Political Leanings Revealed by the Eyes
"Across a variety of tasks, we are beginning to find a consistent pattern where conservatives are more responsive to threat/disgust, more responsive to angry faces, and less sensitive to gaze cues than liberals," Dodd wrote in an e-mail to LiveScience. "Liberals, on the other hand, are proving to be more responsive to positive/appetitive stimuli, more responsive to happy faces, and more sensitive to gazes."
Consistent with the observation that "A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality".
There are several possible explanations for the result, Dodd said. One possibility is that liberals are more empathetic and thus more responsive to others. Another theory is that conservatives are better at following instructions and were thus more likely to listen when the researchers said to ignore the face.
Dodd and his colleagues believe that a more likely explanation is that conservatives value personal autonomy more than liberals, making them less likely to be influenced by others.
The results are correlational, meaning there's no way to know whether your tendency to pay attention to others influences your political beliefs or whether political beliefs change behavior.
"Both possibilities exist," Dodd said. "I do tend to think that it is more likely that basic cognitive biases influence how you process the world, making you more or less likely to seek out liberal or conservative ideals."
There are a number of interesting follow up questions to be explored:
- Do these patterns persist after a change in government for liberal dominated to conservative dominated or vice versa?
- What happens when a person shifts political orientation. Do these patterns shift or not? If the do, do they anticipate or follow that shift?
A conservative isn't a liberal who has been mugged by reality. That is because reality can't mug anyone. But someone mugged by a person is more likely to become conservative. So, is a society where there are lots of muggings more real than a society where there are fewer muggings?
ReplyDeleteAny severely stressful event or chronically stressful conditions (violent crime, pathogen exposure, high parasite load, etc) increases conservative traits and decreases liberal traits. But then again, non-stressful or low-stressful conditions do the opposite in promoting liberal-mindedness.
So, it depends on whether one considers severe and chronic stress as 'reality' or not. Maybe the reason humans evolved both psychological and behavioral responses is because human evolution included periods of both more and less stress. Reality, in human terms, includes all aspects of human nature.
In reading the article, I also honed in on the explanation. Unfortunately, the author of the piece was obviously not familiar with this field of social science research.
"There are several possible explanations for the result, Dodd said. One possibility is that liberals are more empathetic and thus more responsive to others. Another theory is that conservatives are better at following instructions and were thus more likely to listen when the researchers said to ignore the face."
Based on studies, we already know both of those are true statements. Liberals measure higher on 'openness to experience'. It includes empathy as a main facet. This is the reason right-wingers speak of bleeding heart liberals. As for conservatives, they measure higher on 'conscientiousness'. That will make one more likely to follow rules.
Instead, the author reports, "Dodd and his colleagues believe that a more likely explanation is that conservatives value personal autonomy more than liberals, making them less likely to be influenced by others." That is a theory, if I've never come across any scientific evidence to support it. Generally, conservatives value group identities (e.g., religious affiliation) more than liberals. It's why liberals are infamous for being hard to organize, like trying to herd cats.