Nightmare on Elm Street
Conservatives, Liberals, and Dreaming
"I hop onto the Kerry Campaign trail-literally. It is a long line of connected wooden boats. I climb from the back car towards the front. I find Edwards on one boat, and Kerry is in the front boat. I feel safe, but there is a huge disruption of some kind and I find myself alone again with all of the zombie Bush supporters pulling me in every direction and trying to feed me some kind of processed meats from their barbecue (sausage/hot dog looking things). I don't trust this meat and find that it is human flesh from the Kerry supporters. I try to get away and am suddenly falling down a huge waterfall or waterslide with zombies grabbing me. I wash into the dark tunnel again, and that’s when I woke up.”...Dream reported by a 22 year-old female liberal to Kelly Bulkeley.
We've provided a lot of evidence about the variations in the behavior and cognitive styles of Liberals and Conservatives--which we refer to as the Ghost World. Other organizations are jumping into the fray, and are asking Democrats and Republicans whether they "re-gift" or are "happy".
To many, these seem like irrelevant questions, but there is one problem with this view--personality and political-religious orientation are tightly enmeshed. This is why we keep detecting variations in the such seemingly "nonpolitical" behaviors such as wearing perfume, swearing, sweating, drinking coffee, occupational choices, etc, etc, etc.
From this, one can extrapolate that political-religious disposition is not the result of emotionally neutral reasoning. And sure enough, neuroimaging has confirmed it. Those people with strong conservative or liberal viewpoints activate neural regions involved in emotionally "hot" reasoning, such as the orbitofrontal cortex, while regions known for for emotionally "neutral" reasoning, such as the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, are not activated. (Note that the neuroimaging community has yet to focus on politically neutral subjects, which might produce different results).
However, the fact that both Conservatives and Liberals are using emotionally charged reasoning does not tell us why they differ so much in their political and religious attitudes. One of our hypotheses to help explain these variations involves the asymmetric functioning of the monoamine neurotransmitter systems (see The Hemisphericity Theory of Political Orientation), something that fMRI cannot definitively resolve.
Further, cognitive and behavioral variation seems to be a very successful attempt by evolution to improve the adaptability of populations of social vertebrates (see The Social Integration of Hemispheric Asymmetry). But human brains are genetically structured to provide a substantial bit of flexibility to the environment, and political-religious disposition can change over relatively short periods of time.
Mutation and meiotic shuffling have been spectacularly successful in mixing up genes to throw a steady stream of new DNA at the environment, which has tackled a wide range of problems, from ice ages to dangerous microbes. For humans, a substantial amount of microevolution can take place in just 1,000 years, and political-religious disposition has certainly been under the evolutionary gun since the inception of the species.
But the fact that humans now inhabit every continent on the planet in such a wide spectrum of population densities makes them the most interesting animal in the field of population biology. Political-religious disposition plugs right into r/K population selection theory, which needs few modifications to account for the behaviors of Conservatives and Liberals.
The social integration of these two adversaries, along with the less polarized Moderates and Libertarians, modulates a population's approaches to reproduction, ecological stress, and outgroup competition. Evolution has created quite a mixture of behavioral phenotypes in its architecture of the human gene pool, leaving the Conservatives and Liberals to anchor the ends of the r/K behavioral spectrum, while the Moderates and Libertarians quickly shift a population's direction towards either r or K.
Don't Fall Asleep
As a result, we continually detect variations in the nonpolitical behaviors of Conservatives and Liberals, which frequently have subtle reproductive overtones, such as coffee or alcohol consumption. But long before we began our assault on the conscious world of Conservatives and Liberals, Kelly Bulkeley has been peeking into their dream world.
The dream world of Conservatives and Liberals is as fascinating as their conscious world, with many parallels. As reported by Bulkeley, from 1996-2000, during the Clinton administration, Conservatives reported more nightmares than Liberals. From 2001-2004, during the Bush administration, the Liberals reported more nightmares and the Conservatives reported fewer, in spite of 9-11.
The content of these dreams has some parallels with their conscious states. First, the Liberals recall more dreams than the Conservatives. Bulkeley also reported that Liberals have poorer sleep quality, which may be related to their tendency to recall more dreams. The poor sleep quality is consistent with the higher anxious-depressive and stressed profile that Liberals have reported in our surveys (see Stress and Liberalism).
