The Human Beast

Asinine study, considering liberals are the ones that mostly succumb to things like the global warming farce and the world is collapsing pandemonium. Conservatives are clearly more objective and reason oriented thinkers. They don't buy into irrationality like liberals are known for.

Hello,
As partisan as things are, do you really think that increasing the disparity between the parties, is prudent?
I mean, you may as well just dye the people with one gene orange, and the other purple... As we already have Black, and White, and Red, and Yellow, and Brown...
If conservatives are as paranoid as you say... Don't you think this type of article would be fodder for their FEAR?
Just something else for them to think is inferior/superior... "We conservatives have bigger amygdala's than the Dems"...
One step short of The Third Reich!

Let's see... I was born to conservative Parents, both of which have/had enlarged amygdala's, due to PTSD. My mother from having half her face burned, and scarred since she was 2 years old. My dad from WWII service on Batan.

I was beaten, neglected, and humilliated as a child. I experienced the death of 6 year old compatriots, stabbings in HS, being molested by a teacher, a bombing in school, and being raped by a "friend"... I have PTSD, as do all of my 5 siblings. We all have enlarged amygdala's...
So... Why are my two sisters and I Liberals, and one of my 3 brothers is a liberal/conservative...
Because WE HAVE GREAT BIG BRAINS IN OUR SKULLS, TOO.

And as fearful as we may be of things happening in the world, we are fearful most of CONTROL FREAKS like my parents, and two teabagger brothers. Afraid of their "all for me and screw them" attitude...
My sisters and I have been a minority all our lives. We know how it feels to be under paid and under supported... Less than WHITE MALE. Most of our Sisters of the world know this, too.

Just look at Sarah Palin... Female Puppet of the Conservative party. She is a ho to money, and notoriety, now... After being USED as a Female Token Presidential Runningmate, when the Conservatives knew they were not going to win. Then she continues to make women look like ho's, by offering her daughter and herself up, to the "Reality" TV Wasteland. She fears the conservatives.
She is serving to humiliate woman everywhere with her being a Bimbo for money and fame.
She is now going around the world SPREADING FEAR to other countries.
Conservatives in Wisconsin are trying to remove collective bargaining from... NOT THE POLICE AND FIRE DEPARTMENT and their collective bargaining... They are trying to take MOSTLY WOMENS COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHTS!

There are WAY TOO MANY FACTORS involved in political leanings/draggings, to say that a "gene for fear" makes one a conservative voter.
If anything, having a gene for fear might make one good at handling their fear... And knowing who is TRUELY SCAREY!

The whole thing with the amygdala is not so simple. Larger amygdala correlates also with "social" stuff. According to some studies, one could reasonably make the opposite guess, that larger amygdalas are associated with liberalism:

Amygdala volume and social network size in humans

We found that amygdala volume correlates with the size and complexity of social networks in adult humans. An exploratory analysis of subcortical structures did not find strong evidence for similar relationships with any other structure, but there were associations between social network variables and cortical thickness in three cortical areas, two of them with amygdala connectivity. These findings indicate that the amygdala is important in social behavior.

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.2724.html

At the same time, the correlation of fearfulness and size (in contrast with activity) is relatively weak, and more strong in girls (presumably also on women, and women don't seem to make the bulk of conservativeness, if I'm not mistaken, women are more likely to be liberal):

Amygdala volume correlates positively with fearfulness in normal healthy girls

Research into the neural underpinnings of fear and fear-related pathology has highlighted the role of the amygdala. For instance, bilateral damage to the amygdaloid complex is associated with decreased appreciation of danger and recognition of fear in humans, whereas enlarged amygdala volume is associated with internalizing syndromes. It is unknown whether amygdala volume and fearfulness are related in the absence of pathology. We examined the correlation between normal fearfulness and amygdala morphology in 116 healthy children and adolescents (60 boys, 56 girls, age 7–17 years). Fearfulness was measured using the parent ratings on the Pediatric Behavior Scale and amygdala volumes were determined by manual tracing. We found a positive correlation between right amygdala volume in girls (r = 0.29). This relationship was more robust and present bilaterally when analyses were limited to girls with a positive nuclear family history of depression (for left r = 0.63; for right r = 0.58). In boys there was no significant relationship which may suggest that biological mechanisms differ between sexes. Given the role of enlarged amygdala volume in pathology, these findings may indicate that variation in amygdala morphology marks susceptibility to internalizing disorders.

http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2010/02/11/scan.nsq009.abst...

...why is it that LIBERALS are constantly panicking?

