Two things.
Incredibly small sample and the fact it says “decidedly unsicentific conclusions”
Not especially. A higher than average IQ is correlated with an above average income, but a very high IQ is not associated with any income increase beyond that. There may even be a decrease when you get above 170 or so, but I don’t recall. If that’s the case it may either be that when you get smart enough you learn to not worry about money, or more likely, that ultra-high IQ people have brains specialized for test-taking and other sorts of knowledge which the money-driven employment market does not value as much as “people skills” and practical engineering.
No, one wouldn’t. One might say that Neanderthals retained more basal traits (what used to be called primitive traits), but no scientist worth his salt would say that one was more “evolved” than the other when comparing two contemporaneous populations.
Can conservatives and liberals still interbreed? Do they produce viable offspring??
-XT
:smack:
I knew, even when I wrote the title of the OP, that using the term “evolved” is problematic. Which is why I tried to hedge things a bit by putting it in quotation marks. I just thought it was very striking that conservatives rely heavily on a more primitive part of the brain and liberals rely more on the part responsible for what truly makes us “human” (in my humble opinion). Every animal is able to perceive danger, scurry away or attack (the flight or fight response). But empathy and rational thought are what truly what makes human beings stand apart from other species, and conservatives seem to demonstrably have less of those qualities.
He’s a more neutral article describing the study. The liberal blog musings I posted in the OP took an admittedly biased spin on those findings (but ones that I largely agree with).
Umm, yeah, I definitely doubt the “over 170” number. It appears that you might be misremembering and just speculating about any causes. The largest study I saw (Zagorsky, 2007, Intelligence) shows an increase in income from IQ 120 to IQ 125 and above but it doesn’t go beyond that.
Going down the path of “more evolved,” the results of this study might just as well support the hypothesis that conservatives are more evolved, since they have larger amygdala. The human amygdala might have evolved to deal with an increasingly complex social life and there is a link between amygdala size and social network size and complexity.
BTW, I like how the OP’s supposed link to “this study” is a link to a liberal website’s obviously biased article about the study.
James Carville (liberal political commentator) and Mary Matalin (conservative political strategist) are married and have two daughters. No word yet on whether their hybrid offspring are fertile. 
[QUOTE=Blalron]
I knew, even when I wrote the title of the OP, that using the term “evolved” is problematic. Which is why I tried to hedge things a bit by putting it in quotation marks. I just thought it was very striking that conservatives rely heavily on a more primitive part of the brain and liberals rely more on the part responsible for what truly makes us “human” (in my humble opinion). Every animal is able to perceive danger, scurry away or attack (the flight or fight response). But empathy and rational thought are what truly what makes human beings stand apart from other species, and conservatives seem to demonstrably have less of those qualities.
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Well think about it. What you seem to be implying here is that ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ are inborn traits, that we are born to be one or the other and that our environment has nothing to do with how we turn out. And what about people who change? For instance, I was a pretty hard core liberal when I was a kid. Why? Because most of my extended family were and are Democrats of the most liberal kind. When I was in college I became a pretty hard core fiscal conservative (while keeping most or all of my social liberal stances). And while many on this board would disagree, as I’ve gotten older I’ve steadily drifted to a more moderate stance on most things (though I’m still a pretty hard social liberal about most things).
So…does that mean my liberal/conservative gene is stuck? Are we talking dominance and recessive traits here (so if you are a L/L you are liberal, a C/C a conservative, but an L/C means…what? You are a moderate?)?
The thing with polls is that they can say what ever you want them to say, depending on what questions you ask and how you ask them. Ask them one way and you will get one set of answers. Ask them another and you will get another. And a sample size of less than a hundred is really not going to get you any firm data at all…not unless you do many suck polls using different, randomly chosen population groups.
-XT
Logically speaking, the statement “All swans are white” can be refuted by showing a single example of a non-white swan. Similarly, the statement “all political views are genetically caused” can be refuted by just one contrary example.
Here’s an NPR story about identical twins who are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. I think that one example is enough to show that political leanings are not always set in stone by genetics. However, genetics does seem to play some role in shaping political leanings, in combination with environmental factors.