Our survey results for dream-recall are consistent with Bulkeley's, as Liberals report that they remember dreams at a higher rate than Conservatives. In the graph below, we see the percentages reporting that they frequently remembered their dreams. This survey consisted of 2,189 respondents.
Those Reporting That They Frequently Remember Their Dreams by Political-Gender Cohorts
(VL=Very Liberal, L=Liberal, M=Moderate, C=Conservative, VC=Very Conservative) (F=Female, M=Male)As can be seen, females report better recall of their dreams than males. There is some evidence that the mechanisms of dream-recall may be slightly different in males and females. Dream-recall in males seems to be correlated with insomnia, as dream-recall is most likely to occur while awakened immediately after or during the dream.
In females, emotional stress seems to correlate better with dream-recall. Females report higher rates of recall of emotional dreams. The dream-recall percentages reported by females certainly correlates well with the fact that females, in another of our surveys, reported higher levels of stress than males.
The Liberal females also reported, on average, higher levels of dream-recall than Conservative females, and also reported higher stress levels than Conservatives. The Liberal males also reported higher levels of dream-recall than the Conservative males, possibly for the same reasons.
Bulkeley also reported that Liberals incorporate more "fantastic elements" in their dreams than do Conservatives, who report much more "conventional" dreams. This correlates very well with the artistic nature of the Liberals. Liberals have a much stronger preference for the artistic occupations, and we will be reporting the specific statistics shortly.
The contribution of the right hemisphere towards more "fantastic" dreams is certainly possible, but dreaming and hemisphericity is a very ambiguous and hotly debated topic. However, hemispheric asymmetry has been found to be interfering with the recalling of dreams. The more hemispherically "polarized" one is, the less likely they will recall their dreams. And since males are more "polarized" than females, this certainly fits the fact that males report fewer dreams.
Another interesting note from Bulkeley's research is that Liberal females report more dreams of homosexuality. This certainly correlates with their higher reported levels of non-heterosexuality (see Sexual and Political Preference). However, we suspect that Conservatives are less likely to report homosexual tendencies and homosexual dreams than are the Liberals, so these results may indeed include a reporting bias.
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Brack and Zhang, February 2007
Email: Brack@neuropolitics.org
Zhang@neuropolitics.org
Who Are The Caucasians Attracted To?
Politics, Religion, and Physical Attraction
White Liberal Males and Asian FemalesThe relationship between sexual selection and political-religious affiliation has been of particular interest to us, as we suspect the rate of gene dispersal varies quite a bit among our political-religious cohorts. Physical attraction is highly correlated with sexual selection, and involves all the sensory systems via a wide variety of reproductive fitness cues, which are both innate and socially manipulated.
The components of physical attraction are numerous, and we are now attempting to build a more comprehensive picture of what these are, and how they relate to both politics and religion. But for now, let's take a look at how race and physical attraction relate to political affiliation. Racial preference is one of the best indicators of the propensity for genetic variation and gene dispersal throughout a population. Since Caucasians were our only statistically significant racial sample, let's give them a closer look.
We asked the 2,681 white respondents to our Ethnic and Religious Attitudes Survey which race they were most physically attracted to. The percentages are displayed in the table below. We left off the other races, such as Indian, Native American, and Middle Eastern, due to their relatively small preferences among the Caucasians.
White
Asian
Hisp
anicThere are several notable trends in the above table. First, white females were more attracted to whites than are white males. Further, the preference of whites for whites varied substantially across political affiliation. The Very Conservative physical attraction for whites was extremely high for both males (70%) and females (75%). The regular Conservatives were next, with females at 68.6%, and males were at 59.9%.
The Very Liberals, Liberals, and Nonpolitical (those who don't care about politics) had the lowest preferences for whites across both males and females. The Moderates and Libertarians fell in between the Liberals and Conservatives in their physical attraction towards whites.
White Liberal Males and Asians
Second to other whites, the Asians were preferred by the males. This was especially true for Liberal and Nonpolitical males. In general, the more liberal a white male is, the more likely they will indicate they are physically attracted to Asians.
The Conservative males were less inclined to prefer Asian females, and had the highest preference for Hispanics among the political cohorts. The Conservative males also had the lowest rates of physical attraction towards blacks.
People were more likely to indicate some sort of racial preference in physical attraction. The Conservatives were most likely to indicate a racial preference, especially the Very Conservatives, in both genders. The Liberals and the Nonpolitical were most likely to indicate that they had no racial preference in physical attraction.
