Difference between revisions of "Conservatives and Liberals"

Latest revision as of 23:37, 8 May 2017

For many of those who attempted to reach an agreement between liberals and conservatives on wide variety of issues, it seems that the gaps in understanding the situation between the parties is very hard to negotiate. The misunderstanding sometimes become an emotional issue, which result the raising of a wall of contempt that blocks any further path to mutual understanding. Thus, understanding the differences between liberals and conservatives and the grounds for the schism, may help find devising deliberative process which will support a better mutual understanding and even agreed decisions.

This page is a stub. It is not ready for publication and is used to aggregate information about a subject. You can add further reading and add information to the page. If you want to prepare this page for publication please consults with the creator of this page. Tal Yaron 03:46, 14 October 2014 (MDT)

description of liberalism and conservatism

Recent research provides evidence that one important difference between liberals and conservatives is their basic moral intuitions. These studies suggest that while liberals and conservatives respond similarly to considerations of harm/care and fairness (what Graham and Haidt call the “individualizing” foundations), conservatives also respond strongly to considerations of in-group, authority, and purity (the “binding” foundations) while liberals do not."^[1]

Liberals are more moved by harm then conservatives and much more then libertants (see Haidt, 2102, Righteous in mind p. 212).

Conservative Society

In conservative society, there is a tendency to align according to legitimate theories and customs. People afraid to think differently, otherwise they will be criticized heavily, as enemies or as collaborators with the enemy. This is probably due to the need for closure and the feelings of threats.

Observed: Doron Tzur, 2013, private talks.; Tal Yaron, establishing the forum in Kedumim 2007.

Conservative tend to look only on evidence for the justice of their country, and to dismiss evidence to the contrary.

Conservatives show more anger towards criminals^[2]. Conservatives are more happey due to social conformation^[3]

Environmental Causes for Conservatism and Liberalism

Conservatism and liberalism as reactions to environmental states.

Based on Haidt findings I suggest that liberalism and conservatism are reactions to environmental state. Haidt found that liberal and conservatives differ in their attitude toward six typical values. I'll suggest that these differences of attitude may stem reactions to different environmental situations. Liberalism may stem from a reaction to safe and abundant environment while conservatism may be a reaction to dangerous environment which is scarce of resources.

The idea that creatures tend to react with different strategies to different environmental situations is not new. In ecology it is known that in organisms react to a harsh or safe environment with two different strategies of breeding: one is named r selection and the other is k selection. R selection is a strategy suited for an environment which is dangerous and has scarce resources. In this strategy, creatures tend to give birth to many offsprings and they tend to give them minimal resources in their nurture. In such strategy, some of the offsprings may survive the harsh conditions and the dangers. For instance some kinds of fishes ten to lay ten of thousands of eags, and they don't take care of them. from such multitude, only few survive predation ang go into adulthood. But when the environment is safer and there are more resources, creatures tend to have less offsprings and they tend to give each of them much more care and resources while nurturing them. They protect their offsprings and prepare them for adulthood.

It seems that that r and k strategies, also apply to breeding patterns in humane societies. Liberal societies where there are plenty of resources and life are safe tend to sustain a lower birth ratio compared to conservative societies, in which poverty is prevailing and life are less protected.

While r and k selection is well documented strategies for birth, I'll suggest that conservatism and liberalism are two strategies for group behavior in the face of dangerous or safe environment. One of the reason that help me suggest such hypothesis is a research done by Jonathan Haidt. Haidt found that conservatives and liberals have different attitudes towards six values. The values are loyalty, respect for authority, fairness, sexuality, defend from harm and liberty. Liberals tend to value loyalty and authority less then conservatives. Liberals tend to have a less strict need for controlling the sexuality. Conservatives tend to legitimize punishment of insubordinate individuals and groups, while liberals tend to defend the unorthodox. Conservatives see fairness as a reward for an investment, while liberals tend to share more resources and distribute them more evenly, regardless of one's investment. And of course, liberals tend to value liberty in the face of society more then conservatives does.

it seems that such difrences in attitude, may help a group to adapt itself to change in an environment. The conservative value in which fairness is based on reciprocity and that hard work is needed for one to earn his living, can help encourage people to work hard in an environment where resources are scarce. On the other hand, in a state of abundance, where there is plenty to go around, there is no need to work hard to obtain resources. In this case people can share more resources.

high levels proposed causes of liberalism and conservatism

Causes of conservatism

Some genes differ between conservatives and liberal^[4], asspecialy genes related to NMDA and serotonin.

