Abstract
The relationship between politics and biopsychology is complex. But first, an explanation of biopsychology itself is in order. As a biopsychologist I have frequently been asked to explain my speciality even to other psychologists. Biopsychology is all about the biology of behavior, human and animal. Biopsychologists are trained in the methodology of behavioral research and in biology but are psychologists not biologists. There are neurological underpinnings to behavior and these are being explored vigorously. Neuroscience is the study of the brain and nervous system in relation to function and behavior. Political science and neuroscience have been connecting for the last decade (Arciniegas & Anderson, 2017; Chawke & Kanai, 2016; Fowler & Schreiber, 2008; Haas, 2016; McDermott, 2009; Pedersen, Muftuler, & Larson, 2018). Biopsychology is part of that mix (Jost, Nam, Amodio, & Bavel, 2014; Kandler, Bleidorn, & Riemann, 2012; Marcus, 2013; Norris, Gollan, Berntson, & Cacioppo, 2010; Settle, Dawes, Loewen, & Panagopoulos, 2017).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Aarøe, L., Petersen, M. B., & Arceneaux, K. (2017). The behavioral immune system shapes political intuitions: Why and how individual differences in disgust sensitivity underlie opposition to immigration. American Political Science Review, 111(2), 277–294. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055416000770
Adorno, T., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D., & Sanford, N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
Ahn, W. Y., Kishida, K. T., Gu, X., Lohrenz, T., Harvey, A., Alford, J. R., … Montague, P. R. (2014). Nonpolitical images evoke neural predictors of political ideology. Current Biology, 24(22), 2693–2699. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.09.050
Ames, D. L., & Fiske, S. T. (2010). Cultural neuroscience. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 13, 72–82. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-839X.2010.01301.x
Amodio, D. M., Jost, J. T., Master, S. L., & Yee, C. M. (2007). Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism. Nature Neuroscience, 10, 1246–1247. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1979
Arciniegas, D. B., & Anderson, C. A. (2017). Toward a neuroscience of politics. The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences. Retrieved March 7, 2017, from https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.neuropsych.17020046
Asp, E., Ramchandran, K., & Tranel, D. (2012). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, and the human prefrontal cortex. Neuropsychology, 26(4), 414–421. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028526
Babaev, O., Chatain, C. P., & Krueger-Burg, D. (2018). Inhibition in the amygdala anxiety circuitry. Experimental & Molecular Medicine, 50(18), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1038/s12276-018-0063-8
Barbey, A. K., Colom, R., & Grafman, J. (2014). Architecture of cognitive flexibility revealed by lesion mapping. NeuroImage, 82, 547–554. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.05.087Get
Beirich, H. (2019, Spring, 166). Rage against change: White supremacy flourishes amid fears of immigration and nation’s shifting demographics. Intelligence Report: The Southern Poverty Law Center, pp. 35–61.
Berns, G. S., Chappelow, J., Zink, C. F., Pagnoni, G., Martin-Skurski, M. E., & Richards, J. (2005). Neurobiological correlates of social conformity and independence during mental rotation. Biological Psychiatry, 58(3), 245–253. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2005.04.012
Bogage, J. (2016, June 23). Whom are you voting for? This guy can read your mind. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../whom-are-you-voting-for-this-guy-can-read-you
Bosson, J. K., & Vandello, J. A. (2011). Precarious manhood and its links to action and aggression. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(2), 82–86. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411402669
Botvinick, M. M., Braver, T. S., Barch, D. M., Carter, C. S., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). Conflict monitoring and cognitive control. Psychological Review, 108, 624–652. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.108.3.624
Brader, T., & Marcus, G. E. (2013). Emotion and political psychology. In L. Huddy, D. O. Sears, & J. S. Levy (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political psychology (pp. 237–261). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Briggs, J. L. (1978). The origins of nonviolence: Inuit management aggression. In A. Montague (Ed.), Learning non-aggression: The experience of non-literate societies (pp. 54–93). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Buckwalter, J. G. (2018). Why white Americans voted for trump—A research psychologist’s analysis. Techonomy. Retrieved from https://techonomy.com/2018/.../white-americans-voted-trump-research-psychologists
Burke, B. L., Kosloff, S., & Landau, M. J. (2013). Death goes to the polls: A meta-analysis of mortality salience effects on political attitudes. Political Psychology, 34(2), 183–200. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12005
Cai, W., & Landon, S. (2019, April 3). Attacks by white extremists are growing. So are their connections. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/03/world/white-extremist-terrorism-christchurch.html
Carney, D. R., Jost, J. T., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2008). The secret lives of liberals and conservatives: Personality profiles, interaction styles, and the things they leave behind. Political Psychology, 29(6), 807–840. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2008.00668.x
Carraro, L., Castelli, L., & Macchiella, C. (2011). The automatic conservative: Ideology-based attentional asymmetries in the processing of valenced information. PLoS One, 6, e26456. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0026456
Case, A., & Deaton, A. (2017). Mortality and morbidity in the 21st century. Brookings Institution (pp. 397, 476). Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/casetextsp17bpea.pdf
Castagne, R., Kelly-Irving, M., Campanella, G., Guida, F., Krogh, V., Palli, D., … Chadeau-Hyam, M. (2016). Biological marks of early-life socioeconomic experience is detected in the adult inflammatory transcriptome. Scientific Reports, 6, 38705. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep38705
Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., & Feldman, M. W. (1981). Cultural transmission and evolution: A quantitative approach. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Chawke, C., & Kanai, R. (2016). Alteration of political belief by non-invasive brain stimulation. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9, 621. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00621
Chiao, J. Y. (2011). Cultural neuroscience: Visualizing culture-gene influences on brain function. In J. Decety & J. T. Cacioppo (Eds.), Oxford library of psychology. The Oxford handbook of social neuroscience (pp. 742–761). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Chua, A. (2018). Political tribes: Group instinct and the fate of nations. New York, NY: Penguin Press.
