Hey there political nerds! It turns out that people with different ideologies are looking
at the world differently surprise, surprise! What do you see when you look at these faces?
Are these people aggressive? Or, are they just hanging out? Scientists looking at
people's politics and their political views found that one side is more motivated by
emotional processing, while the other is more inclined to process conflict rationally.
You want to guess which one is which? Because I'll tell you about it in 10 seconds [Music]
Hey there politically minded nerds and maybe trolls too, thanks for being here, I am Trace. In
American politics right now the conservative vein tends to be motivated by their emotional
processing. This is likely in part to how politics is being presented as much as their
internal reaction, meanwhile the more liberal vein of our political system again, right now,
tends to process their conflict rationally using logic and reason. How do we know
Brain scans and correlations. That doesn't mean conservatives aren't logical or liberals
aren't emotional, we know that's not true, but your brain isn't a
homogenous lump of thinky meat; it's divided up into structures that have specialized into
different functions. In the olden days, when cocaine was medicine, the way to figure out
what was happening in a person's head was to wait for them to die, and then you know get to
slicin'! But since the 90s, technologies have let us peer into the mind while it's still
alive and kicking (or pumping really). So how do conservative and liberal brains differ in
their structure? According to one study that looked at 90 students from the
University College London, the major differences were in two areas: the anterior
cingulate cortex, and the right amygdala the ACC is associated with empathy and emotion impulse
control and decision making; conflict and uncertainty. Self-identified liberals tended to
have more gray matter in the anterior cygulate cortex more gray matter doesn't mean that it's
better it doesn't mean anything other than it's a bit bigger and that means that that person is
using that part of their brain a little more robustly this leads researchers to speculate
that liberals may be more tolerant of things like ambiguity and uncertainty and more open
to changing habitual responses to stimuli that essentially means that liberals may be open to
changing how they're responding to a situation that they've already responded to so they might
respond to it differently this time because they're presented with new information or
they might react differently because the uncertainty isn't as discomforting. While the
amygdala is associated with processing good and bad emotions. The right side is
more involved in fear and pain in scans of self-identified conservatives these
studies found a tendency for more gray matter in the right amygdala in conservative brains
other research shows larger amygdala are associated with a desire to keep status
quo but also processes fear more. And other studies show conservative participants
were responding more aggressively to threatening situations, and when shown pictures
of ambiguous Expressions the people with larger right amygdala tend to perceive those people as
more threatening and dominant even though the expressions are again neutral basically what
these studies are saying is liberals process uncertainty differently and they're okay
with changing responses depending on the situation, but conservative brains might
respond more emotionally and they might respond more with fear and to try and maintain the status
quo and the hierarchy in order to understand their responses and this isn't just a handful
of studies by the way I mean this specifically in this video what I'm mentioning are a handful of
studies but there are hundreds more that support them just based on the size differences of the
right amygdala and the anterior cingulate cortex they could predict if someone
would identify as a conservative or a liberal 72% functional brain Studies
have shown even stronger correlations that's the ones that tell where your blood is pumping
as your thinking stuff gambling is an apolitical activity typically and on the outside liberals
and conservatives might show off the exact same behavior as we would say in Psychology
they're presenting the same behavior but if you scan their B Reigns you can learn a lot while
gambling liberals activate the left posterior insula a region associated with awareness of
their body's feeling for conservatives again it was the right amygdala it just lit up like a
firecracker. Looking at the Active activity researchers predicted a person's politics
with 83% accuracy. Remember they're just gambling! none of
these are necessarily inborn traits. The brain is plastic meaning it can change over time
more gray matter in an area simply means that that person has been using that part of their
brain more like a muscle if you go and lift a bunch then you're going to end up with bigger
biceps or a larger booty whatever it is that you've been targeting what does all this mean it
means, broadly, people who identify as liberals and conservatives have to work to
change their opinions. They don't just change overnight! Just presenting somebody with one
fact and all of a sudden they're like oh it was like I was asleep before that's not how it works
brain pathways are plastic I.E changeable but that change is a physical thing it takes effort
for example if you have to learn to juggle or use a prosthetic or even change muscle memory
like when you hide your app that you use all the time into some other folder so that you don't
use it all the time, and now you're touching where it used to be to change that muscle
memory requires the changing of pathways. those need updating so it takes
time and effort and also I want to point out it's not clear if the differences in brain structure
cause differences in politics or if the politics cause the brain regions to develop in this way or
change over time, but the correlation between them is solid regardless. You might wonder
why would politics be embedded in our brains we didn't evolve to be political it's a function of
our broken Society I'm just gonna stop you right there because that's not true at all we totally
evolved to be social. Social groups (even non-human ones) have politics! it
just doesn't look like ours. Evolutionary biology is not my favorite discipline, but it is one that
is looking into this Dr Darren Schreiber author of the paper "your brain is built for politics" believes
I mean your brain is built for politics he points to functional Imaging taken of people who were
engaged with politics compared to people who weren't. (Political junkies). But,
we can explain it let me back up you need to know what the default mode network is it's a set
of systems in the brain that are active during passive tasks you know things like remembering
