▲
1
0
▼

Liberals and Conservatives React in Wildly Different Ways to Repulsive Pictures


 invite response                
2019 Feb 12, 9:55pm   2,475 views  13 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (55)   💰tip   ignore  

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/the-yuck-factor/580465/

When the data began rolling in, any skepticism about the project quickly dissolved. The subjects, 83 in total, were first shown a randomized mixture of neutral and emotionally evocative pictures—this second category contained both positive and negative images—while undergoing brain scans. Then they filled out a questionnaire seeking their views on hot-button political and social issues, in order to classify their general outlook on a spectrum from extremely liberal to extremely conservative. As Montague mapped the neuroimaging data against ideology, he recalls, “my jaw dropped.” The brains of liberals and conservatives reacted in wildly different ways to repulsive pictures: Both groups reacted, but different brain networks were stimulated. Just by looking at the subjects’ neural responses, in fact, Montague could predict with more than 95 percent accuracy whether they were liberal or conservative.

The subjects in the trial were also shown violent imagery (men pointing revolvers directly at the camera, battle scenes, car wrecks) and pleasant pictures (smiling babies, beautiful sunsets, cute bunnies). But it was only the reaction to repulsive things that correlated with ideology. ...

No doubt your own political allegiances will heavily influence what you extract from the bulk of this research. If you’re liberal, you may be thinking, So this explains some of the other side’s nativism and hostility to immigration. But it’s just as easy to flip the science on its head and conclude, as conservatives might, that the left is composed of clueless naïfs whose rosy-eyed optimism about human nature—and obliviousness to various dangers—will only lead to trouble.


Another interesting bit I read lately:

Both Sowell and Pinker contend that conservatives see an unfortunate world of moral trade-offs in which every moral
judgment comes with costs that must be properly balanced. Progressives, on the other hand, seem to be blind to, or in
denial about, these trade-offs, whether economic and social; theirs is a utopian or unconstrained vision, in which every
moral grievance must be immediately extinguished until we have perfected society.

Comments 1 - 13 of 13        Search these comments

1   Ceffer   2019 Feb 12, 10:46pm  

Gee, 'social non-science' to the rescue again. Absurd madness. Pontificating editorializing claptrap and naked manipulation masquerading as "science" sigh. The article is a feeding trough for the LIbbyFuck fake news zombified.

"Depictions of 'free shit' made the liberals smile idiotically and pee warmly in their pants, while the conservatives reacted with pity and dismay."

The Atlantic has been thoroughly captured and degraded by the Globalist psyops.
2   curious2   2019 Feb 13, 12:19am  

Actually, the article describes multiple methodologies. For example:

"In one experiment, Schnall, Haidt, and other collaborators sat subjects at either a clean desk or one with sticky stains on it as they filled out a form that asked them to judge the offensiveness of various acts, such as lying on a résumé, not returning a wallet found on the street, and resorting to cannibalism in the aftermath of a plane crash. One subgroup of participants seated at the filthy desk—those with high “private body consciousness,” meaning they were particularly sensitive to their own visceral reactions—judged the transgressions more severely than those seated at the pristine desk.

Foul odors can be just as effective as a sticky desk. Another experiment involved two groups of subjects with similar political ideologies. One group was exposed to a vomitlike scent as the subjects filled out an inventory of their social values; the other group filled out the inventory in an odorless setting. Those in the first group expressed more opposition to gay rights, pornography, and premarital sex than those in the second group. The putrid scent even inspired “significantly more agreement with biblical truth.” Variations on these studies using fart spray, foul tastes, and other creative disgust elicitors reveal a consistent pattern: When we experience disgust, we tend to make harsher moral judgments.
***
Several years ago, Pizarro learned that people vary tremendously in the number of bitter receptors they possess on their tongue, and thus in their taste sensitivity. What’s more, the trait is genetically determined. This got him wondering: If conservatives have a greater disgust sensitivity, are they also better at detecting bitter compounds? “It seemed like a really long shot,” Pizarro says. But he, Inbar, and Benjamin Ruisch, a grad student at Cornell, decided to put the idea to the test. They recruited 1,601 subjects from shopping malls and from the Cornell campus and gave them paper strips containing a chemical called Prop and another chemical called PTC, both of which taste bitter to some people. Sure enough, those who had self-identified as being conservative were more sensitive to both compounds; many described them as unpleasant or downright repugnant. Liberals, on the other hand, tended not to be bothered as much by the chemicals or didn’t notice them at all.

The researchers went a step further. Taste receptors, they knew, are concentrated in fungiform papillae—those spongy little bumps on your tongue. The greater the density of papillae, the more acute your taste. So they dyed subjects’ tongues blue (which allows the papillae to be more easily observed), pasted a paper ring on them like those used to prevent pages from tearing out of a metal binder (to create a standard area to be evaluated), and recorded the number of circumscribed papillae. The degree to which subjects’ views tilted to the right was, they found, in direct proportion to the density of papillae on their tongue. This result may have bearing on a puzzling partisan split in food preferences.
***
More recent investigations by Petersen and Aarøe suggest that those with high disgust sensitivity tend to be leery of any stranger, not just foreigners. They view casual social acquaintances with a certain amount of suspicion—a robust finding replicated across three studies with a total of 4,400 participants."

The article notes Bush 41's famous aversion to broccoli, a vegetable with a type of bitterness that some people (but not others) can taste.

It seems to address a correlation I have wondered about: why do opinions about Muslim immigration correlate inversely with opinions on domestic policy issues? Identitarian "liberals" demand to import Islam, even though it is antithetical to their beliefs and interests. Meanwhile, identitarian "conservatives" recognize that Islam is a threat, but seem to imagine threats in every shadow, and to overreact harshly to things that are not even threats. The answer might be that most people aren't really analyzing and reasoning based on evidence; they are instead reacting based on heuristics including group identity and individual propensity to experience disgust.

