Neuroscientists Can Predict Your Political Views with a Brain Scan
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 18, 2013 by admin in Politics
Monday, February 18th, 2013Not clear on what your political beliefs are? No need to slice your head open or get an MRI, we have some quick handy quizzes to do the job!
Did you know that a brain scan can predict your political leanings with 83 percent accuracy? A Smithsonian Magazine piece the other day about research done at the University of Exeter offered some surprising insights into the reflexive responses in the brains of a small set of subjects which demonstrated a correlation between the subjects’ political leanings and their response patterns to various stimuli. In a nutshell, the study suggested that liberals tend to be more willing to accept risk and novelty, and show stronger bonds with broad social connections, while conservatives tend to have more pronounced “fight or flight” responses to risk, and are more stimulated by narrower social connections. See the full article and its embedded links for a more nuanced picture, it’s not quite that simple.
But you don’t have to scan or slice open your brain to figure out what your political leanings are. In an era of politics shaped by the “values vote” political messaging masterminded by Karl Rove and Frank Luntz, a lot of us are not quite as liberal or conservative as we think. Strong sentiments about issues like abortion, war, and gay marriage can manipulate your thinking into a very polarized position, when in fact you may in every other way espouse values of the party you think you detest. But don’t worry, there’s a test to help you sort things out. Actually a bunch of them. With just twenty a/b questions, the Pew Research Political Typology Quiz informed me that I – along with 10% of the population – am a “New Coalition Democrat”. I of course bristle slightly at this; if I have to put myself in one of the current boxes available, I think I’d be a weird hybrid of Green Party and Libertarian. The common red vs blue framework doesn’t really capture the values of someone like me who thinks money itself is an obsolete concept, which renders a lot of other dialog pointless. Anyway, adding a little more nuance, we have the Political Philosophy Quiz, which identified me (with relative accuracy) as a “socially progressive, moderately capitalist, libertarian pacifist”. The On the Issues PartyMatch Quiz assessed me as 55% Democrat, 53% Green Party, and 37% Republican. A little more accurate in some ways, but all of these quizzes highlight one thing, which is that we’re stuck in a gridlocked bipartisan system that doesn’t really represent anyone’s values, except those who are inside the game, or happy to take their marching orders from those who are.
Probably the most useful of these online quizzes for someone like me was the About.com Political Loyalty Quiz, which asked questions like “Which bumper sticker would you be most likely to put on your car?” and offered choices like “At Least In Vietnam, Bush Had An Exit Strategy” or “Nice Hummer. Sorry About Your Penis”. What about you? Do you know where you really stand? Or or are your party convictions really based on single issues?
White Trash Pride
[ 6 Comments ]Posted on April 16, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Friday, April 16th, 2010Why are rednecks and hillbillies always trying to co-opt my heritage and ethnic identity?
 We’re still struggling with the White Trash brand, as you can see. |
You know America has really gone to hell when a self-respecting white supremacist can’t attend a tea party rally without getting harassed by some elitist intellectual teabagger type. We suggested a while back that the country may be headed for some kind of red vs. blue civil war, but this thinking was based on the pretty narrow evidence of two-party voting behavior during a national election. Now that we’ve had a chance to see America showing its true (mostly white) colors, we’re rethinking things a bit, and think the real civil disorder will be just that: civil disorder. And mostly amongst the hard-to-define factions known as rednecks, hillbillies, and white trash. Yes, while American spatial mobility seems to have slowed around 2007, we’re still left with a lot people from different American subcultures transplanted to a variety of urban areas. And as the old saying goes, “you can take the boy out of the country” yadda yadda. I was reminded of how powerful these subcultural influences can be recently when I used the term “white trash” in mixed company. And by “mixed company”, I mean a group of white people from various parts of the country, some of whom are only spittin’ distance from their more rural roots. I really thought that in an age when so many oppressed groups of people had reclaimed the power of words used against them – i.e.: gay men calling themselves fags, black people calling themselves niggers, etc. – that my reference to my white trash background was pretty safe. How wrong I was. The hilarious arguments that ensued regarding what the differences were between rednecks, hillbillies, and white trash inspired me to do a series of utterly unscientific pop-anthropology overviews of the distinctions. Since my snuff-dippin’ grandmother from West Virginia always bragged about how the main thing that made her not a redneck was the fact that her family fought for the Union during the civil war, that’s the first line I’m going to draw. The strongest image in the redneck brand seems to be the confederate flag, so I’m going to assert that since grandma didn’t come from the hills, and wasn’t a redneck, she must have been white trash. Which gives me license to claim a certain expertise on this group. We’ll go into more detail in upcoming pieces (besides, we already covered how to talk like a hillbilly) , but I figure we’ll cover some basics right now. First of all, you’ll need a name. An awful lot of my white trash (see how comfortably I use the term now?) ancestors had that familiar “billy bob” or dotty mae” theme going on, so I highly recommend this white trash name generator. Two other fundamentals in life are food and housing. As a culinary guide, I can comfortably recommend White Trash Cooking
Would You Vote For A Third Political Party?