Chudasama, Y., Izquierdo, A., & Murray, E. A. (2009). Distinct contributions of the amygdala and hippocampus to fear expression. European Journal of Neuroscience, 30, 2327–2337. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-9568.2009.07012.x
Civai, C., Crescentini, C., Rustichini, A., & Rumiati, R. I. (2012). Equality versus self-interest in the brain: Differential roles of anterior insula and medial prefrontal cortex. NeuroImage, 62, 102–112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.04.037
Clarkson, J. J., Chambers, J. R., Hirt, E. R., Otto, A. S., Kardes, F. R., & Leone, C. (2015). The self-control consequences of political ideology. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112(27), 8250–8253. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1503530112
Cohen, D., Nisbett, R. E., Bowdle, B., & Schwarz, N. (1996). Insult, aggression, and the southern culture of honor: An “experimental ethnography”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 945–960. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/92155
Compton, J. (2017). Why are so many white nationalists ‘Virulently anti-LGBT’? NBC Out. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/why-are-so-many-white-nationalists-virulently-anti-lgbt-n794466
Conover, P. J., & Feldman, S. (1981). The origins and meaning of liberal/conservative self-identification. American Journal of Political Science, 25, 617–645.
Craig, A. D. B. (2011). Significance of the insula for the evolution of human awareness of feelings from the body. Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 1225, 72–82. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.05990.x
Crespi, L. P. (1942). Quantitative variation of incentive and performance in the white rat. American Journal of Psychology, 55(4), 467–517.
Crespi, L. P. (1944). Amount of reinforcement and level of performance. Psychological Review, 51, 341–357.
Crigler, A. N., & Hevron, P. R. (2017). Affect and political choice. In K. Kenski & K. H. Jamieson (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political communication. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Cunningham, W. A., & Kirkland, T. (2013). The joyful, yet balanced, amygdala: Moderated responses to positive but not negative stimuli in trait happiness. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9(6), 760–766. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nst045
Davis, M., Walker, D. L., Miles, L., & Grillon, C. (2010). Phasic vs sustained fear in rats and humans: Role of the extended amygdala in fear vs anxiety. Neuropsychopharmacology, 35(1), 105–135. https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2009.109
de la Sablonnière, R. (2017). Toward a psychology of social change: A typology of social change. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 397. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00397
Denson, T. F., O’Dean, S. M., Blake, K. R., & Beames, J. R. (2018). Aggression in women: Behavior, brain and hormones. Frontiers in Behavior Neuroscience, 12(81), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00081
de Waal, F. B. M. (1995). Bonobo sex and society: The behavior of a close relative challenges assumptions about male supremacy in human evolution. Scientific American, 272(3), 82–88. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamericanmind0509-4
de Waal, F. B. M. (2000). Primates – a natural heritage of conflict resolution. Science, 289, 586–590. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.289.5479.586
Dewsbury, D. A. (1991). Psychobiology. American Psychologist, 46, 198–205.
Dodd, M. D., Balzer, A., Jacobs, C. M., Gruszczynski, M. W., Smith, K. B., & Hibbing, J. R. (2012). The political left rolls with the good and the political right confronts the bad: Connecting physiology and cognition to preferences. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 367, 640–649. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0268
Eichengreen, B. (2018). Economic grievance and political reaction in the modern era. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Eidelman, S., Crandall, C. S., Goodman, J. A., & Blanchar, J. C. (2012). Low-effort thought promotes political conservatism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 808–820. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212439213
Eres, R., Decety, J., Louis, W. R., & Molenberghs, P. (2015). Individual differences in local gray matter density are associated with differences in affective and cognitive empathy. NeuroImage, 117, 305–310. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.05.038
Etkin, A., Egner, T., Peraza, D. M., Kandel, E. R., & Hirsch, J. (2006). Resolving emotional conflict: a role for the rostral anterior cingulate cortex in modulating activity in the amygdala. Neuron, 51(6), 871–882. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2006.07.029
Feinstein, J. S., Adolphs, R., Damasio, A., & Tranel, D. (2011). The human amygdala and the induction and experience of fear. Current Biology, 21(1), 34–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2010.11.042. Epub 2010 Dec 16.