People who are sheltered from disgusting stimuli, or who fail to perceive certain stimuli, might have an underdeveloped defense against potential threats. In contrast, people who live in squalor, or who have unusually sensitive taste receptors, might experience more frequent disgust, and thus be more often primed to over-react harshly.

Neither group seems likely to consider policies in detail. Many identitarian "liberals" ignore deliberately what Islam says and does around the world. Many identitarian "conservatives" mistrust anything unfamiliar, and anyone whom they haven't known a long time. As a result, relevant facts tend not to move the opinions of either group.
3   Ceffer   2019 Feb 13, 2:15am  

Data mining combined with surveys concerning 'precise' definitions such as 'conservative' and 'liberal', derived no less from the additional precisions of self identification and self reportage. Clearly, the fonts of all scientific validity.

More like 'generated significance', because you wouldn't want to go to all that trouble and not find significance worthy of promulgation. All of the reliability of advert testimonials, only better.
4   MisdemeanorRebel   2019 Feb 13, 8:03am  

curious2 says
People who are sheltered from disgusting stimuli, or who fail to perceive certain stimuli, might have an underdeveloped defense against potential threats. In contrast, people who live in squalor, or who have unusually sensitive taste receptors, might experience more frequent disgust, and thus be more often primed to over-react harshly.


Explains a lot if so.
5   NDrLoR   2019 Feb 13, 9:11am  

"Why in the world would your reaction to mutilated animals, vomit, and other unwelcome things somehow be associated with your views on transgender rights, immigration, or anything else stirring debate in the news?"

San Francisco and Portland seem to validate this.
6   MisdemeanorRebel   2019 Feb 13, 9:27am  

P N Dr Lo R says
San Francisco and Portland seem to validate this.



7   FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut   2019 Feb 13, 9:42am  

Read the whole article, thanks Patrick.

Kind of confirms what adults have been saying for years. Liberals are too naive about dangers of this world. Probably explains why people get conservative with age, life experience teaches that.
8   CBOEtrader   2019 Feb 13, 9:42am  

curious2 says
Actually, the article describes multiple methodologies. For example:


Ty for sharing. Very good stuff.

It is amazing that the physical world disgust spills over into moral disgust. Very interesting study
9   curious2   2019 Feb 13, 2:04pm  

FortWayneIndiana says
Kind of confirms what adults have been saying for years. Liberals are too naive about dangers of this world. Probably explains why people get conservative with age, life experience teaches that.


Advancing age is a risk factor for many problems that can produce physically disgusting symptoms. If a spouse becomes incontinent or develops a huge goiter, or an allergy that causes messy sinus problems, then disgust might become more frequent.

@FortWayneIndiana, I think the point of the article was that "liberal" and "conservative" opinions can result from factors having nothing to do with evidence and reason. If you want a correct answer to a question, e.g. predicting tides or phases of the moon, then you need to observe data and to reason by applying mathematical rules. That means you must neither ignore relevant data nor allow the stench of manure from an upwind farm to distort your calculations. Foreign and domestic policy issues, including immigration, transportation, and fiscal and monetary policies raise complex combinations of issues, some overlapping and others discrete. Analyzing issues based on merit requires effort. As noted in another article on PatNet, "Intelligence is the ability to solve problems efficiently. It has survival value because it enables organisms to face novel challenges; instincts are reliable only for recurring challenges." In this context, "instinct" is basically tradition codified at the level of DNA: either can provide rapid and automatic responses to recurring challenges and opportunities, but fail to recognize new challenges and opportunities. A traditional heuristic such as "be fruitful and multiply," combined with migration and reduced infant mortality, produces an exponential proliferation of Muslims until they reach resource constraints on population, and Malthusian collapse due to war or catastrophic failure of resources.
10   steverbeaver   2019 Feb 13, 9:29pm  

To be honest, I ain't reading all of that. But I will remark that meta analysis is of limited use. Perhaps if they used their study to construct a refined model with improved predictor measures, then ran subsequent proper studies to confirm reproducibility I will believe it. Until then there is a lot of confirmation bias going on.
11   FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut   2019 Feb 13, 9:41pm  

curious2 says
@FortWayneIndiana, I think the point of the article was that "liberal" and "conservative" opinions can result from factors having nothing to do with evidence and reason.


I'm not saying otherwise. I got that the article thinks it's a genetic thing possibly. And I think liberal people (at least what I've seen in my experience) are simply too naive about the world and it's dangers. They might not be born or raised with that, however, some do learn with age by going through life and getting hurt enough to learn... and become conservative.

That's just Darwinism, strong survive, stupid either learn or die.
12   curious2   2019 Feb 14, 12:47am  

FortWayneIndiana says
some do learn with age....


I hope everyone learns with age. Medicare seems very popular with the (mostly older) people who are on it. The AMA and Ronald Reagan used to call it liberalism and socialism. On many issues, opinion moves in a more liberal direction, regardless of age.

FortWayneIndiana says
the world and it's dangers... Darwinism, strong survive, stupid either learn or die.


Glad to see you believe in Darwinism now. That's a change from believing in the Bible.

You might, though, want to look up the difference between "it's" and "its" before calling others stupid.
13   anonymous   2019 Feb 14, 4:44am  

curious2 says
You might, though, want to look up the difference between "it's" and "its" before calling others stupid.


That would require the ability to look something up without auto typing TDS, MAGA, Winning, Liberals Etc. - and then engaging a cognitive rational thought process

curious2 says
That's a change from believing in the Bible


Please register to comment:

api   best comments   contact   latest images   memes   one year ago   random   suggestions