I mean, there has never been a happier, more confident, more optimistic politicians than Ronald Reagan, has there? And liberals LOATHED him for it! They thought his sunny smile merely proved that he didn't grasp how TERRIBLE everything is, and how rapidly the world was going to Hell.

Pick up any left-leaning magazine from the past 30 years, and you'll find scare headlines. AIDS is going to kill us all! GLobal warming is going to destroy all life on Earth! Reagan is going to get us into a nuclear war!"

A more fearful band of people you will never meet!

Couldn't you argue that liberals have atrophic amygdalas and are unable to properly respond to threats from afar? ;)

Is it possible to have a large amygdala and a lot of grey matter in the anterior cortex at the same time?

This is not science.

Obviously it's not fixed at birth, since people, such as myself, went from being conservative to being liberal as understanding of the world and appreciation of complexity developed.

And to first commenter... Climate change isn't freaking us out so much as catalyzing us into hopeful action to change the path humanity is on. It just drives home the need for sustainability, and we aren't sitting home stockpiling survivalist supplies and guns, but out there creating solutions, and getting on top of the matter. Collapse isn't scary, it's an opportunity to get rid of the greed system and build a real economy based on people and planet, rather than on money. We're stepping into our mantle while you lot are dropping yours and running for the hills.

Has anyone bothered to go to the study itself? I'm a graduate student in biostatistics, and the conclusions restated here by Dr. Barber are abysmal.

The actual study concluded that liberals have more grey matter in the anterior cingulate cortex and conservatives have more in the right amygdala. This quite likely reflects structural changes from learned opinion, not a cause of opinion.

The predominance of grey matter in the ACC may mean more tolerance for reaching no firm conclusions, the same in the RA may mean more suspicion. In fact, the p values for the RA data (p=.048) were very nearly null in the second analysis of cases, so the predominance of grey matter in the RA for conservatives is questionable at best.

The casual suggestion by the study authors was that liberals may show more tolerance for a lack of a firm conclusion on a subject (conservatives could call this wishy-washy). The other suggestion was that conservatives may show more suspicion of threat (liberals could call this fear). Neither conclusion (wishy-washy or fear) is scientifically supported by this study. In fact, the authors then go on to caution that both possible "emotions" come from multiple centers, not one section so no conclusion could be drawn from the predominance of grey matter in a couple of limited brain sections.

The problem here is that Dr. Barber clearly has a political axe to grind and has abandoned every scientific parameter to draw these conclusions. I'm a social liberal and fiscal conservative, so I do not have a commensurate axe. I am, however, appalled that a professional would resort to such absurd over-simplifications and misleading conclusions in order to sway public opinion, and I am further appalled that a generally respected publication would print them.

In a similar study reported in Psychology Today January 01, 2007 the same conclusions were drawn. In fact these results have been documented NUMEROUS times and can be regarded as scientifically proven facts. Conservatives are cowardly and liberals are far more intelligent. The 2007 article did point out that its not known if the chicken or the egg came first. Are conservatives dim witted cowards because of the respective regions of the brain? Or have the regions of the brain been affected by the cowardice and stupidity of conservatives? Either way its the same result.

Has anybody considered that perhaps an enlarged amygadala means that conservatives are just a lot more sexual than liberals? Try googling "Brain size matters for sex" to read an article on how people with enlarged amygdala seem to be more sexual. The correlation that an enlarged amygdala means that conservatives are more fearful seems a bit narrow. This article was probably written by a conservative who does not have the proper amount of grey matter developed in parts of the brain that would give him the capacity to have a more open minded view.

OK. OK. I kid. I kid. But I must because this is a funny article with some funny comments from both sides. Why do we have to be so confrontational? I think we are all developed enough to be able to consider that there may be more to a topic than what we've known all along.

WARNING: I may be evangelizing a bit.

I happen to be a God loving former super conservative, who is still probably not a liberal, and I now believe pretty strongly that Jesus really wants us to be faithful (fearless) so that we can focus on spreading God's love not wrath. And I am pretty sure that Jesus would've have put the beat down on many conservative politicians just as he did to the merchants at some temple. Not because they're any worse than liberal politicians but because they insult God every time they leverage the church for their political agendas.

Unfortunately, if Jesus were to come to the US today, he would probably be labeled a commie pinko illegal immigrant and he might even deported to Israel depending on what state he lands on. And it seems like they really didn't want him there to begin with. You know what I mean?

Let's start spreading the love, people. Your modern/made in God's image adult human brains have developed enough to be able to love while having differences with others regardless of the size of our amygdalas, haven't they?