Feldman, S. (2013). Political ideology. In L. Huddy, D. O. Sears, & J. S. Levy (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political psychology (pp. 591–626). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Ferry, B., Herbeaux, K., Javelot, H., & Majchrzak, M. (2015). The entorhinal cortex is involved in conditioned odor and context aversions. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 9, 342. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2015.00342
Fitzsimmons, E. G. (2018, December 2). Why are taxi drivers in New York killing themselves? The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/nyregion/taxi-driverssuicide-nyc.html
Fowler, J. H., & Dawes, C. T. (2013). In defense of genopolitics. American Political Science Review, 107(2), 362–374. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055413000063
Fowler, J., & Schreiber, D. (2008). Biology, politics, and the emerging science of human nature. Science, 322(5903), 912–914. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1158188
Freeman, J. B., Rule, N. O., Adams, R. B., Jr., & Ambady, N. (2009). Culture shapes a mesolimbic response to signals of dominance and subordination that associates with behavior. NeuroImage, 47(1), 353–359. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.04.038
Funk, C. (2013). Genetics foundations of political behavior. In L. Huddy, D. O. Sears, & J. S. Levy (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political psychology (pp. 237–261). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Funk, C. L., Smith, K. B., Alford, J. R., Hibbing, M. V., Eaton, N. R., Krueger, R. F., … Hibbing, J. R. (2013). Genetic and environmental transmission of political orientations. Political Psychology, 34(6), 805–819. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2012.00915.x
Goldberg, A. D., Allis, D. C., & Bernstein, E. (2007). Epigenetics: A landscape takes shape. Cell, 128, 635–638. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2007.02.006.
Gordon, G. (2018). American women of the far right. The New York Review of Books. Retrieved from https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/12/13/american-women-of-the-far-right/
Grandin, G. (2019). The end of the myth: From the frontier to the border wall in the mind of America. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books.
Gray, J. D., Kogan, J. F., Marrocco, J., & McEwen, B. S. (2017). Genomic and epigenetic mechanisms of glucocorticoids in the brain. Nature Reviews Endocrinology, 13(11), 661–673. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrendo.2017.97
Grinshteyn, E., & Hemenway, D. (2016). Violent death rates: The US compared with other high-income OECD countries, 2010. American Journal of Medicine, 129(3), 545–552. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2015.10.025
Gupta, S. (2019). One nation under stress. Retrieved from https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/one-nation-under-stress
Haas, I. J. (2016). Political neuroscience. In J. R. Absher & J. Cloutier (Eds.), Neuroimaging, personality, social cognition, and character (pp. 355–370). Cambridge, MA: Academic/Elsevier.
Haase, V. G., & Starling-Alves, I. (2017). In search of the moral-psychological and neuroevolutionary basis of political partisanship. Dementia & Neuropsychologia, 11(1), 15–23. https://doi.org/10.1590/1980-57642016dn11-010004
Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. New York, NY: Vintage Books.
Hasson, Y., Tamir, M., Brahms, K. S., Cohrs, J. C., & Halperin, E. (2018). Are liberals and conservatives equally motivated to feel empathy toward others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(10), 1449–1459. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218769867
Hatemi, P. K., & McDermott, R. (2011). Man is by nature a political animal: Evolution, biology, and politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Helzee, E. G., & Pizarro, D. A. (2011). Dirty liberals! Reminders of physical cleanliness influence moral and political attitudes. Psychological Science, 20(10), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611402514
Helzer, E. G., & Pizarro, D. A. (2011). Dirty liberals! Reminders of physical cleanliness influence moral and political attitudes. Psychological Science, 20(10), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611402514.
Hetherington, M., & Weiler, J. D. (2018). Prius or pickup? How the answers to four simple questions explain America’s great divide. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
Hibbing, J. (2013, November 13). Why biology belongs in the study of politics. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../why-biology-belongs-in-the-study-of-politics/
Hibbing, J. R., Smith, K. B., & Alford, J. R. (2014a). Differences in negativity bias underlie variations in political ideology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37(3), 297–307. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X13001192
Hibbing, J. R., Smith, K. B., & Alford, J. R. (2014b). Predisposed: Liberals, conservatives, and the biology of political differences. New York, NY: Routledge.
Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D. A., & Bloom, P. (2008). Conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals. Cognition and Emotion, 23(4), 714–725. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930802110007
Inzlicht, M., McGregor, I., Hirsh, J. B., & Nash, K. (2009). Neural markers of religious conviction. Psychological Science, 20(3), 385–392. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02305.x
Izuma, K., Matsumoto, M., Murayama, K., Samejima, K., Sadato, N., & Matsumoto, K. (2010). Neural correlates of cognitive dissonance and choice-induced preference change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences United States of America, 107(51), 22014–22019. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1011879108
Janak, P. H., & Tye, K. M. (2015). From circuits to behaviour in the amygdala. Nature, 517(7534), 284–292. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14188
Jost, J. T. (2009). “Elective affinities”: On the psychological bases of left-right differences. Psychological Inquiry, 20(2), 129–141. https://doi.org/10.1080/10478400903028599
Jost, J. T. (2017). Ideological asymmetries and the essence of political psychology. Political Psychology, 38(2), 167–208. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12407
Jost, J. T., Federico, C. M., & Napier, J. L. (2009). Political ideology: Its structure, functions, and elective affinities. Annual Review of Psychology, 60(1), 307–337. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163600
Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, F. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129(3), 339–375.
