of the protest’s goal. If the objective was liberal (opposing the military barring openly gay people from service), the conservatives were more likely to want the cops. The opposite was true when participants thought it was a conservative protest (opposing an abortion clinic). The more strongly we identify with a party, the more likely we are to double down on our support for it. That tendency is exacerbated by rampant political misinformation and, too often, identity wins out over accuracy. If we understand what is at work cognitively, we might be able to intervene and try to ease some of the negative effects of partisanship. The tension between accuracy and identity probably involves a brain region called the orbitofrontal cortex, which computes the value of goals and beliefs and is strongly connected to memory, executive function and attention. If identity helps determine the value of different beliefs, it can also distort them, Van Bavel says. Appreciating that political affiliation fulfills an evolutionary need to belong suggests we should create alternative means of belonging—depoliticizing the novel coronavirus by calling on us to come together as Americans, for instance. And incentivizing the need to be accurate could increase the importance accorded that goal: paying money for accurate responses or holding people accountable for incorrect ones have been shown to be effective. It will be nearly impossible to lessen the partisan influences before the November 3 election because the volume of political information will only increase, reminding us of our political identities daily. But here is some good news: a large 2020 study at Harvard University found that participants consistently overestimated the level of out-group negativity toward their in-group. In other words, the other side may not dislike us quite so much as we think. Inaccurate information heightened the negative bias, and (more good news) correcting inaccurate information significantly reduced it. “The biology and neuroscience of politics might be useful in terms of what is effective at getting through to people,” Van Bavel says. “Maybe the way to interact with someone who disagrees with me politically is not to try to persuade them on the deep issue, because I might never get there. It’s more to try to understand where they’re coming from and shatter their stereotypes.” ADVERTISEMENT Rights & Permissions ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S) Lydia Denworth is an award-winning science journalist and contributing editor for Scientific American. She is author of Friendship:The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life's Fundamental Bond (W. W. Norton, 2020) and several other books of popular science. Credit: Nick Higgins Recent Articles by Lydia Denworth U.S. Kids Are Falling behind Global Competition, but Brain Science Shows How to Catch Up People in Republican Counties Have Higher Death Rates Than Those in Democratic Counties A Single, Quick 'Mindset' Exercise Protects against Adolescent Stress NEWSLETTER Get smart. Sign up for our email newsletter. Sign Up SCROLL TO TOP Support science journalism. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Knowledge awaits. See Subscription Options Already a subscriber? Sign in. Of course a real American is also someone from a foreign country who becomes a naturalized citizen of this country. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BEHAVIOR Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences Scanners try to watch the red-blue divide play out underneath the skull By Lydia Denworth on October 26, 2020 أعرض هذا باللغة العربية
fedup Posted April 3, 2023 Share Posted April 3, 2023 17 hours ago, weirdcritter said: As I said before, I oppose this procedure for anyone under 18, but adults should have that right. Why, you ask? Well, OUR BODIES ARE OUR ULTIMATE PROPERTY. WE ADULTS SHOULD MAKE THE DECISION OF WHAT WE DO WITH OUR OWN BODIES AND THE GOVERNMENT, THE CHURCH, FEDUP, ANYONE, HAD JUST BETTER F--- OFF. I have no desire to transition to a woman, but I fully support anyone who does. Because it is THEIR LIFE and THEIR BODY to do with as they please. I myself believe that tattoos are stupid and so is piercing anything but the ear, but I have no problem with someone getting those adornments. Care to guess why? FORCING somone to go through any of these procedures is barbaric and totalitarian. Sorry you think the government should have the right to tell other people what they can do with their bodies because it makes you nervous when you learn about it. All these posts you made are a contradiction of what you say you believe. One of many----- FORCING somone to go through any of these procedures is barbaric and totalitarian. But cutting a kids dick off ain't??????? Sorry you think the government should have the right to tell other people what they can do with their bodies-----Your telling me right now, according to you I ain't allowed to prove liberals are bad for America. I am supposed to sit down and shut up while you kill us all. That ain't gonna happen. All humans and most animals are born