stuff or thinking about your future letting your mind wander all of those would activate
the Default Mode Network in your brain so when Dr Schreiber asks about National politics
to people in an fMRI machine scanning their blood flow: politics junkies default
mode network was active it's similar to them thinking about whatever meanwhile political
novices Switched Off the default mode Network and activated regions that a person might use
when they're struggling through a math test when asked to think about politics of everyday life
though like within their family or at their office the political novices switched on that
Default Mode Network again! Those politics are more familiar based basically everyone
is political; they just think differently depending on the context. Schreiber
concluded that because humans have had to deal with complex social situations and ever-changing
alliances throughout our social groups as we've evolved we've literally learned to naturally
consider politics within our brains and for people who think about big p politics all the time they
apply that same thinking to the default mode Network you could say that for politics junkies
politicalness is second nature science writer Hannah Holmes believes that conservative and
liberal thought patterns played a crucial role to our early survival a strong response to fear
and threatening situations was probably necessary for humans and small tribes to protect precious
resources and territory and to make sure that they're not getting predatored off you know
Studies have also shown that conservatives tend to have these stronger responses to discussed
stimuli and Holmes argues that disgust being an evolutionary response to keep us away from
contagion in danger was probably helpful and today okay those responses may have led
conservatives to be more distrustful of people that they consider Outsiders and protective of
the modern day equivalent of resources and in order to respond to threats more easily they
might favor societies with clear hierarchies of rigid rules than a status quo but today in modern
society living in a Tiny Tribe of humans that's totally hostile to Outsiders can risk inbreeding
and stagnation so there needs to be humans who exist who are more tolerant of Outsiders more
willing to accept those who are different because it may benefit that group if you don't have those
people you don't continue to exist for very long these early humans were open to experimentation
and would rely on reason and logic even in the face of dangerous or disgusting things those more
open members of society might consider Shades of Gray rather than just reacting these two ways of
thinking may have each served a useful purpose at the dawn of humanity again evolutionary biology so
grain of sand but today things have gotten little out of hand I don't know if you've noticed but
America is is pretty darn divided like maybe more than it's been since like 1860. politicians and
campaigns know this though and this is why I said politics is the way it is now in part because of
the media that people are presented with campaigns know that we're divided and they know a bit about
this psychology like they can read evolutionary biology studies too and so they may tailor their
messages to these things to get voters to respond further creating polarization and they do this
with science because fear sells almost more than sex fear is a huge motivator if someone is telling
you to be afraid they're trying to force you to respond emotionally rather than rationally
said fear is the mind killer and no one political group is responsible for this alone conservative
ads do tend to play to fear more often fear of immigrants fear of the government fear of losing
your jobs or your income or your guns or just broad-based Freedom whatever that means we're
liberal campaigns on the other hand often call for big changes like drastic climate spending or
Universal Health Care it's easy to get lost in the details of all these proposals because you
know they're attempting to appeal to reason and logic and that doesn't always work because it's
not an emotional appeal it's not an easy answer where I just react to it I have to actually think
it through but they can package those in fear as well the problem is while campaigns are getting
better at talking to their own voters people who don't already agree are increasingly turned
off by that very targeted messaging and this is why as I see it we're getting worse at talking
to each other we're tending to think that the arguments that convince us will convince everyone
but something that I've said in the YouTube world you are not your audience think about who you're
talking to and how you have to talk to them the best way to do that is just to ask questions if
you disagree with someone politically ask them questions don't tell them your thoughts ask them
theirs and start a conversation because as we've seen our brains are processing and prioritizing
information differently and it will take work and time to change them your thinky meat is
structured in such a way to help reinforce the Norms that you're already using that doesn't
mean that those Norms are right that's just how your brain works and it doesn't mean that their
Norms are wrong that's just how their brain works but appealing to Nuance might not resonate with
someone who's focused more on fear pain status quo and hierarchy and emphasizing threats and fear
probably won't motivate somebody who's responding with reason and logic until we collectively get
better at understanding each other or start to unwrite these trenches in our brains we're pretty
much stuck thinking someone else's Viewpoint might be plain incomprehensible and the best
way to get your brains to co-mingle whether that's in a friendly way or you know whatever
I'm not here to judge is to talk to people and to talk to people who disagree with you
and to ask them questions literally that's the strategy I use all the time ask them questions
you may not come around to you know agreeing with each other that's okay those opinions don't have
to align but if you can't understand each other Not A lot's going to get done thank you so much
for watching this video today I really hope you enjoyed it I hope you learned something please
subscribe so that you can get more videos from me I'm trying to release them as fast as I can
while doing all this other stuff and raising a one-year-old and it's in a wild year but
either way I'm Trace I really appreciate you being here today no matter who you vote for
make sure that you get out and vote and support our political systems thank you again for being
here come follow me on Twitter or Instagram I'm at Trace Dominguez support the show here on YouTube
on patreon on Twitter I have super follows now that's kind of fun you can do whatever you want
wherever you want and support the show thanks so much I'm Trace I'll see you in the future