PSYCHOLOGY

Spiders, Maggots, Politics

A small but intriguing study finds that liberals and conservatives react differently when shown threatening images.

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  • Posted By: FredJ @ 09/30/2008 2:30:47 PM

    So conservatives are more sensitive people. They respond viscerally when they see a person in trouble (with a spider on their face). Are conservatives more sensitive to people in financial trouble?

  • Posted By: Brian0901 @ 09/22/2008 9:51:12 AM

    Sounds like conseratives are scared of their shadow. I always suspected they were.

  • Posted By: observer101 @ 09/20/2008 9:53:11 PM

    Show a liberal a pic of a cross in a front yard or children praying in school their heart rate increases, they sweat and begin to show anger. Show them the Twin Towers burning and ppl falling to the ground, then their heart rate slows down and they remind themselves its not real...Show them Obamas picture then they go into a deep trance and chant "Obama for President"..

    • Posted By: mcourtmiller @ 09/21/2008 9:03:56 AM

      Oh yeah? Show a bible-belt conservative of a slave getting whipped and beaten, and their physiology grinds to a halt. How's that for racial sensitivity? Its looking like the results of this election are going to be the equivalent of a cross burning in my front yard...

      • Posted By: observer101 @ 09/21/2008 1:02:58 PM

        I was referring to religious crosses...For instance Easter or some religious holiday. Perhaps pictures of a elementary school Christmas party w/ children passing red and green Christmas cookies around also makes you angry. How about pics of the Ten Commandments by a court house .....Mad are you? You must be liberal...So quick to bring racism into a conversation... You just proved my point ..thanks lib.

        • Posted By: topknot5 @ 09/21/2008 2:33:12 PM

          Saying someones political stand has anything to do with christianity then you have no common sense. I would bet theres just as many liberals that consider themselves as Republicans.

          I lived in the bible belt. Those so called christian republicans would be the first to make some sort or racist comment about someone that wasnt white. I'd call them hypocrites before I'd call them christians. Think of that "observer101" next time you are stading around having a not so christian conversation with someone.

          When I saw the planes hit the twin towers, I did what every AMERICAN did......I cried and asked God why someone would do that. Are you trying to say everyone in the towers was republican? I'd say not. I'd say that people in general were affected by that, regardless of their political stand. I'd try a different approach if I were you if you were trying to make any valid point in your post.


          Do you even remember learning "thou shalt not judge" in your christian education? It amazes me how many people call themselves christain turn around and do un-christian like things. Before you name call and call other people with a different political stance than you, not christian, think about some not so plesant questions you'll have to answer to St. Peter at the gates of heaven.....If you get that far.

          • Posted By: observer101 @ 09/21/2008 7:15:51 PM

            At what point did I imply I was Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Wiccan or Athiest?....Liberal thinking includes wiping out any form of religion in any forum. Unless your at home, even then if a Lib is in earshot of praying they practically think their brain is frying and have to sue for damages and to remove prayer from their neighborhood...Ask a liberal if we should be fighting a war on terror, theyd comment "What terror?. This is Bushs' war"...Ask a Lib if we should say the Pledge of Allegience in school, theyd say do away with it...Esp. since it has the word God in it..I should correct myself and say "todays libs" because creators of the Constitution and Dec of Independence were quite Liberal..But I digress...You guys hate conservatives and Bush SOOO much you are willing to say that we arent under any real threat of another 9/11 event and that this is paranoia created by Bush himself...Yeah right....

            • Posted By: topknot5 @ 09/21/2008 9:23:04 PM

              First off....I am a liberal. I believe in god. I believe people should have a right to worship they way they want as long as its not forced on the people around them that dont share the same beliefs and as long as it doesnt hurt other people. My brain doesnt fry when I hear someone praying, I think its great that people have faith. In regards to war on terror, it depends on who is telling the story. I believe everyone believes in it, just that it hasnt been that well planned out in the bush administration. We didnt even finish the first war on terror we started. Instead of finishing off Bin Laden we decided to deplete our troops by jumping into a second war and now the person who was behind 9/11 runs free while we kill off our soldiers (peoples fathers and mothers, children, husbands wifes) in a war that was never properly organized in the first place. Pledge of allegiance is fine in school. If anyone is a conspiracy theorist it sounds more like you than the people you are accusing.

