Neuropolitics.org Ezine
The Ghost World of Liberals and Conservatives
May 2007
Half-Life
The Radioactive Nature of Warfare Support
Males have a greater genetic investment in warfare. Females are more likely to oppose the war across all political cohortsSo what happened? President Bush has had the rug pulled right out from under his political feet, as the new Democratic alliance of Liberals and Moderates has put the brakes on the Conservative stranglehold over national foreign policy. As we shall see, most people, even Conservatives, have some sort of internal alarm clock for warfare--the longer it lasts, the more likely they will oppose it.
Warfare, more so than any other social behavior, creates a wide spectrum of emotions that vary over time. This time-dependent emotional spectrum most likely originates from the long history of hominid intergroup conflict, and has evolved to reduce the negative impact of long wars on food production and reproduction.
Short wars that wreak vengeance or acquire territory and resources are very popular. But long wars lower food production, dislocate populations, disrupt intragroup dominance hierarchies, and lower birth rates. This not only happens to the loser, this also happens to the winner. But how long is a long war?
Modern state warfare emulates the model of hunter-gatherer warfare quite well. The initial phase consists of the propagation of hostile beliefs towards an outgroup, either from an impending threat, or even better, to wreak veangence against a prior aggression. In either case, as the group nears the point of attack, these beliefs reach their peak, both in the numbers of members that share the beliefs, and the degree to which they believe them.
This cognitive unity is an evolutionary adaptation to improve the probability of survival, both at the individual and group level, regardless of the original justification for the conflict. Hunter-gatherer conflicts are typically brief, almost like modern day sporting events.
Warfare is a persistent activity in hunter-gatherer cultures, and not so coincidentally, women in hunter-gatherer societies are excluded from the decision-making process. Modern state warfare does not have that luxury, and as we shall see, this is of particular significance in the Iraqi War. Warfare in all cultures is an almost uniquely male endeavor, and also highlights the variations in the reproductive strategies of males and females.
Reproductive-age females of the defeated tribe are often taken captive, as the impact of warfare on reproduction is more likely to impact the heredity of male genes than it will female genes, which speaks volumes about the male propensity for warfare.
For hunter-gatherers, the post-conflict period is one of elation for the victorious tribe, and a period of despair and hardship for the defeated. Hunter-gatherer wars, despite their superficial causes, are fundamentally over territory, resources, or females, something that state warfare closely emulates.
The social structure of the defeated tribe is one of turmoil. If the tribe manages to remain intact, there are changes in the dominance status among males and kin-groups. Correspondingly, losses in state warfare invariably result in changes in governments, as do long periods of unresolved conflict, something that has recently occurred in America.
The Decline of Support for the Iraqi War
Let's take a closer look at the decline in support for the Iraqi War, based on the results from our Iraqi Warfare Attitudes Survey. We asked the 3,501 respondents if they originally supported the war, and further, whether they supported it now. The results are in the table below. We combined the Very Liberals in with the regular Liberals, and the Very Conservatives in with the regular Conservatives.
Decline in Support for the Iraqi War, by Political-Gender Cohorts
Supported War Initially
Support War Now
Change
(NP=Nonpolitical, L=Liberal, LB=Libertarian, M=Moderate, C=Conservative)As can be seen above, except for Conservatives, support has dropped significantly beneath 50% for all political cohorts, in both genders. Three things are notable: 1) Females are more likely to be against the war. 2) The Moderates have contributed most to the overall decline of support for the war. 3) The Conservatives are unique in both their high levels and stability of support.
The Retention Factor is the ratio of the percentage of people still supporting the war divided by the percentage of people that originally supported it. The lowest retention factor was with the Liberals, which had the lowest rates of original support for the war, and currently report almost zero.
Following the Liberals, the Moderates in both genders, the Libertarian females, and Nonpolitical females had the lowest rates of retention of their original support. The Libertarian males held onto their original support much better, while the Conservatives held on remarkably well. In fact, based on a pure linear extrapolation of their support, it would take about 35 years for the Conservatives to drop below the 50% level, although this relationship is hardly linear, as Conservative opposition to the war is accelerating.
