In America we\u2019re Republicans and Democrats, but across cultures and throughout history there have been two main opposite forces in human political society:\u00a0 liberals and conservatives.\u00a0 Interestingly, there are meaningful differences in the brain structure of liberals and conservatives (though it\u2019s not yet clear whether the mindset builds the brain or vice versa).\u00a0 For a long time know, it\u2019s been proven that political leanings are partly heritable (lending credence to the idea that the brain structure you\u2019re born with at least partially determines your ideology).\u00a0 Being born liberal or conservative, since the difference is so significant high help explain why it\u2019s so difficult to change our mins along liberal and conservative lines.<\/p>\n
Are there structural differences?\u00a0 It turns out that that the differences basically boil down to a differential weighting of basic ethical ideas.\u00a0 While conservatives assign roughly the same values across moral pillars such as fairness vs. cheating, care vs. harm and sanctity vs. degradation, liberals place a much lower value on sanctity, and a much higher value on fairness and care.\u00a0 For example, conservatives strongly value the sanctity of marriage, while liberals value the fairness of open marriage.<\/p>\n
Our neural network structures diverge so starkly along party lines that it\u2019s possible, in fact, to predict someone\u2019s political leanings from an MRI.\u00a0 Viscerally disgusting (gruesome) images provoke strong reactions in conservatives, while not in liberals, for example.\u00a0 Liberals think more cortically and analytically and are thus more open to new ideas and experiences; conservatives prefer experiences and life choices that are familiar.\u00a0 Therefore, sadly, the antagonism between the sides is structurally unresolvable.\u00a0 Morality binds people together into teams that seek victory, not truth, closing hearts and minds to opponents even as it makes cooperation and decency possible within the group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In America we\u2019re Republicans and Democrats, but across cultures and throughout history there have been two main opposite forces in human political society:\u00a0 liberals and conservatives.\u00a0 Interestingly, there are meaningful differences in the brain structure of liberals and conservatives (though it\u2019s not yet clear whether the mindset builds the brain or vice versa).\u00a0 For a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n