Jost, J., Hennes, E. P., & Lavine, H. (2013). “Hot” political cognition: It’s self-group, and system-serving purposes. In D. Carlston (Ed.), Oxford handbook of social cognition (pp. 851–875). New York: Oxford University Press.
Jost, J. T., Nam, H. H., Amodio, D. M., & Bavel, J. J. (2014). Political neuroscience: The beginning of a beautiful friendship. Advances in Political Psychology, 35(Suppl. 1), 3–42.
Jost, J., Noorbaloochi, S., & Van Bavel, J. (2014). The “chicken-and-egg” problem in political neuroscience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37(3), 317–318. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X13002616
Jost, J. T., Stern, C., Rule, N. O., & Sterling, J. (2017). The politics of fear: Is there an ideological asymmetry in existential motivation? Social Cognition, 35(4), 324–353. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2017.35.4.324
Kanai, R., Feilden, T., Firth, C., & Rees, G. (2011). Political orientations are correlated with brain structure in young adults. Current Biology, 21(8), 677–680. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2011.03.017
Kandler, C., Bleidorn, W., & Riemann, R. (2012). Left or right? Sources of political orientation: The roles of genetic factors, cultural transmission, assortative mating, and personality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 633–645. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025560
Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Napier, J. L., Callan, M. J., & Laurin, K. (2008). God and government: Testing a compensatory control explanation for the support of external systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 18–35. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.95.1.18
Kay, A. C., Whitson, J. A., & Gaucher, D. (2009). Compensatory control: Achieving order through the mind, our institutions, and the heavens. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(5), 264–268. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01649.x
Kitayama, S. & Huff, S. (2015). Cultural neuroscience: Connecting culture, brain, and genes. In. R. A. Scott & S. M. Kosslyn (Eds.), Emerging trends in the social and behavioral Sciences, p. 1–16. New York, NY: Wiley.
Klimecki, O. M., Leiberg, S., Ricard, M., & Singer, T. (2014). Differential pattern of functional brain plasticity after compassion and empathy training. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9(6), 873–879. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nst060
Knutson, B., & Greer, S. M. (2008). Anticipatory affect: Neural correlates and consequences for choice. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, Biological sciences, 363(1511), 3771–3786. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0155
Knutson, K. M., Wood, J. N., Spampinato, M. V., & Grafman, J. (2006). Politics on the brain: An fMRI investigation. Social Neuroscience, 1, 25–40.
Korte, S. M., Jaap, M., Koolhaas, J. M., Wingfield, J. C., & McEwen, B. S. (2005). The Darwinian concept of stress: Benefits of allostasis and costs of allostatic load and the trade-offs in health and disease. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 29(1), 3–38.
Lach, E. (2018, October 24). The bombs addressed to Obama, Clinton, and Soros, and the history of anti-Soros hate-mongering. The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/.../the-bombs-addressed-to-obama-clinton-and-soros-and
Lakoff, G. (2016). Moral politics: How liberals and conservatives think. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Landau, M. J., Kay, A. C., & Whitson, J. A. (2015). Compensatory control and the appeal of a structured world. Psychological Bulletin, 141(3), 694–722. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038703.
Lazauskas, J. (2019, February 10). The neuroscience technology that could change the 2020 election. Noteworthy-The Journal Blog. Retrieved from https://blog.usejournal.com/the-neuroscience-technology-that-could-transform-the-2020-election-bdf30397c5d6
Levitin, D. J. (2014). The organized mind: Thinking straight in the age of information overload. New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
Lilienfeld, S. O., & Latzman, R. D. (2014). Threat bias, not negativity bias, underpins differences in political ideology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37(3), 318–319. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X1300263X
Liuzza, M. T., Lindholm, T., Hawley, C. B., Gustafsson Sendén, M., Ekström, I., Olsson, M. J., & Olofsson, J. K. (2018). Body odour disgust sensitivity predicts authoritarian attitudes. Royal Society Open Science, 5(2), 171091. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.171091
MacWilliams, M. (2016, January 17). The one weird trait that predicts whether you’re a trump supporter: And it’s not gender, age, income, race or religion. Politico Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump2016-authoritarian-213533
Marcus, G. E. (2004). The birth of the mind: How a tiny number of genes creates the complexities of human thought. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Marcus, G. E. (2013). Political psychology: Neuroscience, genetics, and politics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Martinez-Conde, S., Alexander, R. G., Blum, D., Britton, N., Lipska, B. K., Quirk, G. J., … Macknik, S. L. (2019). The storytelling brain: How neuroscience stories help bridge the gap between research and society. Journal of Neuroscience, 39(42), 8285–8290. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1180-19.2019
McCourt, K., Bouchard, T. J., Jr., Lykken, D. T., Tellegen, A., & Keyes, M. (1999). Authoritarianism revisited: Genetic and environmental influence examined in twins reared apart and together. Personality and Individual Differences, 27, 985–1014.
