Caught this on Slashdot.

The Political Brain

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.

I have to admit that my politics are based on gut responses to issues, followed up by reasoning to justify myself. Luckily, I’m a Conservative, and that’s how we’re supposed to be. Gut response Liberals are probably more conflicted.

The biggest single predictor of party affiliation is who your parents voted for, of course. But did your parents give you their ideology or their genes?

Posted by Thrasymachus at 12:27 PM