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In the Shadow of Horror, SS Guardians Frolic
The New York Times had an article about a Nazi concentration camp scrapbook which was donated to the Holocaust Museum. The photos show concentration camp guards having picnics and such right within sniffing distance of the ghastly unspeakable Auschwitz. What are the neurological correlates of that? More, plus a link to a test to see if you have an authoritarian personality after the jump.
Left wing brain, right wing brain. Neo-cons have a tough time breaking a habitual behavior. Liberals are better at changing from habitual behavior.
At least, this was the conclusion of a recent report. Researchers ran a test: the letter ‘M” appeared on a screen most of the time, but sometimes a “W” would appear — the subject was to tap a key when they saw the “W”. Subjects were hooked up to machines which detect brain activity in various areas. ” Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M. Analyzing the data, Sulloway [a non-related researcher] said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.”
Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism,
Nature neuroscience, published online: 9 September 2007
Is this connected to the “Authoritarian Personality?” About a year ago I bought a used copy of “The Authoritarian Personality” in Black Oak Books. T. W. Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950). Social scientists at UC Berkeley studied the Nazi mind-set toward the end of WWII, funded by the American Jewish Committee. I found it sort of like watching a reality show. The work was done before political correctness, when people thought nothing of expressing prejudices. I’ll do a book review of this in another post, with some of the narratives of the subjects interviewed.
The F Scale is a series of questions designed to determine if someone has an authoritarian personality. The link above is for the quiz at “Anesi.com” (apologies I’m not linking in a link page to other blogs yet as I’m not ready for prime time ….)
| Variable | Questions measuring variable |
| Conventionalism: Rigid adherence to conventional, middle-class values. | 1, 2, 3, 4 |
| Authoritarian Submission: Submissive, uncritical attitude toward idealized moral authorities of the ingroup. | 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 |
| Authoritarian Aggression: Tendency to be on the lookout for, and to condemn, reject, and punish people who violate conventional values. | 2, 3, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 |
| Anti-intraception: Opposition to the subjective, the imaginative, the tender-minded. | 3, 4, 17, 18 |
| Superstition and Stereotypy: The belief in mystical determinants of the individual’s fate; the disposition to think in rigid categories. | 5, 6, 19, 20, 21, 22 |
| Power and “Toughness”: Preoccupation with the dominance-submission, strong-weak, leader-follower dimension; identification with power figures; overemphasis upon the conventionalized attributes of the ego; exaggerated assertion of strength and toughness. | 8, 11, 12, 20, 23, 24, 25, 30 |
| Destructiveness and Cynicism: Generalized hostility, vilification of the human. | 26, 27 |
| Projectivity: The disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world; the projection outwards of unconscious emotional impulses. | 18, 22, 25, 28, 29 |
| Sex: Exaggerated concern with sexual “goings-on.” | 13, 16, 29 |
All of these traits deal with avoiding change or fear of the unknown. Or keeping things the way they are, and avoiding new things which could lead to conflict. The power-aspects, such as wanting to know about the private lives of others, seems to me to be a power thing, accumulate information to use later if needed.
Is all of this designed to avoid having to use the anterior cingulate — the liberal, left-wing portion of the brain? Is that part underdeveloped in conservatives? Authoritarians? Nazis?
I wonder if someone from Fox is going to come and put foil between my wireless connections or something tonight.
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Kursk // Apr 4, 2009 at 8:48 pm
The problem is that fascists are leftists.The worst mass murderers in the world have all come from the left side of the political spectrum.Mao, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro..the list goes on. All leftists.
What tests do you propose we implement to root out this very much left of center problem?
If Liberalism is a mental disease, what part of the pathology of fascism makes up its central core?
It is also very typically leftist to blame others for the most murderous shortcomings of their ideology.
2 swivelchair // Apr 5, 2009 at 10:37 am
Thank you for your comments, Kursk.
I don’t frame the neurol-psychological issue so much in the substance of the ideology, as much as the intransigence of it. I think there may be a neural plasticity problem, as indicated by the difficulty in changing from a pattern in the “M” experiment. Perhaps that’s how those with “authoritarian personalities” (using that term as described in the post) find comfort — where you have difficulty and confusion being flexible in your through processes, it is best to be an inflexible ideologue (regardless of it is Maoist, Nazi, religiously intolerant, corporate cultist, whatever).
I mean, there are those who are simply duped — like, Maoists may have that as a compassionate good of the people movement, during the cultural revolution in the ’70s. (I just heard an interview with someone about that).
But as far as a test, the test may be one that determines if the person has the neural capacity to have flexibility of thought — in a real, organic, physical sense. If those dendrites and microtubules are stuck, well, perhaps that means that they are stuck in their ideology.
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