Study Finds Liberals Brilliant

I love these stories. Nothing surprising - new research by liberal universities demonstrates that liberals are brilliant free thinkers and conservatives are dimwitted and unimaginative.

Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

In a simple experiment reported today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information.

Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.

Let's see. Liberals are less constrained by things like reality and facts while conservatives are more rational and structured.

Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M.

Is it possible that conservatives found the study inane and became bored and irritated with the process. I can't happen to notice that the study sounds remarkably similar to sitting down in front of a slot machine for hours on end pushing buttons in response to colors on a screen.

Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at UC Berkeley's Institute of Personality and Social Research who was not connected to the study, said the results "provided an elegant demonstration that individual differences on a conservative-liberal dimension are strongly related to brain activity."

Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.

As Mr. Sulloway reminds us, there is just more positive brain activity in liberals. When asked to push buttons (reflecting accuracy) liberals excel.

Sulloway said the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat who opposed Bush in the 2004 presidential race, as a "flip-flopper" for changing his mind about the conflict.

Based on the results, he said, liberals could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.

Of course this explains why Bush is so stupid, and John Kerry is so intelligent and nuanced. He wasn't a flip-flopper, he just recognized so many more angles to issues because of his more advanced anterior cingulate cortex.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that the study is conclusive proof of Kerry's superior cognitive functions. If he is too "nuanced" to form a position on ANY issue, what good is he? And this study doesn't explain why Bush's grades were better than Kerry's in the exact same environment.