The Social Integration of Hemispheric Asymmetry
The coexistence of very large numbers of Conservatives and Liberals within the same population certainly hints at an evolutionary value of such an arrangement. Why, after millions of years of primate social evolution, have these two adversaries been left standing to provide much of the religious, political, and moral framework for modern secular economies?
Human political behavior has naturally evolved from vertebrate social behavior, and has striking similarities with some phylogenetically ancient species. Humans are by no means the first animal on the evolutionary tree to exhibit conservative or liberalistic behaviors, nor are we the first species to exhibit individual variations in cerebral lateralization.
Like humans, most gregarious vertebrate species have successfully adapted individual variations of cerebral lateralization into their social groups. This seems to improve both food-seeking and predator-vigilance, and subsequently creates behavioral phenotypes that look remarkably like human Conservatives and Liberals.
As we have proposed in many articles on this website, the Conservatives exhibit cognitive styles that are shifted more towards their left hemisphere, which is responsible for their enhanced tendency for reward seeking, their greater tendency to organize into hierarchical social groups (and advance to higher levels within those groups), their greater adaptation of their reward valuation system into their moral system, and their greater tendency towards religiosity.
In contrast, the Liberals are shifted more towards right hemispheric cognition, which is responsible for their lower tendency towards reward seeking and exploratory behaviors, their higher propensity for anxious and depressive disorders, their greater adaptation of their empathy systems into their moral system, and their lower tendency towards religiosity and greater tendency towards spirituality.
But how is it that different individuals within the same population are asymmetric when it comes to cerebral lateralization? To date, all vertebrates studied exhibit some form of cerebral lateralization, and this asymmetrical lateralization impacts both the behavior of individuals within a population, and the behavior of the population in general.
Cerebral Lateralization in Fish: Improving Predator Vigilance, Food Seeking, and Sexual Reproduction (note that the fish are using their left eye to keep tabs on the photographer)Lateralization of perceptual and motor functions have long been thought to improve the performance of the central nervous system by reducing redundancy and increasing response times to various stimuli classes. Two neuroscientists, Giorgio Vallortigara and Lesley Rogers, are leading the surge in interest of the survival advantages provided by individual and populational cerebral lateralization, particularly as it applies to the integration of individual lateralization within the group.
In most species studied to date, predator vigilance, escape, and fear responses are managed by the right hemisphere. This leaves the left hemisphere to manage prey-catching and foraging, and subsequently support the enhanced discrimination and valuation of food rewards.
Humans would carry forward this vertebrate legacy of cerebral lateralization, and also maintain the left hemispheric orientation for prey-catching, which falls under the more general category of reward seeking. The human right hemisphere would also maintain its specialization towards predator-vigilance and escape, which falls under the more general category of harm avoidance.
But among most species, cerebral lateralization varies from individual to individual, and can have some very positive survival advantages. During feeding, a strongly lateralized chick will monitor predators better than a weakly lateralized chick. The strongly lateralized chick will also discriminate food items better than the weakly lateralized. But why do individuals vary in both the degree and direction of their cerebral lateralization?
Twins research has confirmed the heritability of genes associated with cerebral lateralization, but what those genes are is still a mystery. But the genetic control of lateralization is far from absolute, as genes simply participate in chemical reactions, and are therefore modulated by a myriad of environmental influences, such as concentrations of other molecules, light, heat, etc. In humans, this environmental influence is seen in the seasonal variation in the birth months of non-right handedness, which seems to vary with the activity of the mother's pineal gland, which alters hormonal levels in the womb. (The pineal gland responds to variations in daylight).
Evolution is very willing to let environmental influences have a very large say on cerebral lateralization, and for a very good reason--predator vigilance and escape. In most species, predator rich environments cause an elevation in the right hemisphere's influence in cognition. This stress-induced shifting of cerebral lateralization was first seen in rats, where long-term predator stress causes permanent neurochemical changes in the right hemisphere, but not the left.
Under the influence of traumatic stress, humans seem to be following the same cerebral shift. We have previously proposed that post traumatic stress disorder contributes to a shift towards right hemispheric cognition, and subsequent liberalistic attitudes. (See our May 2006 issue).
Individual variations in cerebral lateralization are the rule in social animals, and seem to be facilitating a division of labor within social groups. This is seen is schools of fish, where some fish are strongly right-lateralized for predator detection, and others are more left-lateralized for food-seeking behaviors.
