Conservative or Liberal? Nurture vs. Nature or together?

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   tsmogposted 2 months ago

   There are different theories, today, that explain the propensity of a political ideology that is chosen by the individual. The three main ones that influence the individual choice are socialization, biology, and free will.
   
   One of many articles by Psychology Today shares . . .
   
   How We Become Liberal or Conservative (Sept 6, 2021)
   Knowing the forces that act on us can free us to choose.
   https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog … nservative
   
   Key points
   •   Genes, peers, parents, teachers, professors, media, and spiritual institutions all affect our political leanings.
   •   More than half of our political leanings are affected by our environment, which allows us to alter our views.
   •   Making even incremental changes can enable us to fairly consider new political viewpoints.
   
   It concludes with . . .
   
   “The Takeaway
   While 40 percent of our political leanings may have genetic roots, that leaves more than half to the environment (inclusive of socialization). As you consider the factors above, are you satisfied with your influencers? Or would you like to change them, if only modestly, so you can more easily consider multiple perspectives?”
   
   Nurture
   
   Socialization factors (One perspective)
   
   Parenting
   Family
   Extended family & friends
   Peers (A continuum)
   Religious influences
   Familiar culture
   Education inclusive of teachers/professors influences
   Organizations/memberships/belonging
   Dating/pairing
   Workplace/mentors
   Media
   Marriage
   Aging / Maturing and life social dynamics
   
   Biology
   
   Study on twins suggests our political beliefs may be hard-wired
   By Pew Research (Sept 9, 2013)
   “Using data collected from a large sample of fraternal and identical twins, a research team found that genes likely explain as much as half of why people are liberal or conservative, see the world as a dangerous place, hold egalitarian values or embrace hard-core authoritarian views.”
   https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads … ard-wired/
   
   
   
   The Genetics of Politics | Rose McDermott | TEDxSonomaCounty
   YouTube Ted Talk (17:15 min / 2016)
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVVeCOuh7FQ
   
   “Rose McDermott is the David and Mariana Fisher University Professor of International Relations at Brown University and a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Although seventy years of political science research has demonstrated that social experience helps influence the development of political ideology, Rose McDermott shows that is only half the story; genetic factors also contribute, making political ideology partly hereditary as well.”
   
   Also,
   
   Ideology in our Genes: The Biological Basis for Political Traits I Rose McDermott by Long Now Foundation / YouTube (1:00:59 min / 2020)
   Informal lecture plus Q & A
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu64XepPI2M
   
   “McDermott studies the biological influences which interact with environmental factors to shape ideology across the political spectrum in cultures around the world. McDermott has described her work as intended to offer an interdisciplinary approach to the interaction of psychological processes and political outcomes.”
   
   The Biology of Politics published by Brown Political Review (Dec 11, 2018)
   https://brownpoliticalreview.org/2018/1 … -politics/
   
   “Research by Brown professor Rose McDermott reveals that as much as 40 percent of the difference between people’s political outlooks—defined in broad terms of openness to change and reverence for authority—can be attributed to genes. This does not mean that genetics determine 40 percent of a person’s political outlook. Rather, it refers to the statistical relationship between the genetics and the political outlooks of wide populations. This correlation can be explained by the different ways people tend to react to perceived threats—people who are genetically predisposed to be more fearful are also more likely to be conservative. Thus, biologically rooted behavioral responses to perceived threats explain the correlation between genes and political outlook.”
   
   Free Will
   
   From a Psychology Today article, Free Will we discover one explanation for Free Will.
   “Free will is the idea that humans have the ability to make their own choices and determine their own fates. Is a person’s will free, or are people's lives in fact shaped by powers outside of their control? The question of free will has long challenged philosophers and religious thinkers, and scientists have examined the problem from psychological and neuroscientific perspectives as well.”
   https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/free-will
   
   Key points to bear in mind within the article . . .
   ** Does Free Will Exist?
   ** Why Beliefs about Free Will Matter.
   
   Two considerations countering Free Will
   ** Determinism (Philosophy) - the doctrine that all events, including human action (In this case choosing an ideology), are ultimately determined by causes external to the will. Some philosophers have taken determinism to imply that individual human beings have no free will and cannot be held morally responsible for their actions.
   ** Predestination (One Christian doctrine) - If you think everything happens for a reason and we have no control over our own futures, then you believe in predestination. In religious terms, predestination is the belief that everything that happens has already been determined by God — He's got a master plan, and there's no deviating from it.
   
