The Religious Versus the Nonreligious
Who is More Moral?
Nothing better illustrates the underlying psychological variations in the Conservative and Liberal approaches to morality than their own explanations of it. We asked the 2,987 respondents to our Ethnic and Religious Attitudes Survey where they thought their sense of morality came from. The percentages by response are listed in the table below.
Innate
(genetic)Where does your sense of morality come from?
(NP=Nonpolitical, VL=Very Liberal, L=Liberal, LB=Libertarian, M=Moderate, C=Conservative, VC=Very Conservative) (F=Female, M=Male)The above table has some very interesting trends. First are the percentages of those believing that "morality comes from God". While the Very Liberal females and males report extremely low rates (1% and 1.9%, respectively), the other end of the political spectrum, the Very Conservatives report extremely high rates (67.3% for females, 54.2% for males). It is interesting to note that the belief that "morality comes from God" increases as one goes from left to right on our political scale.
This is one of the more extreme differences that we've seen between Liberals and Conservatives, and neurologically revealing. On the other side, just as neurologically revealing, are the responses indicating that "morality comes from concern for others". The Very Liberal females and males rated very high with the concern response (44.4% and 46.3%, respectively), while at the other end, the Very Conservatives females reported very low numbers, at 0%, and the Very Conservative males weren't much higher at 1.7%.
The Liberals and the Conservatives are the most hemispherically polarized of the political cohorts, and are the most likely to exhibit moral approaches centered on either the left-hemisphere's reward categorization networks (the Conservatives), or the right-hemisphere's empathy networks (the Liberals). See Conservatives, Liberals, and Behavioral Inhibition for a further discussion on this.
It is therefore no surprise that the Conservatives and Liberals report the highest rates of "morality comes from God" and "morality comes from concern for others" than the other cohorts, respectively. This leaves the two other responses, "morality comes from upbringing", which is equivalent to an environmental explanation, and "morality is innate", which is equivalent to genetic explanation.
The middle portion of the political spectrum, the Moderates, Libertarians, and the Nonpolitical (the politically agnostic), tended to favor the environmental or genetic explanations over the hemispherically polarized explanations of the Conservatives and Liberals. The middle portion of the political spectrum is also the least hemispherically polarized, at least based on our cognitive testing.
Who Has Better Morals, the Religious or Non-Religious?
As would be expected, people tend to have dimmer views of the motives of others than they do of themselves. We also asked our 2.987 survey respondents "are religious people more likely to have higher or lower morals than non-religious people?". The results of this question are displayed in the table below.
Are religious people more likely to have higher morals than non-religious people?
(NP=Nonpolitical, VL=Very Liberal, L=Liberal, LB=Libertarian, M=Moderate, C=Conservative, VC=Very Conservative) (F=Female, M=Male)In the above table, the not sure responses are not shown. As can be seen, the Conservatives strongly believe that the Religious are more moral than the Nonreligious. This is to be expected, as conservatism and religiosity are strongly correlated. The Moderates were more likely to indicate that the Religious and Nonreligious have equivalent morality, although their next highest response favored the Religious.
The Libertarians and Nonpolitical also tended to indicate that the Religious and Nonreligious had equivalent morals, although their next highest preferences varied by gender. The Liberals were also more likely to indicate equivalence in the Religious-Nonreligious morality debate, although their next highest preference was that the Religious were less moral.
________________________________________
Politics and Alcohol
Along with their obvious cognitive differences, Conservatives and Liberals seem to have different personal habits, on average. When we stumble upon one of these, the first thing we consider is the reproductive valence of the habit, and in this case, the habit in question is drinking.
In our Ethnic and Religious Attitudes Survey, we asked the 2,987 respondents what they preferred to drink from a list of beer, red wine, or white wine. We also asked them to indicate if they drank or not. The results are in the table below.
What do you prefer to drink?