              None of your post is true. Just because you assign all those traits to a group of people. That would be like saying all conservatives are the same and have the same beliefs. Some conservatives are right wing nut jobs and some arent, same with liberals. Jerks reside in both sides of the spectrum and to say any differently is just plain naive. I belive being a liberal stands for letting people make their own choices in their lives and leaving them be to do so as long as it doesnt hurt anyone else. I believe the important thing to the majority of Americans is the economy, the environment, healthcare, etc. Some (not all) republicans would make the entire platform about anti-gay, anti choice, guns for everyone. Who cares about the stuff that effect the majority of american citizens....To each his own I guess.

              I've never heard any liberals say anything of the sort about terrorists or about 9/11. The only people I've heard say that are some of the conservatives pointing fingers saying thats what all liberals believe because somehow it makes them feel better about themselves. Easier to point fingers and call someone else dirty without any such evidence, then it is to look at themselves and their own failures and realize that they themselves arent a good person and in turn makes them worse then their liberal "enemies".

              Anyway, no need to reply to this. None of your posts are factual in the least bit. Stereotypes and assumptions are the only content of your posts. Just a ranting and raving of an obviously miserable person. So unhappy with your life that you have to assume the worst in people so it makes you feel like a better person.

              I will end this with "God bless America. The land of the free and the home of the brave", because we have liberals, independants and conservatives. We are all AMERICAN in the end. Who the heck cares what side of the fence the live on as long as they are a good person and treat others

  • Posted By: it's about the future @ 09/21/2008 3:15:32 PM

    This "genetic component to political idealogy" is bumf, and a bad joke.

    In our house of democrats, I am the one who collects the spiders happily and puts them outside. The rest of the household would no go near them with a barge pole.

    Politics, as with religion tends to be culturally transmitted.

    When people leave home for whatever reason, they get a second chance to think again about what they really think politically. That is, if they read and take an active interest in the world around them.

    At fifteen years of age I walked out of the service at church while the priest gave his sermon, because he was preaching ani-union. It felt wrong to me and I knew enough working people that it wasn't right.

    Not genetics.

  • Posted By: mcourtmiller @ 09/21/2008 9:01:11 AM

    Oh yeah? Show an Ultra Conservative a photo of a slave getting whipped, and their physiology grinds to a halt. How's that for racial sensitivity...

  • Posted By: OH-bama Mama @ 09/20/2008 5:03:07 PM

    Comment: In the immortal word of Keith Olbermann: BOO!
    Hopefully this will scare all the so-called conservatives off and make them go away, at least for a while. I'm tired of them spamming up my email box with their forwarded forwarded forwarded messages they get from God knows where that have not a modicum of truth to them. Hello? Ever hear of snopes or factcheck? No, better to be afraid. Be vewy, vewy afraid. Egad.

  • Posted By: trazer @ 09/19/2008 9:28:20 PM

    Huh? The only thing I can see from this story - I hope this worthless study that has no results was NOT funded by my tax dollars. Given that it is a university study - Rice - most likely it was. American taxpayers cannot afford this type of worthless nonsense. I really don't care which party and candidate you are for....but come now...Tony Dokoupil | - tell us how much $$$ this has now cost us. There are so many worthless university studies.

    • Posted By: OH-bama Mama @ 09/20/2008 5:00:33 PM

      In the immortal word of Keith Olbermann: BOO!
      Hopefully this will scare all the so-called conservatives off and make them go away, at least for a while. I'm tired of them spamming up my email box with their forwarded forwarded forwarded messages they get from God knows where that have not a modicum of truth to them. Hello? Ever hear of snopes or factcheck? No, better to be afraid. Be vewy, vewy afraid. Egad.

  • Posted By: desertfox118 @ 09/19/2008 3:47:20 PM

    There are essentially 3 kinds of people in the world: 1) the person who thinks "I am my brother's keeper" (liberals), 2) the person who thinks "My brother should take care of himself" (conservatives), and 3) the "person" who thinks "I have no brothers, only objects to be used for my own amusement" (the thankfully small % of sociopaths among us). This over-simplifies things, but is the crux of the difference.

    • Posted By: rockye @ 09/20/2008 11:25:01 AM

      HEY DESERT FOX: HOLA
      GREAT THINKING! YOU DO HAVE A POINT! AS A MATTER OF FACT, YOU I HAVE SEEN A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE SPECIAL NEEDS. THEY NEED SOMEONE!

  • Posted By: A.J.S. @ 09/19/2008 4:06:18 AM

    I can't help stating what to me seems obvious: there is a confusion between what is merely a physiological response and the "biological", which here implies heritability, of the genetic kind. Our fear responses can be acquired through experience, at an early or even not so early age and so mimic "instinctive" ones. (think P.T.S.D). This obsession with genetics is so tiresome, futile and even wasteful. Wouldn't the money used for this study be better used elsewhere?