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on September 25, 2009 by admin in Politics
Friday, September 25th, 2009Are you one of the many that feels that neither of the two dominant parties represents your values accurately?
I’m what you might call a reluctant Democrat. Although I felt good about voting for Obama, I’m experiencing some consumer remorse, and I cringed as I voted for Kerry, Gore, and Dukakis. Worthy of note is the fact that voting for Dukakis started a long tradition of voting only to avoid having a George Bush in office, and that prior to that I was a cynical young punk that considered himself more or less apolitical. Which brings me almost full circle. I’m so cynical at this point that I have almost come to the conclusion that I think Washington is so corrupt and self-interested and that the two parties are so similar that there’s almost no point in voting. Before I do that though, I decided with some resolve recently that I’m going to “throw my vote away” if necessary in the next presidential election. By that I mean vote third party if the two major candidates reflect my values as poorly as they have for several election cycles. As I explored my thoughts on all of this recently, I came to a disturbing decision. I may just be a Libertarian. Although something about the political party that calls itself Libertarian gives me the willies with their restrained cowboy capitalism, a lot of the principles that can be described as Libertarian (as in this Wikipedia entry) are right up my alley. We’ve talked about Red vs Blue both jokingly and semi-seriously in the past, but we’d love to know: If there were a third party that represented your values, do you think you might vote for it? Vote below and let us know if you think we’re adequately represented by a two party system. Read the rest of this entry »
The Next Civil War: Red vs Blue
[ 7 Comments ]Posted on August 10, 2009 by admin in Politics
Monday, August 10th, 2009It may be the beginning of the week, but it’s the end of the country.
Slate recently ran a How is America Going to End game/survey in which you get to choose the way that you predict the American Empire will come to an end. Well, the results are in, and I have to say I’m a little disappointed that my chosen scenario – the Red vs. Blue Civil War – came in 13th. That map on the left highlights an interesting fact: the whole red state vs. blue state debate becomes a little irrelevant when you look at things on a more granular level. Those aren’t mega-highrises of the future, those are voters by population density. And you’ll notice that most of the spikes are blue. An American civil war may seem preposterous, especially when a crazy Russian academic predicts it, but the re-emergence of the “bubba militias” makes it seem a little less far-fetched in a country that’s been split in two by Rovian/Luntzian politics. When winning is everything, everyone loses. It says a lot when a large group of people (the average knee-jerk, ignorant Republican voter) gets behind a trillion-dollar activity that kills thousands of Americans but violently protests one that is intended to save American lives. I personally wouldn’t be surprised if things eventually got ugly on a larger scale; when you get a bunch of ignorant PBR-swilling yahoos riled up, there’s usually going to be some kind of fight. But I’m not worried. We city-folk have this one covered in spades, and we have maps and charts to prove it. First of all, we all know blue voters are smarter, and all the smart Read the rest of this entry »
Did You Take The Red Pill Or The Blue Pill?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on July 24, 2009 by admin in Politics
Friday, July 24th, 2009Shirts or skins? Red or blue? Republican or Democrat? Liberal Or conservative? Is life really that simple? Maybe an online quiz can help.
I’m confused. I wish the words liberal and conservative would rediscover their meaning and stop consorting with scoundrels like the Democratic and Republican parties. And I wish we could de-politicize colors. Although it was pretty easy to choose a color in the great red and blue contest of 2008, I think I’m really something more like purple, given what red and blue have come to mean. And purple just seems a little indecisive somehow. But who – if they’re paying attention - wouldn’t be a little undecided, in a time when both near-socialists like myself and a rabid neo-con like Free Republic’s Jim Robinson joke about the need for revolution, rather than voting. I think I’d fall into the liberal category simply because I don’t want some demented, rapture-driven Ayn Rand capitalist deciding who we can have sex with, or racist nutjobs like the GOP base deciding anything for us. But I can’t say I’m ecstatic with the current administration either. I know that campaigns are poll-driven marketing machines designed to appeal to nebulous but emotional voter values (like mine), but I have to admit I still feel a little suckered by the “Hope & Change” pitch. I see the former fading in a lot of people, and very little of the latter. So rather than continue thinking for myself, which has never done me any good, I decided to submit my indecision to science, and took the Pew Research Typology Test. Give it a try, the results were surprising. So surprising in fact (it pegged me as a Conservative Democrat) that now I’ve given up on science as well. I found this Democratic Loyalty Test much more informative, with questions and choices like: Read the rest of this entry »