Acceleration in the Conservative Opposition to the War
If we look at the subpopulation of those that have changed their minds against the Iraqi War, and the time they changed it, there is a notable acceleration of opposition among the Conservatives. We asked our respondents if they had changed their mind about the war, when did it occur? In the table below, we see the percentages, by year, of the subpopulation that has changed their mind against the war.
Percentage of those, by year, turning against the Iraqi War
Within Last Year
1-2 Years Ago
2-3 Years Ago
(NP=Nonpolitical, L=Liberal, LB=Libertarian, M=Moderate, C=Conservative)There are two interesting trends in the above table. First, if the Liberals initially supported the Iraqi War, they didn't support it for very long. They had given up on the war within two years after its beginning. On the other hand, the Conservatives held on very well for the first two years, with their erosion in support coming primarily in the last two years. Their trend is also accelerating. The other political cohorts had no discernable patterns, which might be due to their low sample sizes.
Half-Life of Support for the Impending Threat Model of War
The half life of warfare support, by our definition, is simply the period of time where the support for an ongoing war declines to 50% of the electorate. This is significant for elected governments, in that at this point, the probability of political change becomes very high, especially if the election cycle is short, like the two-year period of the United States. When the support declines to nearly the 40% level, political change is eminent.
How long does a government have to fight an Iraqi-style conflict? The Iraqi War is notable in that it is a war on foreign soil. Unlike the Afghani War, which applied a vengeance model of warfare justification, which was popular even among the Liberals, the Iraqi War adapted an impending threat model, based on possible weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.
Impending threat models are not popular with Liberals, but very popular with Conservatives. But the impending threat model used in Iraq would probably not have not evolved into real warfare without the 9-11 attack, which even had the Liberals on edge. No doubt the Bush Administration would not have been able to engage in the Iraqi War without the 9-11 precedent.
But support from the electorate for impending threat warfare, like the Iraqi war, appears to be very short. Based on our data, a linear rate of erosion of support, and some recent estimates of the percentages of Liberals, Conservatives, Moderates, and Libertarians in the American population, support for impending threat warfare drops below the 50% level about 18 months after the beginning of the conflict. During these first 18 months, two things are notable: Liberal support dwindles to almost zero, and Moderate support declines at an even pace.
But the loss in the already low levels in Liberal support is not politically catastrophic in the execution of impending threat warfare, at least in America. It is the Moderate loss that threatens it. Between the 19th and 42nd months of conflict, the stability of Conservative beliefs keeps the overall support from dropping too quickly. Between the 42nd and 48th month of conflict, the overall level of support falls below 45%, which is a very dangerous point for the government in power. This period of erosion, from the 19th to the 48th month, is due primarily to the Moderates.
After 48 months of conflict, there appears to be a Conservative acceleration in opposition, which we are experiencing now, and overall support drops into the politically catastrophic sub-40% level.
However, these are only rough estimates based on the Iraqi War, and each particular impending threat model of warfare will have its own idiosyncrasies. Currently, an impending threat model of warfare against Iran, even a nuclear threat at that, will not be able to gather sufficient support from a war-weary American population.
The Psychology of Opposing the War
The people that have changed their minds against the war have some interesting psychological nuances. For one, they are more introverted than those that continue to support the war. With the human brain, introversion is a marker for elevated prefrontal cortical activity, primarily in those regions involved in planning and memory retrieval.
As we noted before, the introverts are less likely to align their beliefs to match the prevailing beliefs in their social groups, and are prime candidates for the erosion of warfare support. Those that changed their opinion against the Iraq War were more likely to retain the initial belief that the war was over weapons of mass destruction, while those that maintained their support completely transitioned from weapons of mass destruction, when none were found, and into Iraqi Freedom, and/or fighting terrorism. As a justification for the war, Iraqi freedom, was a distant third among the remaining supporters of the war.
Also notable was that television seemed to be a greater factor in the erosion of warfare support than any other media. Those that changed their minds were more likely to get their Iraqi War information from television. Interestingly, those that turned on the war reported higher rates of spirituality than those that maintained their support, who were likely to report much higher rates of religiosity.