liberal-----then they grow up into self supporting individual non-liberals that can think and do fore theirselves. So as a liberal you support an adult who cut's off dicks and boobs because it is a kids right to have it done. Plus force them into taking drugs? Try this on for size--- your grandfather goes to your great grand father and asks to have his dick cut off and the old Liberal says "sure son it's your body" Now, the severing of the dick happens before Critter was born--------POOF another liberal no longer on this earth. Can't you see the whole picture???? You liberals are trying to manipulate the human race into what they want. Now tell me again how I am telling you what to do with your body. ON AND ON AND ON IT GOES Every day a Liberal is trying to run your life and they mostly are making that happen while you sit by and argue with me and other Americans who are trying to get you to see you are being used like a puppet. You said you don't like piercings except in the ears, Try removing that big ring the liberals stuck in your nose to lead you around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fedup Posted April 3, 2023 Share Posted April 3, 2023 16 hours ago, weirdcritter said: Of course a real American is also someone from a foreign country who becomes a naturalized citizen of this country. A real American actually believes in their country. They do not lie about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fedup Posted April 3, 2023 Share Posted April 3, 2023 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fedup Posted April 3, 2023 Share Posted April 3, 2023 3 minutes ago, fedup said: Open Forum: If anyone is working to destroy America, it's the liberals GEORGE THOMAS Aug 23, 2021 Updated Aug 25, 2021 88 Facebook Twitter Email Facebook Twitter Email Print Copy article link Save The Democratic Party today exists largely due to the mass media’s support for their agenda. For the most part, the mass media craft and produce stories in support of the liberal Democratic agenda, by selective reporting, non-reporting and fabrications. They deliberately avoid reporting negative aspects of liberal activities and actions. True, unbiased investigative reporting no longer exists. The Democratic base has no idea they aren’t well informed, since they don’t know what they don’t know. The current administration has failed across the board in all they’ve touched. Against their oaths of office they have allowed an ongoing invasion across the border, undoing the effective policy of the recent past. They have worked to reduce oil, gas and coal mining, driving costs up and eliminating the US’s energy independence. Inflation is escalating due largely to out of control spending and inflated wages. The excessive and ongoing unemployment benefits has left a majority of businesses shorthanded, since it’s far more attractive to sit at home making more money than working. Crime continues to increase in many cities, mostly governed by ineffective democratic leaders backed up by equally ineffective liberal governors. As noted by many, the cities with the worst gun violence have democratic governance and the strictest gun laws, so additional gun laws are not the solution. Reducing funding to police and not supporting the police is the wrong approach. We now have a President that is becoming even more cognitively impaired by the day. He is unable to competently or intelligently discuss any situation and misquotes facts in virtually every statement. Joe Biden is wholly unqualified to be President, and the VP is equally a train wreck. Every day we wonder who is actually running the country, we all know it isn’t Joe, he’s just the guy sent out to read prepared statements. It appears a small number of far-left liberal Democrats are driving the extreme socialistic agenda, while the majority of moderate Democrats refuse to push back. It appears reelection and party unity is a higher priority. Very, very few are speaking up or doing what’s right. The efforts by 19 states so far to revise their voting laws is exactly the opposite of what the media and Democrats profess. The changes are to eliminate areas of voting fraud, such as mass mailing of ballots, 24-hour voting, drive by voting and lack of identification. The argument this suppresses anyone’s ability to vote in unfounded. Absentee ballots remain legal and available. Virtually every adult that is a US citizen, of any race has a government issued ID, but the liberals say it isn’t so. The constant denial and hypocrisy noted by Democrats has worn very thin. Most won’t even discuss the issues, since they know their arguments are baseless in practice and economic reality. If anyone is working to destroy America, by radically changing it from its traditional values and norms — it’s the liberals. Socialism of the type they are pursuing has failed miserably everywhere it was tried. George Thomas Lake Frederick https://www.winchesterstar.com/winchester_star/open-forum-if-anyone-is-working-to-destroy-america-its-the-liberals/article_a267383b-e8e7-56e9-8211-5be3af4b5f51.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts