"The Political Brain" NYT - They really DO think differently to us

[GCP]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/22/magazine/22IDEA.html

A few months before retiring from public office in 2002, the House majority leader Dick Armey caused a mini-scandal when he announced during a speech in Florida, ''Liberals are, in my estimation, just not bright people.'' The former economics professor went on to clarify that liberals were drawn to ''occupations of the heart,'' while conservatives favored ''occupations of the brain,'' like economics or engineering.

The odd thing about Armey's statement was that it displayed a fuzzy, unscientific understanding of the brain itself: our most compassionate (or cowardly) feelings are as much a product of the brain as ''rational choice'' economic theory is. They just emanate from a different part of the brain -- most notably, the amygdala, the almond-shaped body that lies below the neocortex, in an older brain region sometimes called the limbic system. Studies of stroke victims, as well as scans of normal brains, have persuasively shown that the amygdala plays a key role in the creation of emotions like fear or empathy.

If amygdala activity is a reliable indication of emotional response, a fascinating possibility opens up: turning Armey's muddled poetry into a testable hypothesis. Do liberals ''think'' with their limbic system more than conservatives do? As it happens, some early research suggests that Armey might have been on to something after all.

As The Times reported not long ago, a team of U.C.L.A. researchers analyzed the neural activity of Republicans and Democrats as they viewed a series of images from campaign ads. And the early data suggested that the most salient predictor of a ''Democrat brain'' was amygdala activity responding to certain images of violence: either the Bush ads that featured shots of a smoldering ground zero or the famous ''Daisy'' ad from Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 campaign that ends with a mushroom cloud. Such brain activity indicates a kind of gut response, operating below the level of conscious control.

More at the link.

I don't know about you guys, but being described as "not bright" by a fuck-wit like Armey just defies description.

Edited for html tags.

[thebigidea]

1. boy, don't we all miss good ol' Vagina Coastguard...

[TreasonousBastard]

2. As a matter of fact...

I was an Economics major at City College, and the first eco 101 lecture we got is the only one seared on my brain.

The chairman of the department, Maurice Balaban, told us very simply that everything we were about to learn in the next four years was a load of crap. Some of it sort of worked, but nobody understood economics properly and if we tried to actually use any of what we studied in the real world, we would be dead and broke in no time. The dismal science exists simply because it is there, and not because it does anything useful. He expressed his wishes that at least one of us would perhaps finally straighten things out and get it right.

Nothing in the last 40 years has changed.

Curiously, Nobels in economics are going to psychologists now.

[w4rma]

3. Bush has so many Nobel Prize winning scientists opposing him its not funny

Dick Armey isn't even correct about who leans toward what occupation.

[teryang]

4. Was he drunk when he said this?

Armey's analysis is about as reliable and informative as that heard among a bunch of alcholics at the corner bar.

[salvorhardin]

5. Closer to the heart (or amygdala)

And the men who hold high places
Must be the ones who start
to mold a new reality
Closer to the Heart
Closer to the Heart

The Blacksmith and the Artist
Reflected in their art
They forge their creativity
Closer to the Heart
Yea, CLoser to the Heart

Philosophers and Plowmen
Each must know his part
To sow a new mentallity
Closer to the Heart
Closer to the Heart

You can be the Captian
And i will draw the chart
Sailing into destinity
Closer to the Heart
Closer to the Heart
Well,Closer to the Heart
Yeah, Closer to the Heart
Close to the Heart
I said, Closer to the Heart
====
Rush -- Closer To the Heart