And just as interesting, those that changed their minds had birth rates comparable to those that were against the war from the beginning. In other words, the reproductive rates of the deserters were very similar to those that originally opposed the war. Those that maintained support for the war had substantially higher birth rates than those that switched.
Discussion
Impending threat warfare is a very dangerous proposition for any elected government if it extends past 36 months of conflict, at least in America. Currently, Liberals and most of the Moderates will accept the risks of potential terrorist attacks and don't feel that the commitment of large numbers of troops to Iraq is providing any measure of additional safety.
But the Iraqi War also has an elevated "suspicion" factor that seems to be working against it, so its erosion of support may actually exceed a "normal" model of impending threat warfare. The Moderates, and especially the Liberals, are much more suspicious of the motives of the Bush Administration than are the Conservatives. These two political cohorts were more likely to believe that the war is either for oil, or for Bush to avenge his father's criticism for not going to Baghdad during the Gulf War.
Currently, the Moderates, Libertarians, Liberals, and Nonpolitical are more likely to believe they are less safe from terrorism since the start of the war. Only the Conservatives believe they are safer now.
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Charles Brack and Xi Zhang, May 2007
Email: Brack@neuropolitics.org
Zhang@neuropolitics.org
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The God of r, the God of K
The Population Biology of the Bible
"And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them."...ExodusThe God of the Old Testament was inordinately concerned about human birth rates. This was odd, since he not only had a very dark view of human nature, he also wasn't above wiping out the whole human race to prove it. Based on God's diatribes against mankind, he should have been the leading proponent of abortion and homosexuality.
But the Old Testament God's intervention in the lives of humans had an unusually persistent theme--the reproduction and emigration of the Hebrews into new territory, that is, the promised land.
This godly preoccupation with Hebrew reproduction, the promised land, and emigration was not so coincidental, as among both human and non-human species, dispersal into new territories is the primary response to increasing population densities.
Mobile human populations occupying foreign territories have a very strong tendency to coordinate behaviors and beliefs. This mirrors the behaviors of other migrating social animals quite well. The increased cooperation, mutual defense, and altruism among the emigrants of other species improves both group and individual survival in new habitats.
Humans have evolved with individual predispositions for the extremes of migratory social organization and social behavior in dense urban populations. These social behaviors are quite different, and their neurological origins can be traced to the monoamine neurotransmitter systems of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, which have a significant degree of behavioral, cognitive, and anatomical specificity.
Pastoralism and Monotheism
Two monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam, share a common economic foundation: pastoralism. The pervasive Biblical references to God as shepherd and humans as sheep is an echo of the interesting relationship between pastoral societies, warfare, semi-arid climates, animal-product diets, human emigration, and monotheistic religions.
Pastoral-nomadic societies are highly mobile, patrilineal, male dominated, highly organized, militant, and the most likely to develop and propagate distinctly monotheistic gods of the male gender. Both hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies have higher propensities for polytheism, and provided a problem for the spread of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, the latter of which would adopt many solar rituals to improve conversion rates.
Pastoral-nomadism involves frequent conflict with farmers, hunters, foragers, and other nomads. Competition and conflict is exacerbated by the wide rainfall variations of the semi-arid regions that pastoralism typically inhabits, and changes the usual migration routes in search of grazable rangelands, increasing conflict with indigenous populations. This is the foundation of militance and male dominance among pastoral-nomads. This pastoral mobility also provides an excellent mechanism for propagating religious beliefs over large territories.
But pastoral-nomadism was just one type of migratory behavior during Biblical times. Along with the normal cycle of growth and dispersal of pastoral, agricultural, and urban populations, periodic droughts in the semi-arid regions of the Arabian peninsula and Egypt would drive displaced populations towards the Nile delta.
The God of r
In Genesis, a great famine in the promised land of Canaan resulted in the Hebrew emigration to Egypt. According to Exodus, the Hebrews were enslaved by the Egyptians, but still reproduced rapidly, which is contrary to the more typical inverse relationship between reproductive rates and enslavement. Some theories propose that these events were actually based on the occupation of Canaan by the Egyptians.