Both of these lateralized groups coexist with the less lateralized fish and improve both ends of the behavioral spectrum--predator vigilance and food-seeking, while providing for large breeding populations. This continuum of individual lateralization forms the basis of both behavioral specialization and coordination within the school.
Discussion
The integration of Conservatives and Liberals in the same population seems to perform several evolutionary functions. One function appears to be improving the populational sustainability of a given territory, and also the modulation of population density to ecological stresses. Historically, Liberals appear to be quite adept at reducing ecological stresses and moderating their birth rates, while Conservatives are more adept at dispersing into new territories as old territories are depleted.
Conservatives are better organized for and respond more quickly to inter-group competition, and are more organized towards territorial defense. However, they also more likely to engage in conflicts over resources, and the intra-group Liberals are a countervailing force against that Conservative tendency. This reduces the probability that a population will engage in potentially catastrophic wars over resources.
The Liberals are also more genetically diverse than Conservatives, that is, they are more likely to reproduce with dissimilar genotypes. As we shall see in an upcoming issue, the Conservative female is the least likely to mix her genes with genetic "outsiders". The Liberal tendency certainly improves the human genomic response to the rapid evolution of dangerous microbes.
We also suspect that Conservatives and Liberals, on average, maintain different occupations within a modern economy. This is a direct reflection of their variation, on average, in cerebral lateralization.
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Dogs or Humans:
Who do you trust?After seven surveys and over 400 questions, we finally found one that Conservatives and Liberals can agree on. Dogs are better than humans. In our Winter 2006 survey, we asked the 1,616 respondents who was better natured, dogs or humans? The results are displayed in the graph below.
Who is better natured, dogs or humans? (Green=Dogs, Grey=Humans, Purple=Not Sure) (VL=Liberal, L=Liberal, M=Moderate, C=Conservative, VC=Very Conservative)All political-gender cohorts picked dogs over humans by a substantial margin, but Conservative females led the way, with 60.2% believing that dogs are better. On the male side, the Very Conservatives were highest at 55.5%. Overall, females had a slightly worse view of humans than males.
Overall, Moderates had the best view of humans, although they still selected dogs by a substantial margin. The Liberals had higher rates of "Not Sure" responses.
Religion and Technological Change
U.S. Patents granted in 2004 by Bush and Kerry StatesOne of the more interesting statistics from the 2004 U.S. Presidential election is represented in the above graph. The blue bar, representing the states with an electoral victory for John Kerry, had a total of 60,905 U.S. patents granted in 2004. In contrast, the red bar, representing the states with an electoral victory for George W. Bush, had a total of 33,113.
This difference is so substantial that it probably has several causes, but the uneasy relationship between religion and science is our primary suspect. In 1988, the National Opinion Research Center posed some interesting questions to both religious and non-religious Americans about the impact of science on morality. It seems that the strongly religious were more likely to believe that scientific advancement had a negative impact on morality. In the graph below, we see the NORC survey responses broken out by religious sub-categories.
Those believing that science harms moral judgments of right and wrong (Strongly Religious = Blue, Not Strongly Religious= Green) (Source: 1988 NORC General Social Survey)As can be seen above, the strongly religious (in blue) tend to have a dimmer view of science than the not-so-religious (in green). This illustrates the difficulty that the Very Religious have in modern secular society, which is to maintain their traditional religious beliefs in the face of economic competition, sexual selection, and technological change.
Advanced industrial economies have not been kind to organized religions. From 1981 to 1998, the rate of church attendance has declined in 80% of those economies. Below, we see a sampling of the percent of people attending organized religious services by country. The developing economies are coded in red, and the advanced economies are coded in green.
Percent attending organized religious services (1991/1998)
Source: Inglehart/Baker (World Values Survey)Except for Northern Ireland, Ireland, Italy, and the United States, the rate of organized religious participation is substantially lower in advanced economies. The Irish rates are unusually high, due to religious and political conflicts, which tend to increase church attendance.
Economic Development and Religiosity
Interestingly enough, a recent study by Barro and McCleary has found an inverse relationship between economic growth and the rate of organized religious practice, while unorganized religious belief seems to have a positive impact on growth. Barro and McCleary postulated that religious beliefs help stimulate economic growth by sustaining aspects of human behavior that improve productivity. They further proposed that church attendance depresses growth, in that it diverts resources that could be spent economically.