(NP=Nonpolitical, VL=Very Liberal, L=Liberal, LB=Libertarian, M=Moderate, C=Conservative, VC=Very Conservative) (F=Female, M=Male)Among the females, the Conservatives and Very Conservatives report the highest rates of abstinence, at 42.7% and 60% respectively. The Very Liberals and Liberals report the lowest rates of female abstinence at 25.3% and 24.1%, respectively. Among the males, the Nonpolitical (politically agnostic) and the Very Conservatives reported the highest rate of abstinence (45.7% and 42.8%), and the lowest rates were reported by the Very Liberal and Liberal males (23.4% and 26.9%).
The health benefits of the moderate consumption of beer, white wine, and red wine involve substantial reductions in LDL cholesterol, reduced systolic and diastolic blood pressure, the improved antioxidant capacity of the blood, and improved serotonin availability, among many others.
However, the elevation in female Conservative abstinence certainly implies a negative reproductive aspect to alcohol consumption, of which fetal alcohol spectrum disorders are the most prominent. The Conservative female aversion towards drinking alcohol also corresponds with their aversion towards drinking coffee (see It's Coffee Versus the Babies), which most likely is the result of the Conservative female's elevated orientation towards reproduction.
It is interesting to note that there is also an elevation in abstinence among the Nonpolitical (politically agnostic) males and females. The Nonpolitical reported the highest copulation frequency with their partners of any of the political cohorts, in both females and males (see Subcultures of Reproduction).
Among females, red wine was the most preferred, followed by white wine, which was slightly ahead of beer, on average. Among males, beer was most preferred, followed by red wine. For males, preferences for white wine were very low. Abstinence and religiosity were highly correlated variables, as would be expected.
________________________________________
Brack and Zhang, January 2007
Email: Brack@neuropolitics.org
Zhang@neuropolitics.org
Galapagos Now!
The Ghost World in 2006
" In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of SpeciesDarwin's stunning prediction that psychology will eventually be absorbed by evolutionary psychology has certainly taken its sweet time. The resistence has been strong in the community of traditional social scientists, as the ramifications of evolutionary psychology can certainly run counter to their political and religious biases.
But the intellectual inertia created by any well-established theoretical doctrine, with the substantial investment of time by an organized academic dominance hierarchy, can slow the adoption of better theories by hundreds of years. After all, evolutionary theory was formally constructed by the ancient Greeks, whose "Ladder of Life" would be lost for two thousand years.
But evolutionary psychology still has some significant roadblocks to circumvent before it makes any headway into the politically-charged world of the social sciences, the largest being the disturbing social implications.
With humans, the planet has not seen such an integrated organization of social behavior since the social insects, as Edward Wilson pointed out in his epic work, Sociobiology. As Wilson also pointed out, this integrated social organization led the ants to invent the symbiotic behaviors of agriculture and slavery, which would also occur to humans, after adding billions of neurons to their "cognitively advanced" brain.
The evolutionary implications of a species engaged in highly coordinated social behavior are enormous, as seen in the way insect colonies manage the ratios of their caste members by modulating the production of pheromones. The question is, how are humans modulating the numbers within their own loosely organized caste systems? The answer is particularly disturbing.
Predictably, the backlash against evolutionary psychology has been strong among both Conservatives and Liberals. The Conservatives tend to dislike evolution of any kind, and the Liberals tend to interpret it as a justification for social inequality. While the evolutionary psychologists were trying to determine the connection between evolutionary theory and human social behavior, they were secretly hoping the Liberals and Conservatives would quietly go away.
But wait a second, it was those very same Conservatives and Liberals that were the missing link between evolutionary theory and human social behavior. Conservatives and Liberals were not just colloquial terms for groups of people that had different opinions about politics, they were people with different adaptive approaches to survival. They displayed substantial cognitive and reproductive asymmetries. They even avoided breeding with each other.
Further, conservatism and liberalism weren't even unique to humans. Social species were producing their own versions of Conservatives and Liberals, with some surprisingly similar behaviors, such as voluntary reproductive restrictions and emigration in response to ecological stresses. We shall talk about conservatism and liberalism among animal populations in a future edition, but for now, let's review some of our findings in 2006 that highlight the conservative and liberal variations in humans.
Sensory-Cognitive Variations
The Liberals reported higher levels of introversion than the Conservatives in one of our surveys in late 2005. In 2006, we have repeated this result in two different surveys. This is an important difference, as neuroimaging has implicated that prefrontal cortical regions involved in memory retrieval and planning were more active in introverts, along with the anterior thalamus and anterior insula, also involved in memory retrieval. The "self-talk" portion of Broca's area was also more activated in the introverts.
For extroverts, activations in the anterior cingulate, posterior thalamus, temporal lobes, posterior parietal lobe, right insula, and left amygdala have been noted by imaging. These regions are responsible for real-time sensory processing and the resolution of the emotional significance of sensory events. In contrast to the introverts, the "self-talk" region of Broca's area was not as active.
In short, the introverted brain is adapting more neural resources in the prefrontal lobes, and the extroverted brain is adapting more in the temporal and parietal lobes. This enhanced temporal lobe activity in extroverts also correlates with another interesting phenomenon that we picked up in our self-assessment surveys: the extroverts report better senses of smell, which makes sense, as the temporal lobes are more closely associated with the processing of olfactory stimulation by virtue of the close connections with the amygdala, which itself is directly connected to the olfactory bulb (see Sexuality, Religiosity, and the Olfactory System?)
The political and religious implications of extroversion are many. The extroverts are usually more religious, more likely to literally interpret religious doctrine, more likely to believe in their political party's platforms, more likely to organize themselves into social groups, and more likely to align their beliefs to what other people believe in those same social groups.
The fact that Conservatives (and in particular the religious) are more shifted towards extroversion and olfaction is a substantial variation, and one that correlates highly with a variety of behavioral asymmetries.
Reproduction, Reproduction, and Reproduction
As Conservatives and Liberals practice reproductive polymorphism, or different reproductive strategies within the same population, we should expect to find asymmetries in their reproductive behaviors. And indeed we have. Foremost among these is that Conservatives, and in particular Conservative males, are more likely to be involved in a heterosexual pair-bond relationship. A pair-bond relationship is simply an ongoing sexual "relationship" with a partner, although not necessarily restricted to marriage.
Further, the Conservatives are having more heterosexual sex than Liberals. With the exception of the Under-25 males, the Conservatives report higher average heterosexual copulation frequencies than Liberals. The Conservative females report higher copulation rates across all age cohorts, at least relative to the Liberal females.
We suspect that there are hundreds of reproductive behavioral variations between Conservatives and Liberals. In 2006, we reported elevations in the female Conservative preference for the odor of newborn babies. Conservative males were also elevated in this preference, but not to the degree of the females. Conservatives are less likely to drink alcohol or coffee, which we believe to be related to reproduction.
In 2006, we also reported an interesting preference for Conservative females to wear perfume. Conservative males also reported this tendency, but not to the same degree as the females. This trait was also correlated with extroversion and thinking about sex. The Conservatives are more organized around social relationships in their local neighborhoods. The Conservatives carry more photographs of others, remember more birthdays, and are more likely to know their neighbors. They also are much more likely to attend church. We believe that all of these behaviors facilitate reproduction.
Also interesting was the Conservative tendency to report higher rates of partner attraction over time than the Liberals. We speculated that this may actually be partially related to their asymmetries in olfaction. Evolutionarily speaking, olfaction preceeded the visual and auditory systems in managing sexual attraction, and could be adapted as an effective partner-bonding mechanism.
Sexual arousal and population density seem to be correlated with the Liberals. In one of our surveys, both urban-dwelling Liberal males and females report higher rates of thinking about sex than Liberals in rural or suburban areas. Rural Conservative females reported thinking about sex more than urban or suburban, and the suburban Conservative males think about sex more than urban or rural.
Genetic Variation and Racial Prejudice
We also believe that racial prejudice is entwined with reproduction. A key indicator of this relationship is seen in the Caucasian females, who report slightly higher rates of racial prejudice than males, and are more likely to seek out white males than vice-versa. The differential capacity of the sexes to produce offspring and the increased burden on females certainly has them applying more criteria in sexual selection, primary among them is race.
Conservatives, both males and females, report higher levels of racial prejudice, and are more racially restrictive in partner selection. Liberals report lower rates of racial prejudice, and fewer racially motivated restrictions. However, while the white Liberal females rated lower in both self-assessed and measured levels of racial prejudice, their preference for white partners was still high, and not much less than Conservative females. When it came to partner selection, the Nonpolitical and Libertarian males were the most genetically diverse.
Racial prejudice in mate selection has many ramifications in genetic variation and gene flow within and across populations. The Liberals are more promotive of gene flow than are the Conservatives, and we suspect that the more liberal a population, the more quickly genes spread throughout that population.
Religion and Technological Change
Theocratic social groups are at quite a disadvantage when it comes to competing economically and militarily with modern capitalistic economies, unless they find a niche within one, and practice economic endogamy, or the practice of buying from religious insiders and selling to outsiders.
Highly religious social groups exhibit low rates of technological change. The United States is an exception, as its overall rate of church attendance is quite high for a modern economy. However, within the United States, church attendance and technological change are inversely related, at least based on patents granted by state.
The more secular "blue" states have much higher patent rates than the more religious "red" states. Generally, the flow of technology within the United States seems to move from the more secular states and into the more religious states.
Dominance, Dominance Hierarchies, and Intergroup Competition
In 2005, we reported that Conservatives rated their own level of competitiveness to be substantially higher than the average Liberal. This certainly implicated a possible elevation in social dominance among the Conservatives. Further, the fact that Caucasian Conservatives produce more offspring than Caucasian Liberals is very suspicious. Dominant males in all social species produce more offspring, particularly in smaller social groups.
Dominance behaviors in social mammals include competitiveness, leadership, despotism, resource control, aggression, approach, exploration, territory marking, expansive bodily movements, loud vocalizations, maintenance of eye contact, etc.
Based on our evidence collected so far, Conservative males, on average, are more socially dominant than Liberal males, at least when it comes to the classical dominance behaviors exhibited by male primates. This is seen in the elevated rates of self-reported Conservative male competitiveness, and also other corroborating competitive behaviors, such as participation in high school sports and the advancement, on average, to higher levels within business organizations.
Conservative females report higher levels of competitiveness than Liberal females, although Liberal females report slightly higher rates of high school sports participation. Therefore, the issue of whether Conservative females, on average, are more socially dominant than Liberal females is certainly not yet clear, and dominance might vary based on the reproductive valence of the particular behavior.
But competitiveness is a fundamental ingredient in the formation and operation of dominance hierarchies. Just like your average social vertebrate, humans form into dominance hierarchies to wage both intragroup and intergroup resource competition. Prime examples of dominance hierarchies are business and military organizations. The competitive Conservative males readily organize into dominance hierarchies, and are more likely to initiate and manage competition against outside social groups.
The Stressed Liberal, the Self-Confident Conservative
In 2005, we reported that Liberals were, on average, more prone to both depressive and anxiety disorders. In 2006, the Liberals also reported higher current stress levels and higher childhood stress levels. They also reported higher rates of anxious-depressive disorders in their parents. In contrast, the Conservatives reported the lowest rates among all the political cohorts, on all counts.
The Conservatives reported the highest rates of self-confidence across all the political cohorts, and the Liberals reported the lowest. Human "self-confidence" correlates with reward seeking, approach, and exploratory behaviors, which are all modulated by the brain's dopaminergic system. The dopaminergic system is asymmetrically distributed in the left hemisphere, which is why we sometimes refer to Conservatives as being "left-brained". (See The Self-Confident Conservative).
Galapagos Now
The Ghost World of Conservatives and Liberals starts in the political stratosphere and extends deep into the core of population biology. The Conservative's tendency to prefer hierarchical social groups, to exploit natural resources, to prefer genetically-restrictive reproduction and high reproductive rates, to prefer socially-coordinated cognition (e.g., religion), and propensity for intergroup competition make them uniquely adapted for the migration and survival in new territories.
In population biology, the Conservatives follow the same behavioral profile of r selected animal populations. New territories with exploitable resources are usually initially inhabited (or managed) by Conservatives. If population densities increase to a certain level in these new territories, there is a corresponding liberalization of that population (in the absence of intergroup competition).
The Liberal tendency to tolerate large, loosely organized social groups, greater tolerance of cognitive diversity, lower tendency for resource exploitation, low reproductive rates, and lower emphasis on genetic restrictions in reproduction, lowers their tendency towards intergroup competition and makes them uniquely adapted for long-term survival in high density populations, in the absence of competition from outside populations.
In population biology, the Liberals follow the same behavioral profile of K selected animal populations. But the coexistence of these two divergent behavioral phenotypes poses some interesting questions. First, why do humans exhibit such a wide spectrum of cognitive and reproductive diversity? As we mentioned before, conservative and liberal behaviors are found in many social vertebrates. This diversity no doubt is the interaction of both genetic and environmental influences.
Indeed, in studies of identical and fraternal twins, heredity has been found to contribute more to political disposition than environment. In our theory, it is the asymmetric functioning of the monoamine neurotransmitter systems, the noradrenergic and dopaminergic in particular, that are primarily responsible for this behavioral divergence. Note that the asymmetric functioning of the serotonergic system also seems to have a substantial influence.
Further, the functioning of these monoamine systems is subject to both genetic and environmental influences. We believe that conservatism and liberalism can be modulated by both stress and social cues, especially during the highly susceptible period of neural imprinting, 0-6 years old.
In other words, conservatism and liberalism are under constant flux from both genetic, biological (such as aging), and environmental influences. But Liberals and Conservatives are not the only behavioral phenotypes occupying the same political space. The taxonomy of political-religious phenotypes will be quite complex, and will most likely resemble a normal probability distribution depending on the criteria used to quantify degrees of religiosity, conservatism and liberalism.
Near the center of this taxonomic distribution live the Moderates and Libertarians, who maintain a robust mixture of religious, liberal, and conservative opinions, and who buffer the ongoing social conflict between the Conservatives and Liberals. One of the social functions of the Moderates and Libertarians is to modulate the reproductive rates, economic development, habitat depletion, and intra and intergroup competition in a modern political-economy.
This was just seen in 2006 in the U.S. general elections. Both Liberals and Conservatives typically maintain their allegiances to their respective candidates regardless of the current events, leaving the Moderates and Libertarians to shift the political winds.
In two short years, the Moderates and Libertarians overturned the Conservative government that was indefinitely entrenched in Iraq. The Moderates and Libertarians not only have the greatest political flexibility, they also transition populations between r and K selection.
Cultural Integration and Political Affiliation
One of the more unexpected results from our Ethnic and Religious Attitudes Survey was the fact that the Caucasian Nonpolitical males (those with few or no political opinions) and the Libertarian males were the most genetically diverse, that is, they were the most likely to have non-white partners. Also interesting was that white males, in general, were more likely to favor non-whites in mate selection than were the white females.
Prior to conducting the survey, we expected the Liberals to lead the way in genetic diversity. However, the Liberal males fell behind both the Nonpolitical and Libertarians, although they were certainly more willing to mix their genes with non-whites than the Conservative or Moderate males.
This caused some doubt as to which political cohort was actually living the most culturally diverse lifestyle. While we initially expected that the city-tolerant Caucasian Liberals to live in the most racially diverse neighborhoods and the suburban-loving Conservatives to avoid them, what did our survey results tell us?
