In your reply to my statement that if this were so people would not change their opinions as much as you do. You refer to Reagan and Obama.
I would submit that neither caused people to "change" their views. Reagan appealed to values that most people already had.
Likewise, I think Obama's big mistake was assuming his victory showed people supported all his views. I think many people voted for him because of the economy. They didn't vote for other aspects of his platform, like health care or Iraq. I think it was primarily a one-issue win, and no minds were "changed." It isn't that people went from capitalist to socialist. Indeed, he downplayed any "restribution tenencies. The disappointment is the fact that the might be the change people didn't want.
Posted By: willywonka4u
Posted By: dncphil
If it is hard wired, people would not change opinons, which is common enough to raise questions.
Not necessarily. Us humans tend to view the world within frames. Far reaching frames that help us perceieve the world comes largely from structures built within the family. There is the strong father figure frame which tends to elicit a conservative world view. There is the nurturing mother figure that tends to elicit a liberal world view. Virtually everyone has both frames hardwired in them, and it comes out in different parts of their lives.
Reagan mastered this by bringing out the strong father figure frame from union workers who held this frame strongly in the home, despite that they held a nurturing mother frame at their jobs. Thus the frame "family values" was born.
Similarly, Barack Obama and the Dems won strong victories in 2008 largely because as the economic situation became more dire, the desire for a nurturing mother frame became more desirable.
Linguist George Lakoff has done a lot of work in this field if you'd like to read more about it.
Posted By: dncphil
Also, there is a major flaw to the theory. They use, as one example, the fact that "right-wingers had a more pronounced amygdala - a primitive part of the brain associated with emotion."
The problem with this is that to classify political decisions based on emotion depends on your view. For example, I think that many liberal positions are based on emotion. Bi-lingual education, self-esteem issues, the desire to provide some - I SAID SOME - welfare - is to me - I SAID TO ME - very emotional.
You're not entirely wrong. To a layman, empathy or sympathy may seem like emotions, but clinicly speaking they're not. The center of the brain that controls emotions is different from the center that controls empathy and compassion, which developed much further down the evolutionary road.
To illustrate this, people with Anti-Social Personality Disorder have a non-functioning or faulty empathy center in their brain. They have virtually no ability to feel compassion for anyone. However, they can be very emotional, and usually the dominant emotion is anger.
Emotion is reactionary. Consider the last time someone "hurt your feelings". Your chest feels heavy, and your skin may become calmy. A similar visceral reaction often comes when someone lies, and we have lie detectors that can measure these changes in the skin. With anger, your scalp may become hot, as the surrounding tissue becomes engorged with blood, thus the throbbing vein on the forehead.
The point being is that there isn't much rationalizing of emotions. It's all rather reactionary on a biological level. These reactions are less common, and far less strong with empathy, particularly in how it's applied to politics. There's a reason why you'll see a lot of screaming and shouting happening on Fox. It's all very emotional.
-- Modified on 12/30/2010 6:39:59 AM