McDermott, R. (2009). Mutual interests: The case for increasing dialogue between political science and neuroscience. Political Research Quarterly, 62, 571–583. https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912909336273
McElwee, S. & McDaniel, J. (2017). Economic anxiety didn’t make people vote trump, racism did. The Nation. https://www.thenation.com/.../economic-anxiety-didnt-make-people-vote-trump-racis...
McEwen, B. S. (2012). Brain on stress: How the social environment gets under the skin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences United States of America, 109(2), 17180–17185. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1121254109
McEwen, B. S., & Gianaros, P. J. (2010). Central role of the brain in stress and adaptation: Links to 1343 socioeconomic status, health, and disease. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1186(1344), 190–222. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.05331.x
McEwen, B. S., Nasca, C., & Gray, J. D. (2016). Stress effects on neuronal structure: Hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex. Neuropsychopharmacology, 41, 3–23. https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2015.171
McGregor, I., Zanna, M. P., Holmes, J. G., & Spencer, S. J. (2001). Compensatory conviction in the face of personal uncertainty: Going to extremes and being oneself. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(3), 472–488. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.80.3.472
McIntyre, C. K. & Roozendaal, B. (2007). Adrenal stress hormones and enhanced memory for emotionally arousing experiences. In F. Bermudez-Rattoni (Ed.), Neural plasticity and memory: From genes to brain imaging. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis.
Mclean, S. P., Garza, J. P., Wiebe, S. A., Dodd, M. D., Smith, K. B., Hibbing, J. R., & Espy, K. A. (2014). Applying the flanker task to political psychology: A research note. Political Psychology, 35(6), 831–840. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12056
Medina, J., Mele, C., & Murphy, H. (2019, April 28). One dead in synagogue shooting near San Diego; officials call it hate crime. The New York Times.
Mendez, M. F. (2017). A neurology of the conservative-liberal dimensions of political ideology. Journal of Clinical Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 29, 86–94. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.neuropsych.16030051
Menon, V., & Uddin, L. Q. (2010). Saliency, switching, attention and control: A network model of insula function. Brain Structure and Function, 214(5–6), 655–667. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-010-0262-0
Miller, M. E. (2019, December 27). ‘The war of races’: How a hateful ideology echoes through American history. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/12/27/war-races-how-hateful-ideology-echoes-through-american-history/
Miller, G. E., Chen, E., Fok, A. K., Walker, H., Lim, A., Nicholls,... Kobor, M. S. (2009). Low early-life social class leaves a biological residue manifested by decreased glucocorticoid and increased proinflammatory signaling. Proceedings of the National Association of Science, 106(34), 14716–14721. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0902971106
Mooney, C. (2011, June 13). Liberals are from the ACC, conservatives are from the amygdala? Discover. https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/liberals-are-from-the-acc-conservatives-are-from-the-amygdala. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167216636633
Moore, D. S. (2015). The developing genome: An introduction to behavioral epigenetics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Morgan, T. J. H., & Laland, K. N. (2012). The biological bases of conformity. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 6(87), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2012.00087
Mutz, D. C. (2018). Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences United States of America, 115(19), E4330–E4339. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1718155115
Nail, P. R., & Mcgregor, I. (2009). Conservative shift among liberals and conservatives following 9/11/01. Social Justice Research, 22(2), 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-009-0098-z
Nail, P. R., McGregor, I., Drinkwater, A. E., Steele, G. M., & Thompson, A. W. (2009). Threat causes liberals to think like conservatives. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 901–907. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.04.013
Nam, H. H., Jost, J. T., & Feldman, S. (2017). The neurobiology of fairness and social justice: An introduction. Social Justice Research, 30, 289–299.