In the account of Exodus, the rapidly expanding Hebrew population was expelled from Egypt, as it posed a threat to the power of the Pharaoh. During their emigration out of Egypt, God intervened to provide both food and water, and took an unusual dislike for a group of nomads that repeatedly attacked the Hebrews, called the Amalekites. The Hebrew war against the Amalekites was a vicious one, and with a little prodding from God, the Hebrews killed them all.
After a period of emigration, starvation, warfare, and the intervention of Yahweh on behalf of the Hebrews, there was still a lot of resistance to the adoption of the single God theory of Moses. Baal was a rival god of the landowning aristocrats of Canaan, and the pastoral Hebrews were naturally resentful for not being able to graze on their private lands, which were protected by the believers of Baal.
Therefore, there was no other God than Yahweh, the one true God. The socioeconomic structure promoted by the Hebrews would ultimately vanquish Baal, as organized religious practices are not so much about religion as they are about the survival of populations in stressed habitats.
In population biology, as we discussed in last month's edition, the variable r is the intrinsic rate of population growth, and is simply the difference between birth and death rates. r selection is the propensity of a habitat to favor species that reproduce rapidly. r strategists were species that found new habitats quickly, reproduced rapidly, and dispersed quickly as these habitats were depleted.
r strategists were typically small, closely knit populations that engaged in mutual altruistic behaviors such as cooperative nest building and mutual defense. Among humans, emigrating religious groups most closely resemble the behaviors of r strategists, with their higher birth rates and propensity for altruistic behaviors towards other religious group members.
Much of the Old Testament involves reproduction, migration, famine, warfare, altruism, heredity, ethics, genetic restrictions in reproduction, monotheism, and an often angry and vengeful God to facilitate it all--the God of r.
The God of K
In the Old Testament, there were many signs of a softening of God's approach to humans, as he spares cities from destruction, shows tolerance towards the Gentiles, promotes peaceful resolutions to disputes with non-Jews, and speaks more about "love".
In contrast to both Moses and Mohammed, who both spent time as shepherds, the Biblical Jesus lived a predominately cosmopolitan life. His home town, Nazareth, was a popular caravan stop along the trading routes of the eastern Mediterranean, and a melting pot of Hebrew, Babylonian, and Hellenistic cultures. The district of Galilee had transitioned towards urban life, was heavily engaged in trade, and had a corresponding diversity of culture and genetics.
Jesus' father was a carpenter, and the young Jesus was caught up in the Galilee building boom, and traveled to many cities to help in his father's construction projects. According to some accounts of his life, Jesus was exposed to both the Egyptian city of Alexandria and the Greek city of Scythopolis. The purported influence of western culture on Jesus was part of a rather broad and liberal education, as he supposedly learned to read and write Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic.
The Biblical Jesus is the most well documented liberal in history. In his studies of the Old Testament, he had a rather unconventional objection, which wasn't too out of line with the prevailing attitudes in the liberal city of Nazareth--why was God so angry and vengeful? This didn't make theological sense. Surely, much of the Old Testament had missed the mark.
According to some accounts of his life, Jesus, an accomplished musician, a performer of the forerunner to the electric guitar (the harp), had quite the scientific mind, and was fascinated by such ungodly things as the different states of matter--gaseous, liquid, and solid. He pondered over the changes in weather patterns, dabbled in astronomy, and studied higher mathematics. He was, in modern terminology, a geek. He refused to defend himself in altercations. The sight of blood made him ill. He was a far cry from the hardened Moses and Mohammed.
Just like your average modern-day Liberal, Jesus disliked commercialism, promoted environmentalism, railed against animal sacrifice, promoted women's rights, and fostered brotherhood among all peoples. While several of the Hebrew prophets would precede Jesus in the promotion of a more loving and just version of God, the empathetic nature of this intellectual carpenter was obvious in his tolerance for genetic and cultural variation, and intolerance of earthly reward-seeking and selfishness.