    • Posted By: rogerhall @ 09/19/2008 10:45:40 AM

      This was not a study of genetics. It was a study of the correlation between physiological responses and political paradigms.

      • Posted By: A.J.S. @ 09/20/2008 3:47:23 AM

        And I quote: "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." Not genetics?

  • Posted By: LudwigVanBeet @ 09/19/2008 7:41:43 PM

    But how do you explain the Repig's lack of speaking intelligently, or reading and thinking abilities? Where do they get their Greed, Hate , prejudice? Is it something lacking in their JEANS, a short subject I am sure.How come the Repig women like Ann C. and Laura Ing. foam at the mouth as they rant and rave?

  • Posted By: nomejo @ 09/19/2008 6:15:53 PM

    Wow, all this study might help prove is that self-described conservatives are scared easily and are more susceptible to irrational fear-mongering. Sad really!

  • Posted By: Anansi @ 09/19/2008 2:13:28 PM

    A scientific study with a whopping 46 test subjects, all from the Mid West, and almost entirely caucasian.
    I am in shock and awe that this amazing finding was not published in Scientific America or the New England Journal of Medicine as a front page article.

    Who knew that all people have the same type of physical skin response to images that that draw an emotional reaction.

    Who knew that Liberals are really unemotional drones who don't care about the suffering and poor people in the world, and that they are all just "faking it!" Our government needs to enact legislation to ban Soma immediatly!

    Next time I pick a fight, it will be with a Liberal, because now I know that if I punch him in the face, he won't fight back.

    The next time I attend an anti-gay rally, you will notice me by my big banner saying "Go Away You Dirty Spiders!" and at my next anti-abortion rally I will carry a banner saying, "Stop the maggot filled wombs!"

    • Posted By: greengordo @ 09/19/2008 5:48:33 PM

      just try punching this liberal in the face.

  • Posted By: OBXartist @ 09/19/2008 4:19:49 PM

    It may also explain why it's self-apparent to people who hold [what are now right-wing positions] that they're really important, and frustrating why it isn't obvious to the other side. It's like, "What part of the difference between a spider and a bunny don't you understand."

    Or maybe another way of looking at this phenomenom is that the average liberal is intelligent/educated enough to know that every spider is not a threat, every spider is not a black widow and instead of overreacting in fear from every little stimulus they, instead, take a more reasonable cool-headed approach and calmly flcik the spider away. Rather than criticize liberals as fools oblivious to threats, maybe the the more accurate fact is that conservatives are unduly fearful and sense terrible threats from all quarters. Might explain their sense of always being under attack, politcally and culturally.

  • Posted By: rockye @ 09/19/2008 5:19:47 PM

    HOLA, I HAVE BEEN WORKING IN THE AREA OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR FOR WELL OVER TWENTY YEARS. WAS A JUDGE FOR TWENTY YEARS, A POLICE OFFICER FOR FIVE YEARS, A DRUG ABUSE COUNSELOR FOR FIVE YEARS, I SERVED IN THE MARINE CORP INFANTRY IN COMBAT DURING THE VIET NAM WAR, AND I AM ON MY SIXTH YEAR IN THE TEACHING FIELD. I HAVE LIVE LONG ENOUGHT TO CATEGORIZE PEOPLE IN GENERAL. THERE IS AN INNATE CORRELATION BETWEEN REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS: THE REPUBLICAN MODE OF THOUGHT IS TO TAKE FIRST AND TAKE CARE OF THEIR OWN FROM THE TOP DOWN AND THEN GIVE TO OTHERS. THEY RECEIVE FRIST, THAN GIVE. THE DEMOCRATS MODE OF THOUGHT IS TO GIVE FROM THE BOTTOM UP. THEY GIVE AND THAN RECEIVE. THERE ARE OTHER CATEGORIES OF GIVERS AND TAKERS THAT STEM FROM INNATE CHARACTERISTICS. THESE ARE THE LEARNED GIVERS AND TAKERS. THE NATURAL TAKER LEARNS TO GIVE A LITTLE TO TAKE A LOT, FOR EXAMPLE DURING POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS. THE NATURAL GIVER LEARNS TO TAKE IN ORDER TO SURVIVE HIS GIVING. THUS THE INNATE AND LEARNED TAKERS EVENTUALLY TAKE AND KEEP MUCH OF WHAT THEY TAKE, WHILE THE INNATE AND LEARNED GIVERS TAKE AND GIVE AWAY MOST OF WHAT THEY TAKE. WHICHEVER GROUP IS IN POWER AND CONTROL OF THE WAYS AND MEANS IN A SOCIETY, DETERMINES THE LEVEL OF GIVING AND TAKING. IN OUR DEMOCRACY, THE IRS SYSTEM IS USED TO TAKE FROM THE HALF-A-LOT TO GIVE TO THE HAVE-SOMES AND THE HAVE-NOTS. THE ULTIMATE POWER THAT DETERMINES HOW MUCH IS GIVEN AND TAKEN LIES IN THE VOTERS IN OUR SOCIETY. HOWEVER, I DO TEND TO BELIEVE THAT A PERSON IS WIRED TO BECOME A DEMOCRAT OR A REPUBLICAN IN HIS/HER GENES. I MUST ALSO NOTE: THAT THE MAXIMUM POWER TO VOTE IS NORMALLY FOUND IN THE HAVE-NOTS. THEY ARE MORE IN NUMBERS, BUT MANY TIME FAIL TO COME OUT TO VOTE; THEY STAY HOME ON ELECTION DAY OR ARE TOO BUSY WORKING TO SURVIVE!