One of the problems with the Barro and McCleary model is the United States, which maintains high rates of economic output combined with very high rates of organized religious practice. The other problem is that the developing countries, with higher rates of organized religious practice, tend to have higher annual growth rates when compared to the established economies.
The Economics of Religious Group Participation
However, these problems with the Barro-McCleary theories would be resolved by Daniel Chen, who was studying the Indonesian financial crisis of 1997, and found a positive correlation between religious intensity and economic distress. This crisis resulted in a dramatic increase in the price of rice which badly impacted the government wage earners whose incomes were fixed by law. Chen found that participation in organized Islamic religious groups increased for those most impacted by the economic crisis, while participation in non-religious social groups did not change.
To no one's surprise, Chen also found that religious intensity and social violence were correlated during this event. Chen witnessed this excellent example of the delicate balance between religiosity and secularism, and would note "religious institutions appear to facilitate consumption smoothing among villagers, suggesting religious intensity functions as ex-post social insurance".
Chen stumbled upon one of the leading causes of secularism, and that is the decline in the necessity for a religiously organized social insurance mechanism. This explains much about the decline in organized religious practice without the commensurate decrease in spiritual beliefs, and also one of the reasons why people organize their religiosity into social groups in the first place. It also explains the negative correlation between economic output and church attendance noted by Barro and McCleary, which is that levels of religious attendance correlate with economic stress.
But organized religious groups are still prevalent, even in the urbanized areas of modern economies. This integration of organized religious groups and secular economies has many faces, from the increasingly integrated Amish, to the highly integrated liberal Protestant sects.
Integration of the Very Religious within Secular Economies
The Amish are of particular interest, as they highlight the tenuous relationship between religiosity and technological change. The Amish have managed to limit the use of modern technology, and are very tactical about the technologies they select from the secular world.
Many Amish families readily seek out modern medical care, as this causes no impact on Amish social structures. However, automobile ownership is not allowed. The avoidance of automobile ownership reduces social stresses that expose the growing inequalities in wealth among the Amish.
The high cost of land and high birth rates are driving the Amish into non-farm related activities, including light manufacturing and construction, and with it, the corresponding incursion of the secular world. On average, the Amish are now more modernized than they have ever been, and the decline of farming is slowly undermining their socio-religious lifestyle.
Economic Endogamy and Religious Groups
The Amish have been surprisingly successful at their capitalistic business ventures, as they succeed at a much higher rate than the secular population. They practice economic endogamy, where they sell to both the Amish and non-Amish, but prefer to buy from religious insiders.
If economic endogamy is practiced by a religious group, it provides them with an advantage within secular economies, as it increases income relative to expenditures (on average). Highly organized religious (and ethnic) minorities typically practice economic endogamy, and not so coincidentally, the rate of business formation is typically higher in those same religious minorities. However, these businesses are typically small, more likely to utilize family labor, and borrow more from older technologies than do secular businesses.
Discussion
This begs the question: how much are the Very Religious contributing to new technology within a secular economy? This sinister picture of highly organized religious minority groups feasting off of the technological achievements of the modern secular economies is misleading, in that strongly religious groups tend to rely less on governmental programs and public goods than the secular population (in general).
But as we see in the graph of U.S. patents, the more religious states are way behind the more secular states in technological change, and the spread of technology is more likely to begin in the secular blue states and flow into the religious red states. It seems that the distinction between the red and blue states is not just religious and political, it's technological, and ultimately reflective of a fundamental difference in their levels of secularism.
As we discussed in The Darwin Code, religiosity is highly correlated with activity in the left temporal cortex, while the major anti-religious region of the brain appears to be the right lateral prefrontal cortex. Secularism, which seems to be integrating the right prefrontal cortex more into social behavior, is also getting a substantial leg up with technological innovation.
2004 State by State Patent Listing
Stress and Liberalism
The Bush family may be an interesting case study of the impact of nature versus nurture on political decision-making.
The rescue of the elder George Bush after being shot down by the Japanese during a near-fatal bombing missionThe elder George Bush, at the age of 20, was the youngest aviator in the Navy. In a squadron that had a 50 percent casualty rate, Bush flew 58 combat missions. During his Vice-Presidency, Bush would later recount his military experience as a "sobering understanding of war and peace" and "there's no question that today it has a real impact on me as I give advice to the President".
As fate would have it, the elder Bush was handed one of the most difficult and criticized decisions a U.S. President would ever make--the decision to attack Baghdad and eliminate the regime of Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War.