   Possible questioning . . .
   
   Plausible? Socialization, biology, free will, or combination.
   Intriguing? Socialization, biology, free will, or combination.
   Bullshit? Socialization, biology, free will, or combination.
   It doesn’t matter, but may with rearing children becoming adults?
   
   Thoughts, criticisms, accolades, and/or commentary?

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2. 86

   tsmogposted 2 months ago

   Discovery warrants adding to the information provided. Supporting the thesis of biology comes neuroscience. The study I read is . . .
   
   A Neurology of the Conservative-Liberal Dimension of Political Ideology (Publication: The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences
   Volume 29, Number 2) published online at Psychiatry Online (March 2017)
   https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.117 … h.16030051
   
   A very in depth study of a great length of content.
   
   The Abstract is . . .
   
   "Differences in political ideology are a major source of human disagreement and conflict. There is increasing evidence that neurobiological mechanisms mediate individual differences in political ideology through effects on a conservative-liberal axis. This review summarizes personality, evolutionary and genetic, cognitive, neuroimaging, and neurological studies of conservatism-liberalism and discusses how they might affect political ideology. What emerges from this highly variable literature is evidence for a normal right-sided “conservative-complex” involving structures sensitive to negativity bias, threat, disgust, and avoidance. This conservative-complex may be damaged with brain disease, sometimes leading to a pathological “liberal shift” or a reduced tendency to conservatism in political ideology. Although not deterministic, these findings recommend further research on politics and the brain.
   
   The final paragraph of the conclusion after the discussion is . . .
   
   "In conclusion, the literature points to a conservative complex involving negativity bias, threat, disgust, and avoidance. On studies of political conservatism-liberalism, those with stronger politically conservative tendencies, compared with those with more politically liberal orientations, have more psychological and physiological reactivity to negative stimuli, accompanied by a greater sense of threat, sensitivity to disgust, and tendency to avoidance. This conservative complex involves a right-sided anterior brain network that includes the amygdala, the anterior insula, and areas of the PFC. A change in conservative-liberal orientation away from conservatism and toward liberalism in neurological disorders may require attenuation of this conservative complex, with ongoing ACC activation for change. These conclusions from the current literature require verification with rigorous prospective research on politics and the brain."

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3. 86

   tsmogposted 2 months ago

   In regard to nurture as an element of affect toward how we become a liberal or conservative is the following. It is from today's (Sept 25, 2024) CNN daily What Matters. There is no article link, so it is copy/pasted. It is about 10 years olds on the topic of the election.
   
   *******
   
   We asked 10-year-olds about the election. Here's what they said
   
   The team at "Anderson Cooper 360" has been working for months to finalize a project focused on how the fractured American political conversation is seen by children. I worked with CNN's Kerry Rubin and Chuck Hadad on the online portion of that show, which includes some really striking video.
   
   Tune in to "AC 360" at 8 p.m. ET for the TV report. Meanwhile, here's some of what is coming to CNN.com:
   
   It is jarring to hear American kids talk about politics and see the country’s often angry political debate filtered through young people.
   
   When a child is asked for one word to describe former President Donald Trump and comes up with “pure evil,” it suggests a level of division that might surprise the average American.
   
   Researchers found that Democrat-supporting kids drove polarization in a new study for CNN, and the children were more likely to say they wouldn’t be friends with someone who supports Trump. Kids in red states, on the other hand, were more likely to repeat misinformation.
   
   The findings are the result of more than 40 hours of interviews commissioned by CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” to talk politics with 80 elementary schoolers in Arizona, a 2024 battleground state; New Jersey, a blue state; and Texas, a red state.
   
   With their parents’ OK, researchers got the kids’ unfiltered thoughts about the presidential candidates and the election.
   
   CNN is not identifying the students or the schools visited, and this is not a representative public opinion poll, but rather a set of interviews designed to gauge polarization in children.
   
   For this project, Asheley Landrum, an assistant professor, child development expert and media psychologist at Arizona State University, worked with Stanford University political science professor Shanto Iyengar, who has already studied polarization in American teens. Landrum asked the elementary schoolers a series of questions, using photographs and visual prompts, to understand how the children feel about the political system.
   