Enviromental threat elvate conservatism^[5]. For instance, middle-aged, professional men who vote Tory most likely to be victims of road rage.

Jost et al, did a very large survey on research about conservatism. They have found two main causes for conservatism. One is a reaction to a state of fear, and the other is a reaction to a need to do work in limited time^[6]. The idea that threat is causing people to bevcome more conservatives was further corroborated by an experiment that showed that under fear conditions, liberal students judge like conservative students^[7].

Conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals^[8]. People with anxiety tend to make more conservative decisions and use vocabulary with more negative words^[9].People that where exposed to priming of uncleanlesnes^[10] or bad taste^[11]become more conservatives.

"Recent research provides evidence that one important difference between liberals and conservatives is their basic moral intuitions. These studies suggest that while liberals and conservatives respond similarly to considerations of harm/care and fairness (what Graham and Haidt call the “individualizing” foundations), conservatives also respond strongly to considerations of in-group, authority, and purity (the “binding” foundations) while liberals do not. Our study examined two alternative hypotheses for this difference—the first being that liberals cognitively override, and the alternative being that conservatives cognitively enhance, their binding foundation intuitions. Using self-regulation depletion and cognitive load tasks to compromise people's ability to monitor and regulate their automatic moral responses, we found support for the latter hypothesis—when cognitive resources were depleted/distracted, conservatives became more like liberals (de-prioritizing the binding foundations), rather than the other way around. This provides support for the view that conservatism is a form of motivated social cognition."^[12]

This strength the idea that conservatives uses their self-regulation to be social? while the other say that implicit....

here is an example that conservatives favor the state power, and there fore blame a situation (liberal tendency) when the police make misdeeds.^[13]

I think conservatives try to comply to society(system 1 and rACC.amygdala), while liberals try to comply to reason (system 2 and dACC/ACC).

ideo-attribution effect: Our current work in this area has been primarily focused on understanding the sources of what we call the “ideo-attribution effect,” that is, the tendency for liberals and conservatives to make different attributions for the causes of various social and personal problems. Specifically, conservatives tend to attribute poverty, crime, homelessness, AIDS, foreign aggression, and even obesity to causes internal to persons, whereas liberals tend to attribute the same phenomena more to situational factors.

This is probably due to amygdala/rACC and dACC tendencies, which causes the liberals to engage more in situational causes and conservatives to engage more in societal reasons.

The causes in the light of brain research

Jost at al, summarizing a 50 years of research on the causes of conservatism had suggested that the two main casus of conservatism are fear and a feel of urgent^[14]. These findings where partly supported by new evidences that comes from the emerging field of political-brain research. These findings show that there are some differences in the way brains of conservatives and liberals work. People with chronic state of conservatism are characterized by smaller anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and enlarged amygdala^{[15] [16]}. The amygdala is involved social learning, and especially fear conditioning ^[17][18]. People with larger amygdala volume correlates positively with both the size (the number of contacts a person has) and the social complexity (the number of different groups to which a person belongs)^[19]. The other implications of enlarged amygdala are that conservatives having enlarged amygdala will be more sensitive to threat^[20]. Conservatives detect threatening faces more easily, with less effort^[21]. Conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals^[22]. This may explain the finding that Individuals with measurably higher physical sensitivities to sudden noises and threatening visual images were more likely to support conservatives policies like defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism, and the Iraq War, whereas individuals displaying measurably lower physiological reactions to those same stimuli were more likely to favor liberals politics such as foreign aid, liberal immigration policies, pacifism, and gun control^[23].

The ACC, which is more active in liberals, is involved in conflict detection^[24], and it is a major player in the process of creating novel knowledge when people are puzzled ^[25][26]. Liberals having larger ACC and therefore we may expect that liberals are better in conflict detection. This suggestion was corroborated by a research that found that liberals reacts better to conflict detection, and their anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was more active during conflict detecting ^[27]. This may explain why on everage, liberals are more intelligent than conservatives ^[28].

On the other hand liberals seems to have lower ability to work in groups as Lakoff suggested (ref). He suggested that liberals should learn from conservatives how to make greater coalitions, but the reason liberals are porrer preformers at social gathering may be due to brain tendency having lower volume of amygdala, which is involved in social learning. And indeed, liberals are more trusting but have smaller social networks, while conservatives find faster threatening facial emotion and have larger social networks^[29].