Nam, H. H., Jost, J. T., Kaggen, L., Campbell-Meiklejohn, D., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2018). Amygdala structure and the tendency to regard the social system as legitimate and desirable. Nature Human Behaviour, 2, 133–138. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0248-5
Nam, H. H., Jost, J. T., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2013). Not for all the tea in China! Political ideology and the avoidance of dissonance-arousing situations. PLoS One, 8(4), e59837. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0059837
Napier, J. L., Huang, J., Vonasch, A. J., & Bargh, J. A. (2017). Superheroes for change: Physical safety promotes socially (but not economically) progressive attitudes among conservatives. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48(2), 187–195. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2315
Napier, J. L., & Jost, J. T. (2008). Why are conservatives happier than liberals? Psychological Science, 19(6), 565–572. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02124.x
Newman, D. B., Schwarz, N., Graham, J., & Stone, A. A. (2019). Conservatives report greater meaning in life than liberals. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(4), 494–503. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550618768241
Norris, C. J., Gollan, J., Berntson, G. G., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2010). The current status of research on the structure of evaluative space. Biological Psychology, 84(3), 422–436. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.03.011
Onraet, E., Van Hiel, A., & Dhont, K. (2013). The relationship between right-wing ideological attitudes and psychological Well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39, 509–522. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167213478199
Oosterhoff, B., Shook, N. J., & Ford, C. (2018). Is that disgust I see? Political ideology and biased visual attention. Behavioural Brain Research, 336(15), 227–235. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2017.09.005
Oudekerk, B. (2019, March 29). Hate Crime Statistics—Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Retrieved from https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hcs1317pp.pdf
Oxley, D. R., Smith, K. B., Alford, J. R., Hibbing, M. V., Miller, J. L., Scalora, M., … Hibbing, J. R. (2008). Political attitudes vary with physiological traits. Science, 321, 1667–1670.
Pedersen, W. S., Muftuler, L. T., & Larson, C. L. (2018). Conservatism and the neural circuitry of threat: Economic conservatism predicts greater amygdala–BNST connectivity during periods of threat vs safety. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 13(1), 43–51. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsx133
Pinel, J. P. J., & Barnes, S. J. (2018). Biopsychology (10th ed.). Essex, England: Pearson Education Ltd..
Pizarro, D. A., Inbar, Y., & Helion, C. (2011). On disgust and moral judgment. Emotion Review, 3(3), 267–268. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073911402394
Provençal, N., Suderman, M. J., Guillemin, C., Vitaro, F., Côté, S. M., Hallett, M., … Szyf, M. (2014). Association of childhood chronic physical aggression with a DNA methylation signature in adult human T cells. PLoS One, 9(4), e89839. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0089839
Rabin, J. S. (1975). Effects of varying sucrose reinforcers and amobarbital sodium on positive contrast in rats. Learning and Behavior, 3(4), 290–294.
Rabin, J. S. (1986). Adaptation across the lifespan: Evolution, future shock, and sex roles. In J. D. Sinnott (Ed.), Sex roles and aging: Theory and research from a systems perspective. Basel, CH: Karger.
Rabin, J. S. (2006, October). Are we doomed by our genetic differences? Paper presented at the 4th annual University of Maryland Faculty conference. Rethinking and Relearning Diversity, University of Maryland, College Park, MD.
Reich, W. (1970). The mass psychology of fascism (V. R. Carfagno, translation). New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. (Original work published 1946)
Richardson, M. K., Strange, B. A., & Dolan, R. J. (2004). Encoding of emotional memories depends on amygdala and hippocampus and their interactions. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 278–285. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1190
Robertson, C., Mele, C., & Tavernise, S. (2018, October 27). 11 killed in synagogue massacre; suspect charged with 29 counts. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/.../active-shooter-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting.htm
Rodriguez, G. (2017, July 21). This is your brain on storytelling: The chemistry of modern communication. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/giovannirodriguez/2017/07/21/this-is-your-brain-on-storytelling-the-chemistry-of-modern-communication/#72435be8c865
Rough, J. (2019, March 30). From moms to medical doctors, burnout is everywhere these days. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../from-moms-to-medical-doctors-burnout-is-everywh.
Rule, N. O. (2014). Cultural neuroscience: A historical introduction and overview. Psychology and Culture, 9(2). https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1128
Rule, N. O., & Ambady, N. (2010). Democrats and republicans can be differentiated from their faces. PLoS One, 5(1), e8733. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0008733
Rule, N. O., Freeman, J. B., & Ambady, N. (2013). Culture in social neuroscience: A review. Social Neuroscience, 8, 3–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2012
Rule, N. O., Freeman, J. B., Moran, J. M., Gabrieli, J. D. E., Adams, R. B., Jr., & Ambady, N. (2010). Voting behavior is reflected in amygdala response across cultures. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 5(2–3), 349–355. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsp046
Rüsch, S., Weber, N., Lieb, M., Philipsen, K., Tuescher, A. O., Ebert, O., … van Elst, L. T. (2012). Small amygdala-high aggression? The role of the amygdala in modulating aggression in healthy subjects. The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, 13(1), 75–81. https://doi.org/10.3109/15622975.2010.541282
Rutjens, B. T., & Kay, A. C. (2017). Compensatory control theory and the psychological importance of perceiving order. In M. Burkowski, I. Fritsche, A. Guinote, & M. Kofta (Eds.), Coping with lack of control in a social world. New York, NY: Routledge.