In recounting his decision not to pursue Saddam, Bush was unusually emotional--"which sergeant, which private, whose life would be at stake in perhaps a fruitless hunt in an urban guerilla war to find the most-secure dictator in the world?".
Bush would go on to say "whose life would be on my hands as the commander-in-chief because I, unilaterally, went beyond the international law, went beyond the stated mission, and said we're going to show our macho?".
How much the elder Bush's World War II combat experience impacted his controversial Gulf War decision would be countered with a variety of conspiratorial arguments about his family's secret business deals with Saudi Arabian connections.
But the impact of stress on promoting liberalistic behaviors is quite real, and the elder Bush's decision certainly fits the profile of stress-induced liberalistic attitudes. Twelve years later, his son George W. Bush, in more equivocal circumstances, was faced with the same decision without the benefit of combat stress, and subsequently made the controversial decision to attack Baghdad and remove Saddam Hussein.
Was this decision-making disparity between George and George W Bush an example of nurture over nature? We certainly cannot be sure of this, but we've collected some evidence that links stress levels with liberalistic attitudes and behaviors.
Childhood and Parental Stress Levels
We have discussed the relationship between warfare and the liberalization of populations in our May 2006 issue, in which we proposed that direct exposure to warfare increases the tendency towards liberalistic behaviors, as was evidenced in post-war German and Japanese populations.
But non-warfare related stress, both past and present, is also correlated with liberalism. Let's take a look at some recent evidence we gathered in our most recent survey of Ethnic and Religious Attitudes. We asked the 1,300 respondents to evaluate their stress levels when they were growing up. We gave them four options: Not Stressed, a Little Stressed, Stressed, and Very Stressed. We combined the Very Stressed into the Stressed category and displayed the percentages in the graph below.
Percentage Reporting a Stressed Childhood by Political-Gender Cohorts (VL=Very Liberal, L=Liberal, M=Moderate, C=Conservative, VC=Very Conservative)As we see in the above graph, both the Very Conservative and Conservative females reported the lowest rates of childhood stress. The Very Liberal females reported very high levels of childhood stress, followed by the Liberal females. The Moderate females fell in between.
The male pattern was much closer, with both the Very Liberal and Liberal males reporting slightly higher rates of childhood stress than the either the Moderates or Conservatives.
This childhood stress is possibly linked to parental stress. However, we did not control for both variables in this survey. In an earlier survey, we asked: Did your mother and/or father have any depressive or anxious symptoms when you were growing up? In the graph below, we see the percentage responding yes to that question.
Percentage Reporting Parents Exhibited Anxious-Depressive Symptoms: (VL=Very Liberal, L=Liberal, C=Conservative, VC=Very Conservative) (F=Female, M=Male)In the above graph, the Very Liberals reported the highest levels of parental anxiety-depression, and the Very Conservatives reported the lowest. This is consistent with the higher rates of childhood stress reported by the Very Liberals in both genders. Just like the childhood stress level graph, the levels of reported parental anxiety-depression were a negative function as one moved from left to right in the political scale.
Current Stress Levels
The Liberals also reported higher current stress levels than did the Conservatives. This is shown in the graph below, when we asked the 2,162 respondents of our Fall 2005 survey to rate their current stress level.
Percentage Reporting They Are Currently Under Stress (VL=Very Liberal, L=Liberal, M=Moderate, C=Conservative, VC=Very Conservative)As can be seen above, the Liberals of both genders report higher rates of stress than do the Conservatives. Again, current stress levels are a negative function as one moves from left to right on the political scale.
Discussion
At each stage in the human life cycle, stress is more correlated with Liberalism than Conservatism. The Liberals reported higher stress levels as both children and adults, and also detected higher anxiety and depression levels in their parents. These higher stress levels are also consistent with our earlier reports of Liberal elevations in the levels of a variety of anxious and depressive disorders. All these traits are indicative of a greater influence of the right hemisphere on Liberal cognition.
The question is, are Conservatives and Liberals created by genetics or environment? Hetero and homozygous twins studies have implicated that genetics plays a larger role in political disposition than does the environment.
But genetics is actually encouraging the environment to alter the direction of hemispheric asymmetry, and a corresponding influence on political disposition (see the article on the above left). Traumatic stress can alter the neurochemical functioning of the right hemisphere, and predispose an individual towards right hemispheric cognitive styles, and liberalistic attitudes.
Brack and Zhang, August 2006
Email:
Brack@neuropolitics.org
Zhang@neuropolitics.org
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