Having lower amygdala volume does not mean that liberals are not felling threat. They detect threat less easily and therefore are more trusting, but when they do detect threat they react as conservatives^[30]. This may be explained by the finding that the Amygdala can be controlled by the ACC^[31]. And as long as liberals do not recognize a threat they will be more engaged in learning through the ACC and it will suppress the amygdala, but when threat is recognized the ACC is turning-on the amygdala and more conservative style reactions will occur.

Some other research found that when engaging in risk conservatives handle risk with the right amygdala and liberals handle risk with the left insula^[32]. The left insula is involved in warmth and painful sensations^[33]. This may imply that liberals will feel more pain when thinking on losing in risky conditions and therefore will be less ready to engage risk. This may explain why conservatives may favor war while liberals will try to find more peaceful solutions.

It seems that open-mindedness according to Cognitive Reflection Test is not correlated with conservatism^[34]. Thous, Consevatives and liberals uses system 2 in the same manner.

Conclusions:

Conservatives uses the amygdala which is active in social learning and threat detection and handling and therefore are more social orinetd. Because every society has it won codes, conservative may tend to be more local-culuter oriented, and when they will engage different cultures and especialy very different cultures, they will be more un-knowing and therefore will feel more threathend. In General they feel more threat, and may prefer war over peace, because they feel less pain when evaluating the consequence.

Liberals are more intelligent and will try to solve social and non-social conflicts by thinking. They will avoid risks due to more sensitivity to pain and lost.

Stop here

Amygdala and ACC

Jost at al, summerizing a 50 years of research on the causes of conservatism had suggested that the two main casus of conservatism are fear and a feel of urgent^[35]. These finding where partly supported by new evidance from the emerging field of brain research. A chronic state of conservatism is characterized by smaller anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and enlarged amygdala^{[36] [37]}. The Amygdala is involved emotional learning, and especially fear conditioning ^[38][39].The ACC is active in conflict detection ^[40]. And is a major player in the process of creating novel knowledge after puzels ^[41][42].

Also it was found that conservatives handle risk with the right amygdala, while liberals deal the same tasks with the left insula^[43]. The insula is thought to be involve in risk prediction error^[44]

(Brain sections)

The amygdala volume correlates positively with both the size (the number of contacts a person has) and the complexity (the number of different groups to which a person belongs) of social networks ^[45].

(Insula)The left insula was fund to be connected to warmth and painful sensations ^[46]. this suggest that conservatives are feeling more threat^[47].

It was found the liberals reacts better to conflict detection, and their anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was more active during conflict detecting ^[48].

The Amygdala can be controlled by the rACC ^[49].

(Non brain research) The idea that threat is causing people to become more conservatives was further corroborated by an experiment that showed that under fear conditions, liberal students judge like conservative students^[50]. Conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals ^[51].

Individuals with measurably higher physical sensitivities to sudden noises and threatening visual images were more likely to support conservatives policies like defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism, and the Iraq War, whereas individuals displaying measurably lower physiological reactions to those same stimuli were more likely to favor foreign aid, liberal immigration policies, pacifism, and gun control.^[52].

Liberals are more trusting but have smaller social networks, while conservatives find faster threatening facial emotion and have larger social networks^[53].

Conservatives detect threatening faces more easly. With less stress^[54].

Proposed Outcomes

This strength that conservative learn more through social learning, and on threat, they will react more with the FFFF reaction.

Conservatives will prefer "conservative" decision (well established past decisions) The ACC is turned off when there is enough past information for making a decision ^[55]. Therefore, people with lower volume of ACC have more "closured" decision making system, and therefore they will prefer "conservative" decisions.

Liberals will prefer less "group" prefernces and more intelgent solutions.

Stop here

More intelligent people tend to adopt liberal ideology^[56].

Liberals have the same implicit intuitions about moral, but explicitly they adjust to liberal morals^[57]

Conservatives, is suggested, are more aware of social asspects, due to more learning through the amygdala, and therefore conform to society^[58]

All in all, conservative learn and react more to emotions through the amygdala, and may exhibt more aggresivnes toward threat, while liberals are less effective in the social filld, but are more effective in conflict detaction, thoughs create more non-social ineligible solutions. Liberals are more wise on the social level, while liberals more wise on the non-social level.