Here’s another paragraph I found interesting (ibid):
There are studies that say vaccines cause autism. There are studies that say a million people died in Iraq. There are studies that say all history up to 1000 AD is false. There are studies that say Africans have lower IQ than whites. Your point?
What method should we use to sort out good data from bad data, Qin Shi Huangdi?
And why did you chose to name yourself after a Chinese Emperor who burned nearly all the history books in China and buried scholars alive? Is that your idea of a role model? That’s an even worse choice than Curis Lemay. 
I cannot believe this hobgoblin of a topic has come again to haunt Great Debates.
I’ll wager none of the folks in here defending any part of this “study,” as it is termed, have actually downloaded it and read it. That may be because it does not seem to have been peer-reviewed and published academically. Here are all the publications I could find by the study lead in 2010 and 2011:
2011
Gilaie-dotan, S., Bentin, S., Harel, M., Rees, G., Saygin, A. P. (2011). Normal form from biological motion despite impaired ventral stream function… Neuropsychologia doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.01.009.
Schwarzkopf, D. S., Song, C., Rees, G. (2011). The surface area of human V1 predicts the subjective experience of object size. Nature Neuroscience 14(1), 28-30 doi:10.1038/nn.2706.
Song, C., Kanai, R., Fleming, S. M., Weil, R. S., Schwarzkopf, D. S., Rees, G. (2011). Relating inter-individual differences in metacognitive performance on different perceptual tasks… Conscious Cogn doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.12.011.
2010
Anderson, E. J., Mannan, S. K., Rees, G., Sumner, P., Kennard, C. (2010). Overlapping functional anatomy for working memory and visual search. Experimental Brain Research 200(1), 91-107 doi:10.1007/s00221-009-2000-5. Author URL
Bahrami, B., Olsen, K., Latham, P. E., Roepstorff, A., Rees, G., Frith, C. D. (2010). Optimally interacting minds… Science 329(5995), 1081-1085 doi:10.1126/science.1185718.
Bahrami, B., Vetter, P., Spolaore, E., Pagano, S., Butterworth, B., Rees, G. (2010). Unconscious numerical priming despite interocular suppression. PSYCHOL SCI 21(2), 224-233 doi:10.1177/0956797609360664.
Carmel, D., Walsh, V., Lavie, N., Rees, G. (2010). Right parietal TMS shortens dominance durations in binocular rivalry… Curr Biol 20(18), R799-R800 doi:10.1016/j.cub.2010.07.036.
De Haas, B., Rees, G. (2010). Multiple stages of cross-modal integration in visual processing. Comment on “Crossmodal influences on visual perception” by L. Shams & R. Kim… Phys Life Rev 7(3), 287-288 doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2010.06.007.
Doria, V., Beckmann, C. F., Arichi, T., Merchant, N., Groppo, M., Turkheimer, F. E., Counsell, S. J., Murgasova, M., Aljabar, P., Nunes, R. G., Larkman, D. J., Rees, G., Edwards, A. D. (2010). Emergence of resting state networks in the preterm human brain. P NATL ACAD SCI USA 107(46), 20015-20020 doi:10.1073/pnas.1007921107.
Fleming, S. M., Weil, R. S., Nagy, Z., Dolan, R. J., Rees, G. (2010). Relating introspective accuracy to individual differences in brain structure… Science 329(5998), 1541-1543 doi:10.1126/science.1191883.
Gilaie-dotan, S., Silvanto, J., Schwarzkopf, D. S., Rees, G. (2010). Investigating representations of facial identity in human ventral visual cortex with transcranial magnetic stimulation… Front Hum Neurosci 4, 50- doi:10.3389/fnhum.2010.00050.
Kanai, R., Bahrami, B., Rees, G. (2010). Human parietal cortex structure predicts individual differences in perceptual rivalry. Current Biology 20(18), 1626-1630
Rees, G., Seth, A. K. (2010). The cognitive neuroscience of consciousness Introduction. COGN NEUROSCI 1(3), 153-154 doi:10.1080/17588928.2010.503602.