Physical Attraction and Religiosity
Let's take a look at how religiosity relates with physical attraction to the various races. In the table below, we have broken out our 2,681 white respondents into religiosity cohorts.
White
Asian
anicThe Races Whites are Most Attracted to by Level of Religiosity (F=Female, M=Male) The correlation between religiosity and political affiliation is evident in the above table, as the more religious a Caucasian is, the more likely they are to be physically attracted to other whites. Those whites indicating that they are Little, Moderately, or Very Religious rated the highest in physical attraction towards other whites, among both genders.
Those whites indicating they were either Atheist, Areligious, Agnostic, or Spiritual were not as physically attracted to whites as the more religious. This trend appears in both genders. The white Atheists had the lowest rates of physical attraction for other whites, again in both genders.
The male's elevated preference for Asians was highest in the Atheist, Areligious, Agnostic, and Spiritual cohorts. It was lowest in the Very Religious cohorts.
Discussion
The relationship between political-religious affiliation and racial preferences in sexual selection certainly has our attention. Affiliative social behavior towards a racial group indeed seems to be linked with that racial group's presumed reproductive value.
If this is indeed true, the white Conservative's lower rate of physical attraction towards non-whites certainly correlates well with their political views regarding racial quotas and integration. The white Liberal's higher preference towards non-whites also correlates well with their attitudes towards racial integration and racial quotas.
However, physical attraction and political attitudes may simply both be the product of the substantial cognitive asymmetries between the religious Conservatives and the secular Liberals. This is seen in the Spiritual, who maintain relatively ambiguous religious constructs, at least compared to the Very Religious. Liberals are more likely to indicate that they are spiritual rather than religious.
Based on our cognitive sampling, spirituality seems to be primarily the construct of the right hemisphere, and the right temporal lobe in particular. If this is indeed true, then we would expect the Spiritual to share a number of cognitive attributes with the Atheists, Agnostics, and Areligious, as they also test higher in our right-hemisphere scoring system.
And sure enough, the Spiritual whites look a lot like the Atheists, Agnostics, and Areligious when it comes to physical attraction to other races. Therefore, hemispheric asymmetry may indeed be a contributing factor. But how?
Early childhood neural imprints seem to be more recallable from the left hemisphere, from the hippocampus and amygdala in particular. If indeed early childhood neural imprinting is building templates for physical attraction in later life, those individuals with a higher orientation towards left-hemispheric cognition may be more susceptible to those imprints in adulthood.
Therefore whites raised among whites between birth and six years old may be more physically attracted to whites when they grow up, particularly if they are more shifted towards left-hemispheric cognition. As we have noted before, Conservatives score higher on our left-hemisphere scale than Liberals.
Some recent evidence implicates that Caucasians are most attracted to the faces of Caucasian-Asian racial mixes, on average. However, this study was not broken out by political-religious affiliation. But it is rather interesting that the highest rate of racial intermarriage, Caucasian-Asian, also produces the most attractive offspring, at least according to one study.
Surplus Males
Reciprocal Sexual Selection and Social Classes
Beauty and the Geek: TV's Mismatch of High-Estrogen Females and Low-Testosterone MalesThe grinding face of evolution has left quite an interesting trail of genetic debris, particularly from males--Isaac Newton and Leonardo DaVinci did not reproduce, while Charles Manson and Richard Speck did.
Both Newton and DaVinci had opportunities to pass on their genes, but their reproductive effectiveness was sacrificed to their creative genius. The right prefrontal cortex is one of the most creative, yet reproductively ineffective regions in the brain.
The females of most vertebrate species typically mate with the dominant males, which are usually larger, stronger, and healthier than subordinate males. But the rearing of human offspring requires a long term investment of resources, and would compromise the human female's propensity to unequivocally favor males with higher testosterone profiles.
Females would apply numerous strategies in mate selection, which are highly correlated with their own hormonal profiles. Females with elevated estrogen profiles tend to prefer males with higher testosterone profiles. Females with lower estrogen profiles tend to prefer males with lower testosterone profiles.
In 2005, we had speculated that the testosterone-estrogen ratios of Liberal males and females were closer to each other than the Conservative males and females, who were more skewed towards either the testosterone or estrogen sides of the scale, respectively. This proposal is looking more reasonable today.
This interesting reciprocal relationship between estrogen- testosterone levels and physical attraction is most likely the result of evolutionary pressures. The sum of testosterone and estrogen levels across a mating pair of humans varies less than among individual females and males.