Causes of Conservatism

Chronic state of conservatism is characterized by smaller anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and enlarged amygdala^[59]. The ACC is used to control efforts and also rostral ACC is active in learning intuitively social behaviors. if having small volume of the ACC, people will react more impulsively, and will have difficulty to understand social interactions. This will cause them to perceive unfamiliar people with less understanding and therefore with more mistrust.

Conservatives handle risk with the right amygdala, while liberals deal the same tasks with the lef insula. this sugest that conservatives are feeling more threat^[60].

Conservative statments make you stop: "Zamboni et al. (2009) found that, regardless of participants’ own political orientation, the processing of conservative statements was associated with greater activity in the right dlPFC—a brain region that is associated with withdrawal motivation, negative affect, and response inhibition in prior research (e.g., Aron et al. 2004; Davidson 1992; Harmon-Jones 2003). Although this finding may have multiple interpretations, one could speculate that thinking about more conservative positions elicited a withdrawaloriented response among these participants, which would be consistent with responses to disgusting or threatening stimuli (cf. Helzer and Pizarro 2011; Terrizzi et al. 2010). This pattern of activation was unrelated to the extremity or level of abstraction of political statements" from Amodio 2012

Damage to the PFC can cause religious foundementalisem^[61]

Causes of Liberalism

Why liberals and atheists are more intelligent^[62]

Liberals have the same implicit intuitions about moral, but explicitly the adjust to liberal morals^[63]

it seems that conservatives uses more [system 1] while liberals uses more of [system 2].

Greater liberalism was associated with stronger conflict-related anterior cingulate activity, suggesting greater neurocognitive sensitivity to cues for altering a habitual response pattern^[64].

Threat causes liberals to think like conservatives^[65]

More

Libertanism

Libertarians have less social bonding and they value most liberty and self creativity^[66]

Power Distance Index

The power distance index (PDI), describes how anequivlante sharing of power is accepted as legitimate. see this site, and see how low Israel is on this scale. This article calim that PDI is important factor for grouth^[67]

Conservatives and God Complex

Good complex et TED WOW! write how he presuase, how Archy works to presuase people, and The god complex in conservatives. and the greatnes in liberal trial and error, and the chalngs he put before schools and politicians.

(Fear and need for certainty, fits brain research.... and show how it fits)

Why liberals are socialists

Th0: Abstract-Liberals have poor social intuitive understanding probably due to small volume of rACC, and they have trouble to work at "productive jobs". Therefore they will prefer to avoid community help for the poor, and will prefer to let the government do the help for the poor. Thy will also resist capitalism, because capitalism emphasize "productivity", and therefore capitalism is inhospitable to liberals. Mild-Conservatives are more "productive" and are more closed-communities oriented; therefore they will prefer capitalism and self-helping communities. As people become more conservatives they more closed minded, adhere more to the "truth" and are more critical, their communities start to disintegrate. They will shift to "strong leadership" regimes like Theocratic regime or nationalistic regime. These regimes are usually working on "Justice" and much less on "Benevolence". Tal Yaron 00:03, 26 December 2012 (IST)

Extremism

Hadit suggest that extremism is caused by addiction to the reward in ventral stratium that people get whenever they are prove to be right (Hadit p. 100-103)

Media influance on Conservatives, Liberas and Moderates

Zaller’s (1992)^[68] reason-accept-sample model of public opinion hypothesizes that politi- cally knowledgeable individuals who have a liberal or conservative ideological bias can effectively filter out messages contrary to their ideology. Moderates and persons lacking political expertise fail to apply such filters and develop views representative of the larger media diet they consume.

Conclusions

Base on previous research I will suggest that the basic difference between liberals and conservatives is the perception of state of threat from some source in the sounding, and the do-explore state, people are in.

Conservatism and Liberalism in the context of deliberation is states of mind that create different understandings and reactions to wide variety of issues. When people in the state of mind of conservatism they usually will be less suspitable to adopt new ideas, they will be more planed-action driven and sometimes more aggressive or fearful^[69]. Conservatism is driving people to group more closely^[70]. On a state of liberalism, people will be more ready to exam new ideas, be less action driven, and more friendly and cooperative toward strangers. In liberalism state, people tend to be more individualistic or to get along according to occasionally sharing of interests.

Conservatives has more need for clouser, while liberals can take more ambiguity. This is due to the FFFF mode that results from their preception of strangers as threat.

Recently I have seen that Liberals and Conservatives can also be looked at as Thinkers and Doers

See also: Conservatives and Liberals: literature review

Other

I suspect that the NMDA have something to do with liberalsem-conservatism

References