“Political Leaning May be in Your Head,” “Left Brain, Right Brain: Are Liberals More Adaptable than Conservatives?” or “Brain Type May Dictate Politics”-the headlines have blared during the past week. The reason: “Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism,” a study published on September 9 in Nature Neuroscience by David Amodio, an assistant professor of psychology at New York University, which concludes that “greater liberalism was associated with stronger conflict-related anterior cingulate activity, suggesting greater neurocognitive sensitivity to cues for altering a habitual response pattern.”

Professor Amodio recruited 43 subjects and presented them with a Go/No-go game. Subjects watched flashing Ms and Ws for 15 minutes; one group was told to press a button for every M and make no response for every W while the second group received opposite instructions. For the first group, M was programmed to appear 80% of the time; W had the same frequency for the second group. The subjects were also asked to report their political orientation on a 10-point scale, with -5 being extremely liberal and +5 being extremely conservative.

Amodio found that conservative subjects were more likely to continue pressing whichever letter was appearing the majority of the time whereas liberals responded more accurately to the change in stimuli. From this, Amodio concludes that “Stronger conservatism (versus liberalism) was associated with less neurocognitive sensitivity to response conflicts.”

In other words, liberals are more adaptable to new situations whereas conservatives remain committed to their beliefs. Moreover, Amodio then suggests this is related to heritable brain structure, meaning the fact that “liberals [.] report higher tolerance of ambiguity and complexity, and greater openness to new experiences on psychological measures” is genetic.

This study has serious flaws, and they are endemic to psychological studies. First, these 43 subjects are not an accurate representation of America, so it is dangerous to extrapolate from them to 300 million other people. Moreover, this is an impossibly small sample from which it is specious to say that this one incidence of significance is itself significant. Either Amodio needs to test 43 people many more times or he must enlarge the sample size to decrease the possibility that this result is not significant only by chance. Second, respondents only had one-half of a second to respond to the letters flashed on screen.

To then argue that conservatives support lower taxes or disdain abortion because they resist change as indicated by their poor half-second reaction times is absurd. Even soundbites, the least complex but most popular form of political communication, last at least 15 seconds, and had the letters been flashed on screen for that long Amodio surely would have determined that conservatives and liberals respond to information with exactly congruous flexibility.

Third, political ideas may be presented to the lowest common denominator, but they cannot be reduced to something as simple as two letters. To say people process information differently based on flashes of letters is an insult to the term. Moreover, M and W are so physically similar that anyone-and especially dyslexic individuals-could confuse them at a quick glance and in such a sample that individual could have skewed the results.

Finally, the concept of “change” and “adaptation” is contextually specific, so the author’s use of the terms plays directly into Manichean political stereotypes.

For example, outlawing abortion would entail drastic change to the American political and social system; in this case, liberals are the ones seeking to conserve the status quo. The meaning of change and reaction depends entirely on which party controls the organs of power (especially the Supreme Court) and not on an eternal alignment of ideology.

American news outlets, continuously searching for startling headlines with which to attract more eyes, immediately seized upon this article. Every major American newspaper immediately reported these findings without critical reflection.

As Karl Rove realized, the repetition of any statement, regardless of its veracity, leads people to think it is true. Newspapers’ reporting of this experiment without any critical analysis has without doubt furthered the erroneous idea that humans are hardwired with a certain political outlook.

This study represents everything that is dangerous about psychology and the media’s obsession with it. Nearly every study reported on involves a miniscule, unrepresentative sample performing highly specific tasks from which grand biological or evolutionary conclusions are dangerously drawn.

The media, too often stocked with journalists lacking either the time, desire or intellect to seriously analyze these issues, exacerbates the hold alluring, but dangerous and harmful, psychology studies maintain on the American public.

Zachary is a senior in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].

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