Inside the Tea Party Brain: Can Science Explain Their Seemingly Irrational Rage?

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/inside-tea-party-brain-can-science-explain-their-seemingly-irrational-rage



***snip


Last week, Moyers & Company caught up with Mother Jones science writer Chris Mooney, host of the Inquiring Minds podcast and author of The Republican Brain: the Science of Why They Deny Science – and Reality, to talk about what this research may tell us about the attitudes of those involved in the tea party movement. Below is a lightly-edited transcript of our discussion.

Joshua Holland: Chris, let’s talk about morality. I’m personally offended by the tea partiers’ resistance to giving uninsured people health care. I find it a bit shocking that a political movement could be so filled with animosity toward the idea. But according to NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt — and other scholars — conservatives have a different moral compass entirely. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Chris Mooney: Absolutely. There are many people doing research in the psychology of politics. Jonathan Haidt is a pioneer in the psychology of morality and how that feeds into politics, and it really helps with something like this where you have strong emotional passions that are irreconcilable on the left and the right.

So what you’re describing is his moral foundation of “harm,” which liberals tend to feel more strongly about. These are emotions relating to empathy and compassion – measured by the question of how much someone is suffering and how much that suffering is a moral issue to you. How much is caring for the weak and vulnerable a moral issue to you?

It’s not that conservatives don’t feel that emotion, but they don’t necessarily feel it as strongly. They feel other things more strongly. So to Haidt, this explains the health care debate because liberals feel, most of all, this harm-care-compassion thing. Conservatives feel it a little bit less strongly, even as they have this other morality. Haidt compares it to karma — it’s really interesting — where basically, you’re supposed to get what you deserve. And what really bothers them is somebody not getting what they deserve. So the government getting involved and interfering with people getting what they deserve is really bad. That, I think, is the clash.

[DonCoquixote]

1. There is an evil detail

If you want to be blunt, most Americans are from countries where people were abused. Whether your ancestor came her on the Mayflower, went through Ellis Island, or got here on a boatlift, chances are, that ancestor was treated like crap.

That sets up three things: one, many people here already have a chip on their shoulder, and a deep distrust of government, because they hear from Grandma how government was used against them. It also needs to be taken into account that, while some of the stories are BS, a lot of them are true. Canadians, for example, were made of of people who were treated good by England, where America had many Scotch-Irish protstants and Irish catholics who remember when the Church of England tried to exterminate them.

Two, and this is where social science meets biology, there is a factor of what happens when certain people breed; when the son of one opressed people marries a daughter of an opressed people. You will get people who are agressive, because that agression is what kept those genes alive. The whole demonizing of the poor is not just arrogance, it is a way to ensure the weak die off so that you do not have to compete them with for food.

Three: the Alphas in the culture make sure to make people feel like they are always in a fight or flight situation. "if I don't do it, someone will do it to me, and my kids will starve." Ever wonder why your European or Asian friends might look at the breakneck pace of American life, and wonder how some of the best fed, most secure people in the world worry so much about everything?, because our culture does not allow relaxation, contentment, TRUST. That is why most Americans act like soliders in combat stress, hell, half our recreation is either watching people in combat or pretending to be said people.

[RKP5637]

2. Well said! ... there is also the factor of brain physiology?

http://digitaljournal.com/article/301856

The research began as a “lighthearted” idea by BBC actor Colin Firth, but has become serious research. In conjunction with recent news regarding the difference in how conservatives and liberals interact with people, the subject is turning into an actual, if unintentional, study of mentalities.

Professor Rees of UCL, as quoted by The Sydney Morning Herald:
"The anterior cingulate is a part of the brain that is on the middle surface of the brain at the front and we found that the thickness of the grey matter, where the nerve cells of neurons are, was thicker the more people described themselves as liberal or left wing and thinner the more they described themselves as conservative or right wing…"

"The amygdala is a part of the brain which is very old and very ancient and thought to be very primitive and to do with the detection of emotions. The right amygdala was larger in those people who described themselves as conservative.

"It is very significant because it does suggest there is something about political attitudes that are either encoded in our brain structure through our experience or that our brain structure in some way determines or results in our political attitudes."

The inference is that the mind is responding to political and social issues through neural pathways which are configured by these structures in different ways.

That’s new science, and it’s also, naturally, highly controversial science. Prof. Rees says that the correlations between brain structures and preferences are strong, but that the scans alone wouldn’t determine a preference.

[tridim]

3. Overanalysis IMO. They are just racists. nt

[Zeke L Brimstone]

4. Spot On!

Never overcomplicate when dealing with nutters.

[pampango]

5. "we all have a tendency to marshal evidence that confirms our previously held worldview ..."

Conservatives just do it more.

...if conservatives have reached a position for moral reasons, are they then more likely to discount evidence suggesting some problem with their position? Absolutely. They’re also more likely to take whatever evidence there is out there and twist it so that it supports their view. And, the more intelligent ones will be better at doing that.

... we all have a tendency to marshal evidence that confirms our previously held worldview and reject evidence that contradicts it — this is known as motivated reasoning. Is that something that both liberals and conservatives do to a similar degree, or do we see differences in this area?

There’s no doubt that both do it. All the studies show that. And this is a debated issue right know — whether there’s asymmetry or not.

... the tendency of people with authoritarian personalities to be really sensitive to cognitive dissonance. That would seem to lead to a more fervent desire to ignore contradictory evidence that causes kind of a psychic pain, if you will.

While there are folks with "authoritarian personalities" on both sides of the political spectrum, it is much more common on the right.

[riderinthestorm]

6. Bookmarking. Fascinating article. Thanks xchrom! nt

[bhikkhu]

7. "conservatives have a different moral compass entirely"

and all else derives directly from that, I have found (living in a RW area). They believe, very simply, that most people are worthless, lazy and dishonest. Possibly it comes down from the old Christian teaching that everyone is a sinner and the great majority go to hell.

If you look at the RW view of the minimum wage, for instance, it makes sense. They believe that the only way people will work is if starvation is the only other option, and that even for people who have jobs the threat of misery is necessary to get people to work hard. A social safety net counters that threat, so is counter-productive.