In my experiments I’ve found that the most rigid thinkers have genetic dispositions related to how dopamine is distributed in their brains.
Rigid thinkers tend to have lower levels of dopamine in their prefrontal cortex and higher levels of dopamine in their striatum, a key midbrain structure in our reward system that controls our rapid instincts. So our psychological vulnerabilities to rigid ideologies may be grounded in biological differences.
In fact, we find that people with different ideologies have differences in the physical structure and function of their brains. This is especially pronounced in brain networks responsible for reward, emotion processing, and monitoring when we make errors.
For instance, the size of our amygdala — the almond-shaped structure that governs the processing of emotions, especially negatively tinged emotions such as fear, anger, disgust, danger and threat — is linked to whether we hold more conservative ideologies that justify traditions and the status quo.
Interesting but I wonder if the samples in the study are diverse enough that they can make a definite conclusion.
Like, what about people in other parts of the world? Asia, Middle East, Africa. Do they have similar or different behaviours. How about difference in culture?
Also when she said ideologies, she only said liberal and conservative. What about progressive, reactionary? What about nihilism or taoism? There are so many ideologies out there and she is only measuring two?
I don’t think any real-world ideology can be neatly mapped to brain structures, and vice versa. A rigid thinker growing up in a Zapatist commune will turn out quite differently, and hold fast to very different values, than a rigid thinker growing up among Amish. And where questioning the status quo will land you also isn’t predetermined: A Zapatist could deepen anarchic principles, they could regress towards democratic socialism (“we tried, but the world isn’t ready yet”), an Amish could become a reddit Atheist, a philosopher, or a batshit crazy supply side Jesus Evangelical. Or, like, a welder, not caring about religion. Or a Buddhist.
One thing’s for sure it’s never a good idea, from a progressive POV, to attack lentil stew: Don’t fuck with the actually tried, good, and true. If the “traditional” in “traditional carpentry techniques” makes your eye twitch, seek help1. When meeting a rigid thinker, make sure to establish rapport by showing your appreciation of such things, you’ll find that suddenly they’re much more amenable to listen to new (to them, or in general) ideas. In this case, centrism actually is enlightened: It allows you to circumvent the old vs. new discussion and get into good vs. bad which ultimately is what actually matters.
1 Unless a hipster happens to have cornered you. My condolences, then.
Oh this is such a good comment.
Yeah, the reason I have my doubts is that what one culture view as “conservative” might be considered “progressive” due to difference in tradition.
And it is not something that can be neatly divided into two sides either.
For e.g., in feudal Japan male homosexuality is accepted but the society is very male dominated. On the other hand, there are rights that women have which would be considered “progressive” by Western standard at that time, such as women did not need to share wealth with husband, which means the wife can be more wealthy than the man and might be the one sponsoring his work.
I had seen some conflict in culture between some Asians and “American liberals” on issues such as cultural appropriation and affirmative action. Liberals blame “conservative” Asian values for their disagreement. But from the Asian point of view, the two ideas could be considered “regressive”.
Take affirmative action as example. The thing is, higher education was something considered to be attainable only by the rich. Their modern examination system was designed so that a poor student who studied hard and get high points can be on “equal footing” with the rich kids.
University admission in South Korea, Japan, China are mostly determined by score and score alone. This is their way of pursuing “equality” and therefore cannot understand why American “liberals” would prefer a system which would discriminate base on race.
From a European perspective the liberal American position is racist AF because it accepts the concept of race as something real. That is, the understanding is that while racism exists, race plainly doesn’t. To solve such issues you make sure that all kids go to primary and secondary schools which can develop their whole potential so that kids from all backgrounds have an equal chance. In the American context: Stop financing schools from local property taxes as that means that kids from poor neighbourhoods go to worse schools than rich kids.Those neighbourhoods quite often are predominantly black, which is how racism perpetuates itself systemically, but if you address the issue by “give black folks more money, or require lower test scores” instead of “get all the poor kids the chances that rich kids have” you’re playing the racist game, you’re playing into and reinforcing divisions, resentment, all that BS.
This goes so far that there was a discussion in Germany about getting rid of the term “race” (Rasse) in the constitution (Article 3) as something that one must not be favoured or disfavoured for, argument being that anything valuable that could be meant by it is already captured by “parentage, homeland or origin”. In the end the Gordian knot was slain by the Jewish community which said “We should keep it as a historical artefact signifying that the constitution was written in reaction to a time where that term had vicious meaning”. That everyone could agree on, would be valuable.
I hope more people read this!