But the impact of high testosterone levels on parental investment is not good, and has been a countervailing influence on the sexual selection strategies that females apply towards males. Selecting for high-testosterone males not only carried a greater risk of infidelity and lowered male parental investment, it also interferes with brain development. The relationship between testosterone and brain development is nonlinear, as both low levels and high levels interfere with the proper growth and differentiation of the central nervous system.
Any female with strong preferences for high-testosterone males will likely maintain closer ties towards her own parents to mitigate the greater risk of lowered male parental investment. In general, females maintain closer relationships with their families of origin, which extends their reproductive social support network.
Since brain growth is a very complex integration of neurochemical processes, a simple testosterone model is very inadequate to explain deficiencies, but there is indeed a ceiling on how much testosterone can be tolerated before neural development is inhibited.
Reciprocal Sexual Selection and Social Classes
While females were selecting for males with higher reproductive fitness, they were inadvertently creating their worst nightmare--males with higher reproductive values than females, and the practice of polygyny. Males can theoretically produce more offspring than females, and if they can contribute substantially to offspring investment, they can select for more desirable traits in females. The increased value of males in reproduction has led humans down a pathway of reciprocal sexual selection.
While the variables that males and females apply in mate selection overlap to a great degree, the males are shifted towards the reproductive fitness of the female, such as facial and body symmetry, youth, and health. Conversely, females are shifted more towards male investment in child-rearing, which heavily applies economic considerations.
This dual model is one of the building blocks of social "classes", as social "classes" are ultimately founded upon reciprocal sexual selection. Male wealth and female youth and beauty are highly correlated pairings, and simply reflect the more prominent criteria that males and females apply towards evaluating reproductive fitness.
But how useful is the concept of social "classes" in dynamic modern capitalistic economies? Within such economies, concentrations of wealth within the same family are usually dissipated within three generations. The constant progression of technological change undermines the long-term reproductive advantages of any group of descendants from a common wealthy ancestor.
Rapid technological change causes rapid fluctuations in relative wealth, and with it, rapid fluctuations in reproductive fitness. Maintaining reproductive advantages and higher social status is more difficult in competitive capitalistic economies, and affiliative behaviors among members of the "upper" classes counteract this tendency.
Surplus Males
Animal populations usually produce males at a greater rate than their utilization for reproduction, as the females in most vertebrate species are more likely to reproduce. The males are handed the burden of competing for sexual partners, and suffering the increased probability that their DNA will come to an evolutionary dead end.
A large surplus of males has both evolutionary and socioeconomic implications. Among humans, male surpluses typically occur in sparsely populated and stressed territories, as microevolution runs rampant with the high ratio of males to females.
In high-density populations, the impact of surplus males frequently correlates with higher crime rates, higher rates of prostitution, and social unrest. However, this is highly dependent on the age demographics of the population.
Liberals are more integrated with the phenomenon of surplus males. Our current evidence indicates that white Liberal males are less likely to pass on their genes than are the white Conservative males, as the Conservatives report higher rates of both pair-bonding and heterosexual sex. Further, this tendency is exacerbated among Caucasians, as the white females, on average, are more likely to mate with Conservative males than with Liberal males.
However, all is not lost for the Liberal males. Liberal females heavily apply political and religious cues in mate selection, and have a strong preference for Liberal males, and seem to be more averse to prominent androgen features in mate selection. The rise of the low-testosterone male, so instrumental in the development of science, technology, and the arts, has been highly reliant on a subpopulation of females keeping them in the mating game.
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Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Political Affiliation
Since our initial report in May of 2005 that Liberals were more prone to depressive and anxious disorders than Conservatives, we have been collecting data on correlates of anxiety and depression. One of these correlates is chronic fatigue syndrome, or CFS. About 50% of people diagnosed with CFS are also diagnosed with depression or anxiety.
In 2005, we asked the 2,189 respondents to our survey about how often they felt fatigued. The results of those responding frequently are displayed in the graph below, by political affiliation.
Frequently Feeling Fatigued by Political-Gender Cohorts
(VL=Very Liberal, L=Liberal, M=Moderate, C=Conservative, VC=Very Conservative) (F=Female, M=Male)The Very Liberal females reported the highest levels of chronic fatigue, followed by the Liberal females. Among the males, the Very Liberals again reported the highest levels, again followed by the Liberals. The Liberal elevations in reporting fatigue correlate well with their elevations in reporting depression, anxiety, and stress. Also note that females report fatigue at higher rates than males.