We asked our 2,697 Caucasian respondents, what racial group is the most represented in your neighborhood? The Caucasians reporting that they live in predominately white neighborhoods are displayed in the graph below.
Whites Living in White Neighborhoods by Political Cohort
(NP=Nonpolitical, VL=Very Liberal, L=Liberal, LB=Libertarian, M=Moderate, C=Conservative, VC=Very Conservative) (F=Female, M=Male)The Caucasian Nonpolitical females were the most racially integrated of the females, followed closely by the Very Liberals. In contrast, the Very Conservative females reported that they lived in the least racially integrated neighborhoods, followed by the Conservatives. These statistics correlate very well with the race of their current partners, as the Nonpolitical and Very Liberals had the highest rates of non-white partners, and the Conservatives and Very Conservatives had the lowest.
On the male side, the Nonpolitical lived in the most racially diverse neighborhoods, followed by the Libertarians. This again correlates well with their partner preferences, as the Nonpolitical and Libertarian males reported the highest rates of non-white partners. The Very Liberal, Liberal, and Moderate males all reported about the same level of racial integration, and the Conservatives and Very Conservatives reported the lowest levels of living in non-Caucasian neighborhoods.
But while 68.5% of the white Nonpolitical males report living in white neighborhoods, only 48% report that they have white partners, which set them apart from the other political cohorts, whose neighborhood and partner preferences were much closer. Indeed, it seems the white Nonpolitical males are either avoiding white females, or the white females are avoiding them.
As can be seen, at least in our latest survey, the Liberals are not the most racially or genetically integrated political cohort. That honor belonged to the Nonpolitical, whose cultural diversity exceeded even the Very Liberals.
__________________________________________________________
In the Presence of God
God is a pretty formidable opponent for any political candidate, which is probably why very few self-proclaimed atheists make it very far in American politics. Even given the separation of church and state in America, the electoral presence of God is very strong.
The importance of God in political decision-making extends all the way to the White House. George W. Bush joined a Bible study group in Midland, Texas during the oil industry downturn in the mid-80s. At that time, Bush was CEO of Spectrum 7, a struggling oil company trying to withstand the plummeting oil prices that began in 1984.
While the stress created by the mounting losses of his oil company may have contributed substantially to his religious awakening, Bush had already been a regular attendee of religious services for years. But stressful events frequently preceed religious catharses, and the timing of the Bush's awakening certainly fits this profile. From this point forward, Bush was not only very religious, he would also state that he felt the "presence of God".
The "presence of God" has come under considerable scientific scrutiny in recent years, but before we touch upon its neurological correlates, let's take a look at how the 2,987 respondents to our Ethnic and Religious Attitudes survey responded to the direct question: Do you feel the presence of God? In the table below, we see the responses by political and gender cohorts.
Freq
quentlySome-
timesNever
Do you feel the presence of God?
(NP=Nonpolitical, VL=Very Liberal, L=Liberal, LB=Libertarian, M=Moderate, C=Conservative, VC=Very Conservative) (F=Female, M=Male) (No answers are not shown)Two trends in the above table are most prominent. First, females are much more likely to report that they feel the presence of God. The second trend is the propensity of the Conservatives to feel the presence of God.
Indeed, almost 71% of the Very Conservative females and 56% of the Conservative females always or frequently feel the presence of God. Only 14% on the Very Liberal females and 20% of the Liberal females have the same feelings. In contrast, 68% of the Very Liberal females and 52% of the Liberal females report rarely or never feeling the presence of God.
Almost 54% of the Very Conservative and 31% of the Conservative males indicate that they always or frequently feel the presence of God. This compares to just 8.4% of the Very Liberal and 11% of the Liberal males. Males were more likely to rarely or never feel the presence of God, led by the Very Liberals at almost 77%.