Sarri, M., Ruff, C. C., Rees, G., Driver, J. (2010). Neural correlates of visual extinction or awareness in a series of patients with right temporo-parietal damage. Cognitive Neuroscience [Accepted]
Schölvinck, M. L., Rees, G. (2010). Neural correlates of motion-induced blindness in the human brain… J Cogn Neurosci 22(6), 1235-1243 doi:10.1162/jocn.2009.21262.
Schwarzkopf, D. S., Rees, G. (2010). Brain activity to rely on?. Science 327(5961), 43-44 doi:10.1126/science.1184242. Author URL
Schwarzkopf, D. S., Rees, G. (2010). Interpreting local visual features as a global shape requires awareness… Proc Biol Sci doi:10.1098/rspb.2010.1909.
Schwarzkopf, D. S., Schindler, A., Rees, G. (2010). Knowing with which eye we see: utrocular discrimination and eye-specific signals in human visual cortex… PLoS One 5(10), e13775- doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013775.
Schwarzkopf, D. S., Silvanto, J., Gilaie-dotan, S., Rees, G. (2010). Investigating object representations during change detection in human extrastriate cortex… Eur J Neurosci 32(10), 1780-1787 doi:10.1111/j.1460-9568.2010.07443.x.
Schwarzkopf, D. S., Sterzer, P., Rees, G. (2010). Decoding of coherent but not incoherent motion signals in early dorsal visual cortex… Neuroimage doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.04.011.
Schwarzkopf, D., Silvanto, J., Gilaie-dotan, S., Rees, G. (2010). A necessary role for the lateral occipital cortex and the occipital face area in the rotational invariance of shape processing. PERCEPTION 39(2), 267-268
Sergent, C., Ruff, C. C., Barbot, A., Driver, J., Rees, G. (2010). Top-Down Modulation of Human Early Visual Cortex after Stimulus Offset Supports Successful Postcued Report… J Cogn Neurosci doi:10.1162/jocn.2010.21553.
Silvanto, J., Schwarzkopf, D. S., Gilaie-dotan, S., Rees, G. (2010). Differing causal roles for lateral occipital cortex and occipital face area in invariant shape recognition… Eur J Neurosci 32(1), 165-171 doi:10.1111/j.1460-9568.2010.07278.x.
Tibber, M., Saygin, A. P., Grant, S., Melmoth, D., Rees, G., Morgan, M. (2010). The Neural Correlates of Visuospatial Perceptual and Oculomotor Extrapolation. PLOS ONE 5(3), e9664 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009664.
Tibber, M., Saygin, A., Grant, S., Melmoth, D., Rees, G., Morgan, M. (2010). The neural correlates of visuospatial oculomotor and perceptual extrapolation. PERCEPTION 39(2), 277-277
Weil, R. S., Furl, N., Ruff, C. C., Symmonds, M., Flandin, G., Dolan, R. J., Driver, J., Rees, G. (2010). Rewarding feedback after correct visual discriminations has both general and specific influences on visual cortex… J Neurophysiol 104(3), 1746-1757 doi:10.1152/jn.00870.2009.
Weil, R. S., Rees, G. (2010). Decoding the neural correlates of consciousness… Curr Opin Neurol 23(6), 649-655 doi:10.1097/WCO.0b013e32834028c7.
So those of you who are supporting this notion, especially the OP, please post the citation for or a direct link to the paper which you read, because doggone it I can’t find it. Maybe it’s because I’m one of those Evil Conservatives who hasn’t evolved enough to do research?
You seem to be correct, Una Persson. It hasn’t been published in a peer reviewed journal… at least not yet. Even if the research is sound, more studies will be needed to confirm it.
I have this image of the pair of them looking down into a cradle with tentacles coming out of it.
“So. Ummmm…divorce?”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t they both part of gray matter?
a·myg·da·la
An almond-shaped mass of gray matter in the anterior portion of the temporal lobe. Also called amygdaloid nucleus.
For this study less than a hundred people were studied. Perhaps the conservative students largely came from one area where those traits are common and the same for the liberal students.
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He was a progressive man for his time who united China and ended centuries of warfare.
Killing everyone who disagrees with you has a way of ending warfare.
Grunt. Og thank.
Which he did not do-especially since most accounts of him were written by opponents of his rule. In addition times were different than from now, you can’t expect people in 200 BC to act like modern liberals.