Re: Study proves it: Conservatives are cowards; afraid of their shadows; run when shown photo of spider

On Sep 19, 1:28 pm, "Kickin' Ass and Takin' Names"
<PopUlist...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/18/AR200...

Startle Response Linked to Politics
More Sensitive May Mean More Conservative, Study Finds

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 19, 2008; A09

People who startle easily in response to threatening images or loud
sounds seem to have a biological predisposition to adopt conservative
political positions on many hot-button issues, according to unusual
new research published yesterday.

The finding suggests that people who are particularly sensitive to
signals of visual or auditory threats also tend to adopt a more
defensive stance on political issues, such as immigration, gun
control, defense spending and patriotism. People who are less
sensitive to potential threats, by contrast, seem predisposed to hold
more liberal positions on those issues.

The study takes the research a step beyond psychology by suggesting
that innate physiological differences among people may help shape
their startle responses and their political inclinations.

The study is part of a growing research effort to uncover the often
hidden factors in people's political makeup. In recent years, a
variety of studies have shown, for example, that voters are subtly
biased in favor of attractive political candidates. Other research has
probed how subconscious attitudes among undecided voters can predict
whom they will eventually support, and how the speed with which voters
answer poll questions can predict the depth of their commitment to one
candidate or another.

"I was quite struck watching the conventions by the different tones,"
said co-author John Hibbing, a political scientist at the University
of Nebraska at Lincoln, about the recent Republican and Democratic
conventions. "The Republicans are waving placards saying, 'country
first.' Democrats are not saying, 'country last,' but there is a
concern that is visceral in one group but not another."

Hibbing and the other researchers stressed that physiology is only one
factor in how people form their political views -- and far from the
most important factor. Startle responses, moreover, cannot be used to
predict the political views of any one individual -- there are many
liberals who startle easily and many conservatives who do not. What
the study did find is that, across groups of people, there seems to be
an association between sensitivity to physical threats and sensitivity
to threats affecting social groups and social order.

"We are not saying if you sneak up on someone and say 'Boo!' and see
how hard they blink, that tells you what their political beliefs are,"
Hibbing said.

Nor is there the slightest implication that either liberals or
conservatives are somehow abnormal for being more or less sensitive to
threats: "We could spin a story saying it is bad to be so jumpy, but
you can also spin a story saying it is bad to be naive about threats,"
he said. "From an evolutionary point of view, an organism needs to
respond to a threat or it won't be around for very long. We are not
saying one response is more normal than another."

Indeed, Hibbing and other researchers hope their study might help
lower the volume of partisan invective in the presidential campaign:
The research suggests that people who adopt political views you
disagree with are not be stupid or irrational. Rather, they may arrive
at their positions in part because they are predisposed to be more or
less worried about risk.

The study, published in the journal Science, recruited 46 white
partisan Republicans and Democrats in Nebraska. The volunteers were
quizzed on their views on a variety of topics -- including the war in
Iraq, same-sex marriage, pacifism and the importance of school prayer.
All the questions were designed to test how strongly people needed to
guard against various internal and external threats. None focused on
economic issues.

Two months later, the researchers brought the volunteers into a
laboratory and hooked them up to devices that measure a physiological
factor that has long been known to be linked to threat response:
moisture on the skin. When a person feels a threat, the skin releases
more moisture -- and this can be picked up by sensors that measure
skin conductance. The release of moisture does not involve conscious
thought. It is an automatic response of the sympathetic nervous
system, which controls many of the body's "fight or flight" reactions.

The researchers then showed the volunteers a number of images. Among
them were images of a very large spider on the face of a terrified
person, a person whose face had been bloodied, and an open wound
filled with maggots. Compared with when they saw three placid images
-- a happy child, a bowl of fruit and a bunny -- people who held more
conservative political attitudes had a stronger startle response.

In a second experiment, the researchers startled the volunteers by
playing a loud noise through headphones. This time, they measured how
hard people blinked -- blinking is an automatic reflex to startling
sounds. Again, people who startled more strongly tended to be those
who held more conservative positions on political issues.

"There is some sort of broad left-right orientation that pervades not
only our politics, but politics across the world and across time,"
said John R. Alford, another co-author of the study who is a political
scientist at Rice University. "This variation could have biological
underpinnings."

Also from the article:

"Nor is there the slightest implication that either liberals or
conservatives are somehow abnormal for being more or less sensitive
to
threats: %%%"We could spin a story saying it is bad to be so jumpy,
but
you can also spin a story saying it is bad to be naive about
threats,"
he said. 'From an evolutionary point of view, an organism needs to
respond to a threat or it won't be around for very long. We are not
saying one response is more normal than another.%%%%' "
.

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