Santos, S., Almeida, I., Oliveiros, B., & Castelo-Branco, M. (2016). The role of the amygdala in facial trustworthiness processing: A systematic review and meta-analyses of fMRI studies. PLoS One, 11(11), e0167276. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0167276
Sapolsky, R. M. & Share, L. J. (2004). A pacific culture among wild baboons: Its emergence and transmission. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0020106
Saunders, B., & Ngo, J. (2016). The right-wing authoritarianism scale. In V. Zeigler-Hill & T. K. Shackelford (Eds.), Encyclopedia of personality and individual differences. New York, NY: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1262-1
Schaller, M. (2014). When and how disgust is and is not implicated in the behavioral immune system. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 8(4), 251–256. https://doi.org/10.1037/ebs0000019
Schaller, M. (2016). The behavioral immune system. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The handbook of evolutionary psychology (Vol. 1, 2nd ed., pp. 206–224). New York, NY: Wiley.
Schlenker, B. R., Chambers, J. R., & Le, B. M. (2012). Conservatives are happier than liberals, but why? Political ideology, personality, and life satisfaction. Journal of Research in Personality, 26(2), 127–146.
Schnuerch, R., & Gibbons, H. (2014). A review of neurocognitive mechanisms of social conformity. Social Psychology, 45, 466–478. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000213
Schreiber, D. (2017). Neuropolitics: Twenty years later. Politics and the Life Sciences, 36(2), 114–131. https://doi.org/10.1017/pls.2017.25
Schreiber, D., Fonzo, G., Simmons, A. N., Dawes, C. T., Flagan, T., Fowler, J. H., & Paulus, M. P. (2013). Red brain, blue brain: Evaluative processes differ in democrats and republicans. PLoS One, 8(2), e52970. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052970
Senior, J. (2019, February 10). Our brains can’t handle the trump era. New York Times, p. 2 SR.
Settle, J. E., Dawes, C. T., Loewen, P. J., & Panagopoulos, C. (2017). Negative affectivity, political contention, and turnout: A genopolitics field experiment. Political Psychology, 38, 1065–1082. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12379
Shook, N. J., & Fazio, R. H. (2009). Political ideology, exploration of novel stimuli, and attitude formation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 995–998. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.04.003
Shults, S., Opie, K. C., Nelson, E., Atkinson, Q. D., & Dunbar, R. (2014). Evolution of primate social systems. In R. I. M. Dunbar, C. Gamble, & J. A. J. Gowlett (Eds.), Lucy to language: The benchmark papers (1st ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199652594.003.0014
Sidanius, J. & Kurzban, R. (2013). Toward an evolutionarily informed political psychology. In L. Huddy, D. O. Sears, & J. S. Levy (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political psychology (pp. 205–236). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Smith, K. B., Oxley, D. R., Hibbing, M. V., Alford, J. R., & Hibbing, J. R. (2011). Disgust sensitivity and the neurophysiology of left-right political orientations. PLoS One, 6(10), e25552. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0025552
Spark Neuro (2016). Measuring emotions: A foray into voters’ mindsets. https://sparkneuro.com/measuring-emotions-a-foray-into-voters-mindsets/
Sprengelmeyer, R., Rausch, M., Eysel, U. T., & Przuntek, H. (1998). Neural structures associated with recognition of facial expressions of basic emotions. Proceedings Biological Sciences, 265(1409), 1927–1931. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.1998.0522
Stavrova, O. & Luhmann, M. (2016). Are conservatives happier than liberals? Not always and not everywhere. Journal of Research in Personality, 63, 29–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2016.04.011
Takeuchi, H., Taki, Y., Nouchi, R., Sekiguchi, A., Kotozaki, Y., Miyauchi, C. M., … Kawashima, R. (2014). Regional gray matter density is associated with achievement motivation: Evidence from voxel-based morphometry. Brain Structure & Function, 219(1), 71–83. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-012-0485-3
Talhelm, T. (2018). Hong Kong liberals are WEIRD: Analytic thought increases support for liberal policies. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(5), 717–728. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167217746151
Talhelm, T., Haidt, J., Oishi, S., Zhang, X., Miao, F. F., & Chen, S. (2015). Liberals think more analytically (more “WEIRD”) than conservatives. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(2), 250–267. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167214563672
Terrizzi, J. A., Jr., Shooka, N. A., & Ventis, W. L. (2010). Disgust: A predictor of social conservatism and prejudicial attitudes toward homosexuals. Personality and Individual Differences, 49(6), 587–592. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.05.024
Todorov, A., Baron, S. G., & Oosterhof, N. N. (2008). Evaluating face trustworthiness: A model based approach. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 3(2), 119–127. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsn009
Toffler, A. (1970). Future shock. New York, NY: Bantam Books.
Toffler, A. (1980). The third wave. New York, NY: Bantam Books.