   The questions about the presidential candidates included prompts asking which one would keep them safer, which is more honest and which is more likely to do bad things.
   
   The interviews were first conducted in the spring, when President Joe Biden was running for reelection and the kids were in fourth grade. Most of the same children took part in follow-up interviews in the fall in New Jersey and Texas, after Vice President Kamala Harris had stepped in to be the Democratic nominee and the kids had started fifth grade.
   
   Most of the children in the fall interviews, nearly two-thirds, supported Harris. There was an even split in Texas, a major improvement for Democrats in the red state compared with when Biden was in the race. Nationwide polls of likely voters suggest a much tighter race for the White House and a lead for Trump in Texas.
   
   Democrat-leaning kids drove polarization
   
   In September, according to an analysis prepared by Landrum, when kids were asked how much they liked Harris or Trump on a five-point scale, the Democrat-leaning and blue-state kids were more likely to say they really liked Harris and really disliked Trump. Republican-leaning and red-state kids liked Trump but were neutral or even positive about Harris.
   
   When Landrum asked for one word to describe a candidate, the results for Trump ranged from positive – such as from one kid in May: “Go America!” – to extremely negative. There were criticisms of Harris too. “Liar” was one child’s one word to describe her.
   
   Back in May, “three Biden-leaning kids spontaneously brought up Hitler when talking about Donald Trump,” according to Landrum’s analysis.
   
   More negative feelings about Trump among Democrat-leaning kids
   
   In May, when the race was between Biden and Trump, kids were asked to select an emoji that corresponded with their feelings about a candidate. Only a quarter of the Trump-leaning kids selected an emoji signifying that Biden makes them feel nervous or worried, but more than half of the Biden-leaning kids selected that emoji when asked about Trump. That imbalance grew when interviews were repeated in September and the kids were asked about Trump and Harris.
   
   Iyengar was surprised by this overall finding of the study.
   
   “Among adults, the usual result is that Republicans are the more hostile toward Democrats than vice versa,” he said. “It suggests something about the cast of characters in this race, i.e., Kamala Harris is relatively unknown and therefore people do not have … a lot of extreme views, either positive or negative, towards her.”
   
   Trump, on the other hand, “is an established trigger,” Iyengar said, and blue-state kids “have assimilated what their parents are telling them, and they’re pretty hostile to him.”
   
   There were also many positive responses, such as the girl who selected the happy emoji for Biden because the president supports women’s rights and said, “And I’m a woman.”
   
   Trump-leaning kids acknowledged the former president’s shortcomings with some interesting justifications. One boy argued that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both slave owners, “a really bad thing, but they still had two terms.”
   
   “So I think, even though Trump has done bad stuff, he still deserves to run for president,” the boy said.
   
   That same boy, in September, also expressed the difficulty of choosing between Harris and Trump when, presented with photos of the two candidates, he was asked which is more likely to do bad things.
   
   “Convicted felon against a liar,” he said. “Who do I pick?” He ultimately decided that Trump, the convicted felon, is more likely to do bad things but it’s OK for a felon to be president.
   
   There's a lot more to the report, which airs on "AC 360" at 8 p.m. ET and will be available on Thursday at CNN.com.

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   1. 86

      tsmogposted 2 months agoin reply to this

      A follow-up to the CNN What Matters newsletter contribution posted above about ten year olds and politics. The purpose of sharing is the perspectives of how people choose or become a conservative/Republican or a liberal/Democrat regarding it by nurture. Of course, this OP applies worldwide when using analogous thought.
      
      We asked 10-year-olds about the election. Here’s what we learned by CNN What Matters (Sept 27, 2024) Note: A 10 year old could be in the 4th or 5th grade.
      https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/26/politics … 7388105172
      
      " The findings are the result of more than 40 hours of interviews commissioned by CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” to talk politics with 80 elementary schoolers in Arizona, a 2024 battleground state; New Jersey, a blue state; and Texas, a red state.
      
      With their parents’ OK, researchers got the kids’ unfiltered thoughts about the presidential candidates and the election.
      
      CNN is not identifying the students or the schools visited, and this is not a representative public opinion poll, but rather a set of interviews designed to gauge polarization in children."
      
      An interesting article with two videos. At the end of article is the 14 page summary.

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