Like Isaiah and Jeremiah before him, the chosen people of the Old Testament were a theoretical problem to Jesus. Why would God choose the Hebrews over other people? This was a common idea in Nazareth, as it simply reflected the genetic and religious diversity of urban populations, along with the calming influence of economic development and trade upon intergroup conflict.
But a major theme of the Old Testament, so focused on the reproduction and emigration, i.e., the promised land of the Jews, was noticeably absent from the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was much more interested in transferring earthly selfishness and reward-seeking into heavenly reward-seeking, and genetics didn't matter one bit. The genetically restrictive inclusive fitness model of the Old Testament, centered on the Hebrews, was suddenly expanded to the entire human population. This was the God of K.
In population biology, the variable K denotes the maximum population that can be sustained by a given habitat. K strategists are stable species, and are able to maintain populations at or near the carrying capacity of their habitats over a long period of time. They are able to modulate their reproductive rates to match the available energy supply. They typically live longer, reproduce at a later age, and are much more specialized in the way they extract energy from the habitat. They are specialists. In humans, urban environments promote the same general behaviors seen in the K strategists of other species.
The New Testament's focus on altruism and the transference of earthly reward-seeking into heavenly was perfect for the problems created by dense populations, as it addressed the competitiveness and mutual indifference that plague urban behavior.
The God of r, the God of K
The Bible presents two distinctly different Gods, one focused on reproduction, warfare, morality, and emigration, and one focused on love, altruism, and heavenly reward-seeking. The modern-day followers of Jesus have a remarkably wide spectrum of beliefs, from the Fundamentalists, who maintain high reproductive rates and literally interpret the Bible, to the urbanistic Unitarians, who maintain low reproductive rates and do not even enforce a belief in Jesus.
So who is God? A great angry thunderer demolishing the enemies of the righteous, or a kind, loving, and confused conglomeration of father, son, and holy ghost? Oddly enough, it really doesn't matter. The Bible is not so much about God and the origin of the universe as it is about the evolution of the human nervous system over a long period of reproduction, emigration, warfare, and r and K selection events. It is the greatest story of population biology ever told.
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The Nocturnal Liberal
We have previously reported, in our September 2005 edition, that Liberals reported higher levels of mental focus in the evening hours than did Conservatives, who reported better mental focus in the morning. This trend was not as pronounced with females as it was with males.
In our most recent survey, we asked the 3,501 respondents what time at night did you go to sleep? The results are in the graph below.
What time do you go to sleep at night? (VL=Very Liberal, L=Liberal, M=Moderate, M=Moderate, C=Conservative, VC=Very Conservative) (F=Female, M=Male)The above data is in 24 hour notation, i.e., military time. There are several notable trends. First, males stay up later than females. Second, the more liberal one is, regardless of gender, the later they go to bed. We initially suspected that the presence of children was causing this trend, however, Liberals with the same number of children as Conservatives still go to sleep later. This is also true when controlling for age.
The question is, why? The biochemical chain of events that result in the sleep-wake cycle is extremely complex, and starts with the suprachiasmatic nuclei of the hypothalamus, which communicate with the pineal gland in order to regulate melatonin production, which modulates the sleep-wake cycle. The complex cascade of events is still not well understood, but it is clear that it involves the modulation of hormones, neuropeptides, and neurotransmitters to create the phenomena of both sleep and the restorative, growth, and disease-fighting functions it supports.
We have long proposed the elevated activity of the dopaminergic system in Conservative behavior. This proposal was due to a number of cognitive clues that we have collected over the last few years (see Conservative Left Brain, Liberal Right Brain). This may be a clue as to why the Conservatives may be on an accelerated sleep clock at night. It appears that dopamine has a role in the synthesis of melatonin.
The fact that the hour of sleep is a negative function of political affiliation, as one goes from left to right on the political scale, is certainly suspicious. The propensity for Conservatives to go to sleep earlier than Liberals is probably a marker of their neurological variations. It is also interesting that females, on average, go to sleep earlier than males.