Tullett, A. M., Hart, W. P., Feinberg, M., Fetterman, Z. J., & Gottlieb, S. (2016). Is ideology the enemy of inquiry? Examining the link between political orientation and lack of interest in novel data. Journal of Research in Personality, 63, 123–132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2016.06.018
Tuschman, A. (2013). Our political nature: The evolutionary origins of what divides us. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
Uddin, L. Q., Nomi, J. S., Hébert-Seropian, B., Ghaziri, J., & Boucher, O. (2017). Structure and function of the human insula. Journal of Clinical Neurophysiology, 34(4), 300–306. https://doi.org/10.1097/WNP.0000000000000377
Uono, S., Sato, W., Kochiyama, T., Sawada, R., Kubota, Y., Yoshimura, S., & Toichi, M. (2016). Neural substrates of the ability to recognize facial expressions: A voxel-based morphometry study. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(3), 487–495. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw142
van Veen, V., Krug, M. K., Schooler, J. W., & Carter, C. S. (2009). Neural activity predicts attitude change in cognitive dissonance. Nature Neuroscience, 12(11), 1469–1474. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2413
Vance, J. D. (2016). Hillbilly elegy: A memoir of a family and culture in crisis. New York, NY: Harper.
Vigil, J. M. (2010). Political leanings vary with facial expression processing and psychosocial functioning. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 13(5), 547–558. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430209356930
Vine, B. (2015, April 28). The neuroscience of politics. Brain World. Retrieved from https://brainworldmagazine.com/the-neuroscience-of-politics/
Wallace, L. (2011, April 12). Are liberals and conservatives hard-wired to disagree? The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/…liberals…conservatives…/237075/
Waltes, R., Chiocchetti, A. G., & Freitag, C. M. (2016). The neurobiological basis of human aggression: A review on genetic and epigenetic mechanisms. American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B, Neuropsychiatric Genetics, 171(5), 650–675. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajmg.b.32388. Epub 2015 Oct 22.
Weissflog, M., Choma, B. L., Dywan, J., van Noordt, J. R., & Segalowitz, S. J. (2013). The political (and physiological) divide: Political orientation, performance monitoring, and the anterior cingulate response. Social Neuroscience, 8(5), 434–447. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2013.833549
Westen, D. (2008). The political brain: The role of emotion in deciding the fate of the nation. New York, NY: Public Affairs.
Westen, D., Blagov, P. S., Harenski, K., Kilts, C., & Hamann, S. (2006). Neural bases of motivated reasoning: An FMRI study of emotional constraints on partisan political judgment in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Journal of Cognitive and Neuroscience, 18(11), 1947–1958. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2006.18.11.1947
Williams, J. C. (2017). White working class: Overcoming class cluelessness in America. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.
Winston, J. S., Strange, B. A., O’Doherty, J., & Dolan, R. J. (2002). Automatic and intentional brain responses during evaluation of trustworthiness of faces. Nature Neuroscience, 5(3), 277–283. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn816
Wojcik, S. P., Hovasapian, A., Graham, J., Moty, M., & Ditto, P. H. (2015). Conservatives report, but liberals display, greater happiness. Science, 347(6227), 1243–1246. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1260817
Woody, A., Hooker, E. D., Zoccola, P. M., & Dickerson, S. S. (2018). Social-evaluative threat, cognitive load, and the cortisol and cardiovascular stress response. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 97, 149–155. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2018.07.009
Woollett, K., & Maguire, E. A. (2011). Acquiring “the knowledge” of London’s layout drives structural brain changes. Current Biology, 21(24), 2109–2114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2011.11.018
Wrangham, R. (2018). Two types of aggression in human evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(2) 245–253. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1713611115.
Wu, H., Luo, Y., & Feng, C. (2016). Neural signatures of social conformity: A coordinate-based activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of functional brain imaging studies. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 71, 101–111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.08.038
Yoshimura, S., Sato, W., Kochiyama, T., Uono, S., Sawada, R., Kubota, Y., & Toichi, M. (2017). Gray matter volumes of early sensory regions are associated with individual differences in sensory processing. Human Brain Mapping, 38(12), 6206–6217. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.23822
Young, D. G., Bagozzi, B. E., Goldring, A., Poulsen, S., & Drouin, E. (2019, November 20). Psychology, political ideology, and humor appreciation: Why is satire so liberal? Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8, 134–147. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000157
Zamboni, G., Gozzi, M., Krueger, F., Duhamel, J., Sirigu, A., & Grafman, J. (2009). Individualism, conservatism, and radicalism as criteria for processing political beliefs: A parametric fMRI study. Social Neuroscience, 4(5), 367–383. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470910902860308
Zaveri, M. & Fortin, J. (2019, May 1). Shooting at U.N.C. Charlotte on final day of classes. The New York Times, p. A15.
Zhang, R. (Ed.). (2018). The epigenetics of autoimmunity. Cambridge, MA: Elsevier Science.
Zhong, W., Cristoforia, I., Bulbuliac, J., Kruegerde, F., & Grafman, J. (2017). Biological and cognitive underpinnings of religious fundamentalism. Neuropsychologia, 100, 18–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.04.009
Zimbardo, P. (1969). The cognitive control of motivation. Glenview, IL: Scott/Foresman.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rabin, J.S. (2021). Blue Brain-Red Brain: The Biopsychology of Political Beliefs and Behavior. In: Sinnott, J.D., Rabin, J.S. (eds) The Psychology of Political Behavior in a Time of Change. Identity in a Changing World. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38270-4_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38270-4_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-38269-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-38270-4
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)