Thread: Politics and Eye Movement: Liberals Focus Their Attention on 'Gaze Cues' Much Differe

Some previous research, which is relevant to the topic.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1031161623.htm

Does Your Personality Influence Who You Vote For?

ScienceDaily (Nov. 2, 200 — Does your personality influence who you vote for? The short answer is yes, according to John Mayer, professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire. As Americans go to the polls in record numbers to vote for the next U.S. president, some voters will crave social stability and others will crave social change. Liberals and conservatives divide according to these personality preferences.

“Our votes are an expression not only of which candidates are best – the Republicans, Democrats, or those candidates of another party – but also of our own way of perceiving and thinking about the world and what is good or bad about it. Our personal perceptions and thoughts in this area (and others) have been shaped over time within our personalities,” Mayer says.

Personality is interior and private, with no direct access to the outside world (everything is filtered through the senses: one’s eyes, ears, touch, etc.). For that reason, each person creates a mental world that represents the real one to a greater or lesser degree. Mental models guide each person and how he or she perceives the world, including those social features he or she they prefers or abhors.

Certain personality characteristics generally influence whether a person is a liberal or a conservative.

Liberals:

View social inequities and preferred groups as unjust and requiring reform.

Prefer atheists, tattoos, foreign films and poetry.

Endorse gay unions, welfare, universal health care, feminism and environmentalism.

Exhibit creativity, which entails the capacity to see solutions to problems, and empathy toward others.

Tolerate complexity and ambiguity.

Are influenced by their work as judges, social workers, professors and other careers for which an appreciation of opposing points of view is required.

Conservatives:

Willing to defend current social inequities and preferred groups as justifiable or necessary.

Prefer prayer, religious people and SUVs.

Endorse the U.S. government, the military, the state they live in, big corporations and most Americans.

Are more likely to be a first-born, who identify more with their parents, predisposing them to a greater investment in authority and a preference for conservatism.

Have a fear of death, reflecting an enhanced need for security.

Are conscientious – the ability to exert personal self-control to the effect of meeting one’s own and others’ demands, and maintaining personal coherence.

Need simplicity, clarity and certainty.

Mayer has published more than 100 articles, chapters, books and psychological tests, including his most recent book, “Personality: A Systems Approach.” In 1990, Mayer and Peter Salovey of Yale University coined the term Emotional Intelligence and provided the first scientific research on the topic.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0911111852.htm

Liberals More Likely Than Conservatives To Break From Habitual Responses, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Sep. 11, 2007) — Liberals are more likely than are conservatives to respond to cues signaling the need to change habitual responses, according to a new study by researchers at New York University and UCLA.

The findings, which show that self-rated liberalism is associated with the type of brain activity involved in regulating conflict between a habitual tendency and an alternative response, appear in the online edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Previous studies have found that conservatives tend to be more persistent in their judgments and decision-making, while liberals are more likely to be open to new experiences. These differences are related to a process known as conflict monitoring-a mechanism for detecting when a habitual response is not appropriate for a new situation.

NYU's David Amodio, a professor of psychology and the study's lead author, and his colleagues recorded electrical activity from the brain using electroencephalograms (EEGs) in people who rated themselves as either conservative or liberal. During these recordings, subjects had to press a button when they saw a cue, which was presented often enough that the button-press became habitual.

However, subjects occasionally saw another, infrequent cue signaling them to withhold their habitual button press. When such response inhibition was required, liberals had significantly greater neural activity originating in the anterior cingulate cortex, a portion of the brain known to be involved in conflict monitoring. Liberals were also more likely to withhold their habitual response when they saw the infrequent cue.

The findings support previous suggestions that political orientation may in part reflect differences in cognitive mechanisms.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0924124549.htm

Political Conservatives Fear Chaos; Liberals Fear Emptiness

ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 200 — Political conservatives operate out of a fear of chaos and absence of order while political liberals operate out of a fear of emptiness, a new Northwestern University study finds.