Neurological Correlates of the Presence of God
There has been a lot of seemingly contrasting evidence about the neurological correlates of religiosity and spirituality, and much of that involves the lack of consistency as to what aspects of religiosity and spirituality are being measured.
It is certainly understandable that the current trends in neuroimaging are throwing in the towel on a standardized definition of religiosity, and rather, focusing on experiments that will have a substantial neuroimaging signature. It is thus no surprise that religious-meditative states have received a lot of attention.
The examination of religious-meditative states was originally pioneered by Herzog, with subjects experienced in Yoga meditation, and therefore tailor-made for neuroimaging. Newberg would follow Herzog's tactic, with an extensive examination of a variety of experts in religious-meditative states, such as Tibetan monks and Franciscan nuns. Many of the neuroimaging results of these religious-meditative states indicate an activation of the prefrontal cortex, among other regions, which has led many in the religious community to claim that religiosity is the result of the advanced functioning of the prefrontal cortex.
This pattern of prefrontal activation was found in meditators that were experienced in seizing conscious control over the parasympathetic system, which also seems to be activated by the religious engaged in prayer. However, the voxel measurements of these religious-meditative activations are relative, and not absolute activations, as these neuroimaging techniques compared the religious-meditative state against the rest-state (or alternate-state) in the same person.
Therefore, comparative rest-state voxel levels of the ordinary religious versus the non-religious, in their normal conscious rest-states, have not been reported in any neuroimaging study, and may not even generate detectable and recurrent variances via neuroimaging.
To date, the neural correlates of religiosity are best indicated by neuropathology, which paints a different, but not irreconcilable, picture of religious cognition, and one that is centered on the temporal cortices. (See The Darwin Code for a brief review of some of the current neural models of religiosity).
The neuropathology of hyper-religiosity has been noted for some time from the study of temporal lobe epilepsy. Temporal lobe epileptics are more prone to religiosity, which is heightened during seizures. The classical "religious" personality, one that maintains constant focus on God, feels the presence of God, literally interprets religious doctrine, exhibits long periods of humorlessness and aversive reactions to sexual media, also exhibit asymmetric activations in left temporal activity relative to the right.
Wuerfel reported that atrophy of the right hippocampus, a mesial temporal structure, is strongly correlated with "religiosity" for patients with refractory epilepsy. However, the final picture of religiosity-spirituality will be a complex and no doubt a surprising one, and won't be fully explainable with even fairly-specific anatomical classifications of neural structures.
Michael Persinger's remarkable proposal, way back in 1983, that religiosity originates from temporal lobe transients, or temporal lobe microseizures, shares common neural components with the more recent neuroimaging studies of religious-meditative states. Since fMRI does not resolve the particular neurotransmitter systems involved in the religious-meditative states, little can be determined about the neurotransmitter systems that we have proposed to be instrumental in political and religious disposition--the dopaminergic, noradrenergic, and serotonergic systems.
However, the neurotransmitter system we have proposed to be the most active in both Conservative and Religious disposition is the dopaminergic, and in a PET study of meditative states (Kjaer), dopamine levels were significantly elevated.
Do our survey results indicate that those who constantly feel the presence of God are more organized around the activity of their left temporal lobes than the Nonreligious? Not necessarily, as more ambiguous constructs of spiritual experience seem to be adapting a wide variety of structures, including the right temporal lobe. But the neuropathology of the "classical" hyper-religious personality certainly seems to implicate the stronger influence of the left temporal lobe.
But the temporal lobes are large, complex, and heavily engaged in crosstalk with a large array of disparate neural structures, and the final chapter on the neurobiology of religious disposition won't be written in our lifetimes. Indeed, the establishment of a cognitive definition of religiosity that will expose predictable neurological processes will be quite a struggle. Rather, it will be the iterative process of picking a way of looking at religiosity and spirituality, and seeing how the neurological correlates overlap with ordinary autonomic, sensory, and cognitive functions, that will ultimately lead us to the promised land.
_________________________________________________________