  • Posted By: Eutectic @ 09/19/2008 5:12:52 PM

    Any well read poker player worth there salt knows that the responses people gave in this study are true to there limbiatice brain responnses. these reactions are hard wire into our brains. No amount of intelectual blathering can make this not true. This bain response is automatic, instantanious, and totally nonvolantary. I find the reaction of the more liberal responders to be most telling . There attempts at claiming moral superiority hate mongering and just plain nastyness is an obvious cover for deep seeded fear and self doubt.

  • Posted By: ndrock @ 09/19/2008 11:42:18 AM

    NO the stupidest thing in Newsweek is it's continued GOD LIKE Support of OBAMA! This magazine has done everything it can to show how much liberal bullshit they can try and push down the public's minds, like we can't see through their bullshit. They always have a big picture of OBAMA next to their articles. This has turned into nothing more than a Hollywood Rag Magazine.

    • Posted By: Bird Brain @ 09/19/2008 12:01:46 PM

      That picture of Obama to the right of your articles is a PAID advertisement. I'm sure if the McCan't camp wasn't so busy making up crap (sex ed to 5 year old, my foot!), they could spend some time MARKETING too!

      • Posted By: pinkyrat2@yahoo.com @ 09/19/2008 4:57:16 PM

        Be gentle, Bird Brain. ndrock can't help being fearful of black people. It's genetic!

  • Posted By: Eutectic @ 09/19/2008 4:56:21 PM

    Any Well read poker player worth there salt could tell you that the reactions are real and automatic .these reactions come from the limbiatic portion of the brain .Your social backgound education or political persuasions have nothing to do with it. these are primal hardwired responses. I find the liberals responses to this study vey interesting . they seem to have a deep need to rationalize , and defend there positions . there just plain nasty attacks and hate mongering , of anyone who dares to disagree with there ideas says to me that they are indeed deeply afraid

  • Posted By: pinkyrat2@yahoo.com @ 09/19/2008 4:54:00 PM

    I think you could test this in all kinds of ways and get the same results. I mean, who hasn't noticed that Republicans are simply just scared of people? Why else would they be so desperate to control everyone else?

    Their view is probably the rational one in light of human nature and nearly all of human history, but it certainly makes for a long life...

  • Posted By: hopelessh @ 09/19/2008 4:47:25 PM

    Why is it that Liberals are frequently implying or outright stating that Conservatives are UNEDUCATED and that they are the "intelligent/educated" ones? I am a full time working female with 3 children. On top of that I graduated top of my class with both an associates and bachelors degree. Why do we need to put down and name call others with a different social opinion? I believe that the main difference is that those on the right beleive that people are intelligent enough to learn how to take care of themselves and that it is better to be proactive, while those on the left more strongly favor the government and community taking an active role in day to day care of people and to wait and see if a threat is a very dangerous/deadly threat before acting. It is too bad that usually in either case people die and there will be war. It is too bad that people can not accept differences in opinions, especially when social styles and politics are involved.

  • Posted By: OBXartist @ 09/19/2008 4:06:29 PM

    Unfortunately, DesertFox, in the current climate there seems to be little difference between your categories 2 & 3.

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