good old neuroscience

in the years i've been teaching, i've noticed a pattern in which those students who seem to have politically conservative leanings are less likely than their more liberal-seeming counterparts to be able to engage the reading of the moment in a way that extends beyond the page in front of them: more deeply, intensively or making imaginative connections between ideas that an english class frequently requires of its students. so, e.g., the students who defend, say, greater governmental power in the interests of security, are often the same students who, during a discussion of some author's unusual choice of words, say things like, "we're reading too much into this." (which in an english class is baffling to hear, because, er, what are we supposed to be talking about, then?)

while i don't think i could care less about my students' political opinions (plus, as i try to point out, you can come to perfectly conservative conclusions using some of the same intensive reading practices), i thought that some iota of caring had snuck in underneath my conscious radar to influence my perception of this phenomenon. but! behold the below and i challenge you to not think it fits perfectly with a bunch of people that you know. . .

Nature Neuroscience 10, 1246 - 1247 (2007)
Published online: 9 September 2007 | doi:10.1038/nn1979

Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism

David M Amodio, John T Jost, Sarah L Master & Cindy M Yee

Political scientists and psychologists have noted that, on average, conservatives show more structured and persistent cognitive styles, whereas liberals are more responsive to informational complexity, ambiguity and novelty. We tested the hypothesis that these profiles relate to differences in general neurocognitive functioning using event-related potentials, and found that greater liberalism was associated with stronger conflict-related anterior cingulate activity, suggesting greater neurocognitive sensitivity to cues for altering a habitual response pattern.

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