“Social scientists long have assumed that liberals are more rational and less fearful than conservatives, but we find that both groups view the world as a dangerous place,” says Dan McAdams, study co-author and professor of human development and psychology at Northwestern University. “It’s just that their fears emerge differently.”

To better understand the differences between politically conservative Christian Americans and their liberal counterparts, McAdams and Northwestern University co-author Michelle Albaugh asked 128 socially active churchgoers this question: What if there were no God?

“Social scientists -- who are generally liberals -- have for decades done research to figure out what makes conservatives tick,” says McAdams.

Like the Northwestern study, the preponderance of research finds that conservatives fear unchecked human impulses that challenge the status quo. What McAdams and Northwestern researcher Albaugh also find is an underlying, but different, fear that drives liberals as well.

“Political conservatives envision a world without God in which baser human impulses go unchecked, social institutions (marriage, government, family) fall apart and chaos ensues,” says McAdams. Liberals, on the other hand, envision a world without God as barren, lifeless, devoid of color and reasons to live.

“Liberals see their faith as something that fills them up and, without it, they conjure up metaphors of emptiness, depletion and scarcity,” McAdams said. “While conservatives worry about societal collapse, liberals worry about a world without deep feelings and intense experiences.”

The study findings may shed light on why conservatives prefer more authoritarian leaders while liberals do not, he adds.

“What’s clear is that it is their political and not religious orientation that underlies the different psychologies of political conservatives and liberals,” says McAdams. After all, all of the adults he and Northwestern researcher Albaugh studied were members of churches, and their data suggested that most were socially involved, altruistic people.

The Northwestern University study sample included 128 highly religious and politically active Americans who attend church regularly. Although nationally conservatives are more likely to attend church than liberals, the Northwestern study was set up to sample equally from religious conservatives and religious liberals.

The researchers also observed gender differences, but said they did not interfere with the relationship between political orientation and narrative themes. The study is part of a larger project that looks at the relationships of faith, politics and life stories in well-functioning American adults. It is funded by the Foley Family Foundation in Milwaukee.

Face it, liberalism should be made a certifiable condition.

^How did you draw that conclusion from the above?

Originally Posted by keda

Face it, liberalism should be made a certifiable condition.

I tend to agree. So should conservatism though.

It means that "liberals" (in the american sense) must never be allowed to hold power again otherwise they will genetically exterminate all "conservatives" (in the american sense), because the whole point of being a left winger is that you oppose Darwinian competition, and want to rig the game to make sure that you always win... how else would they get elected if not for hijacking the uneducated and whipping them up to carry them to power in true Animal Farm style... Taksin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Mao, Castro, Blair, Mugabe, Jacques Delors, Obama, Chavez, Khomeini they all play the same game... "hello children, would you like a sweetie?". Then stamp, stamp, stamp...

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

“Social scientists -- who are generally liberals -- have for decades done research to figure out what makes conservatives tick,” says McAdams.

...don't they just ...trying to work out how they can undermine them, whilst by implication knowing that they are right, as well as right wing.

Originally Posted by ScienceDaily

Does Your Personality Influence Who You Vote For?

no shit Einstein

Originally Posted by CaptainNemo

It means that "liberals" (in the american sense) must never be allowed to hold power again otherwise they will genetically exterminate all "conservatives" (in the american sense), because the whole point of being a left winger is that you oppose Darwinian competition, and want to rig the game to make sure that you always win... how else would they get elected if not for hijacking the uneducated and whipping them up to carry them to power in true Animal Farm style... Taksin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Mao, Castro, Blair, Mugabe, Jacques Delors, Obama, Chavez, Khomeini they all play the same game... "hello children, would you like a sweetie?". Then stamp, stamp, stamp...

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

“Social scientists -- who are generally liberals -- have for decades done research to figure out what makes conservatives tick,” says McAdams.

...don't they just ...trying to work out how they can undermine them, whilst by implication knowing that they are right, as well as right wing.

Conservative or liberal, politics is the art of telling people what they like to hear.