This article explains how certain regions in the brain can be used to predict which political party a person prefers. A new study suggests that Liberals and Conservatives tend to use their brains differently when it comes to taking risks and making decisions. A team of political scientists and neuroscientists research and explore the differences in the way the brain functions for a Democrat vs. Republican. To put this hypothesis to the test, they measured brain activity by playing a simple gambling game and found astonishing results. Democrats showed more activity in a region of the brain associated with social and self-awareness. Republicans showed significantly greater activity in a region involved in the body's fight-or-flight system. And now from analyzing these results a person can accurately predict whether a person is Democrat or Republican 82.9% of the time.NOS:
- Science is collaborative because many researchers have partaken in this experiment. It is involved in the University of Exeter, has been working in collaboration with colleagues at the University of California, San Diego.
- This is also a role of motivation and curiosity because it was published around the time the election and some researchers were simply curious about the matter.
For more information about the study:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/political-views-tied-brain-structure/story?id=13317961
http://www.findcounseling.com/help/news/2007/09/republican_vs_democrat_a_matter_of_brain_chemistry.html
By Nora Hashw
Hour 3
This article is interesting and perplexes me. I know that there are people who will have different opinions on different matters. They will think liberal on one matter and may think conservative on the other. Also, I am curious how they tested the brain activity during this experiment. It is odd that opinions on social and political matters would have anything to do with gambling and people's reactions. I want to know how my brain would respond to this experiment as well.
ReplyDeleteIn the article, I found it interesting that the article talked about genes, heredity, parent influences that could affect a person's view on political parties and if they were conservative or liberal. It however said that those are only 69.5% likely to be correct about what a person's polical party truly is, which I think shows how each person is different and can make their own choices. This can be shown in their decisions and brain tests involving how they make their decisions.
ReplyDeleteI am so intrigued by this observation and how accurate these tests are! I would also like to know by what forms they tested these measurements with. It would be fun to see if these measurements could predict other things besides political party preference. I also wonder how many people this was tested on, in this other article I found it just refers to "groups" and im curious as to how many people were in these groups.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.livescience.com/27213-brain-scans-predict-political-party.html