Meant to write about this last week but was too busy - Ellen Weber over at Know More Media's Brain Based Business wrote about Research finds Political Orientation Hardwired into Brains. 

Why not? if sexual orientation, some claim, is hardwired, what about political orientation? In Political tastes a brain matter it was detailed that "…A study has found that the brain neurons of people of liberal beliefs and those with conservative views fire differently when confronted with tough choices, suggesting that some political divides may be hard-wired."

In this case, it's Liberals vs. Conservatives (though I suppose you could substitute in Democrats and Republicans):

"….The two sides even appeared to learn differently. Because of these contrasting approaches,  New York University political scientist, David Amodio, investigated to see if brains of liberals and conservatives react in different ways to the same stimuli.

Check out Amodio’s fascinating results. The match-up was unmistakable: respondents who had described themselves as liberals showed "significantly greater conflict-related neural activity" when the hypothetical situation called for a break in routine. Conservatives were less flexible, refusing to deviate from old habits "despite signals that this … should be changed."

"…The question that remains is … Are you liberal because your brain is hardwired for freer choices? Or would more conservative neuron activity predict more conservative choices in your organization?"

Well, I'd argue that being a conservative in an age where things are changing so quickly is dangerous, far more dangerous than being a liberal, according to these definations.   Being more "liberally" wired would allow individuals to respond quickly to massive changes that are occurring around us in a blurring rate.

Being a conservative, it would seem to me, is like turning your vision, you gaze away from reality and living in a made up reality - that's simpler; it's often the case that people will create a simpler reality as a reaction to changes they can't process quickly enough.

What would be more interesting - is to take the research father and see if the changes in our environment over the last 50 years or so, have created brain hard-wiring that is more liberal or conservative than it might ordinarily have evolved to be, in other times that are not changing so quickly.

Just a thought on this Sunday.