Spiders, Maggots, Politics

It's a golden rule of democracy that people are free thinkers. There's just one problem: we aren't wired that way—not, at least, according to a new study that probes past the rational mind in search of a biological basis for our political beliefs. The research, led by Rice University political scientist John Alford and published today in the journal Science, attempts to connect the dots between a person's sensitivity to threatening images—a large spider on someone's face, a bloodied person and maggot-filled wound—and the strength of their support for conservative or liberal policies. The subjects of the small but intriguing study were chosen through random phone calls to residents of Lincoln, Neb., and consisted of 46 mostly white Midwesterners who self-identified as having strong political beliefs. After filling out a survey of their political and demographic characteristics, participants were attached to a machine that measures arousal by increased moisture in the skin and presented with a slideshow of 30-odd images, including the three threatening ones. For comparison, the subjects were also shown three nonthreatening pictures—a bunny, a bowl of fruit and a happy child—within a separate sequence of slides. The more sensitive a participant was to the images, the wetter their skin got. Alford and his colleagues then correlated this with their political survey results.

The results seem to suggest that our ideas about the world are shaped by deep, involuntary reactions to the things we see. As evidence, the study found that greater sensitivity to the images was linked to more fervent support for a conservative agenda—including opposition to immigration, gun control, gay marriage, abortion rights and pacifism, and support for military spending, warrantless searches, the Iraq War, school prayer and the truth of the Bible. In other words, on the level of physiological reactions in the conservative mind, illegal immigrants may =s piders = gay marriages = maggot-filled wounds = abortion rights = bloodied faces. Before liberals start cheering, however, they don't come off much more noble or nuanced. They were less sensitive to the threatening images, and more likely to support open immigration policies, pacifism and gun control. But according to the research, that's hardly desirable, since it suggests that liberals may display mammal-on-a-hot-rock languor in the face of legitimate threats. "They actually don't show any difference in physical response between a picture of a spider on someone's face and a picture of a bunny," Alford tells NEWSWEEK. Alford spoke with Tony Dokoupil about the emerging connections between politics and the perceived intensity of threats. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What surprised you the most?
John Alford: The clarity of the result. We came to this work after establishing that there is a genetic component to political ideology, so that made us interested in understanding how you get from the genes to political attitudes. One way into that territory was physiology. But I really didn't expect such crisp results.

Still, does the sample size worry you?
A small sample usually makes it harder to get to a level of statistical significance [because the results must be particularly one-sided to register]. So the fact that we [make it] is really quite powerful for a first attempt to explore this area. We'll follow up with larger groups, but what this needs more people for is to divide it out into different categories, rather than challenge the basic results.

On the level of physiological reactions, in the conservative mind, are spiders and illegal immigrants the same?
Physiology is a blunt way to go from attitudes into biology, so it's not clear exactly how those two things might connect. But that's possible. The immediate way we experience threats might predispose people to find socially protective policies [like tight border control] more or less persuasive. For people that have low levels of support for these socially protective policies, on the other hand, they actually don't show any difference in physical response between a picture of a spider on someone's face and a picture of a bunny. So a way of thinking about this is that there's a portion of the population that is physically primed to be alert to threat, and that feels it physically, and they're more likely to support a set of positions shaped by that response to threat.

Other studies have focused on the psychology, rather than biology, of political beliefs. How are the two strains of research related?
All combined, they show us that there are roughly three influences on political opinion. One is a biological predisposition. Our study is a small window into that. Another is traditional socialization, such as the fact that I grew up during the depression, was in a lower middle-class family, and my parents were Republicans. The last is adult experience, reasoning power, or what's traditionally called free will.
 
How do those work out in practice?
If you ask someone why they support the Iraq War, they would probably give you some answers out of those latter two categories. They would make an intellectual argument: we were faced with a threat and this was the right choice. If you pushed, they might also mention socialization: well, I'm an Army brat, my dad was a colonel, my brother's in the Marines. One thing that they'd never say, in my experience is I'm simply biologically predisposed to be sensitive to threats. What's really important here is that we're not dismissing intellectual choice or experience. We're just asking for a place at the table for biology.
 
If political beliefs are hardened by biology, how do you explain flip-flops?
You'd only have trouble explaining them if you considered biology to be deterministic. By the same token, if you thought childhood socialization was everything, you couldn't explain a flip-flop. The person's childhood didn't change.
 
If biology isn't deterministic, is it at least probabilistic?
It's a question of how easy it is to get from event A to belief B. Russia invades Georgia. What's your response? Military action or be nice to the Russians? You can get to either position intellectually, but how easy it is influenced by whether you experience it as an immediate physical threat or not. I don't think that biology is destiny, but for the general public, I want people to believe that it's something. Right now it's seen as nothing. It's given zero weight.
 
Tell that to the people making political ads with packs of wolves and ominous 3 a.m. phone calls.
That's interesting, actually, because this study shows that the ability for [scare tactics] to work may not be uniform across the population. As for why political strategists have long used threatening images, it seems that sometimes people who do something have a sort of folk wisdom that exceeds the general knowledge, and even the academic knowledge.