The Science of Left and Right: Links for My AAAS Talk Today

I’m going to be talking about some of the left-right material in my new book today at AAAS in Vancouver (panel here). And because the subject matter tends towards the, er, controversial, I’m once again putting up some links so that interested attendees can go read some of the peer reviewed research themselves.

First, there are the studies on left-right differences in brain structure, function, attention, and physiological responses. I’ve listed seven of them here. An eighth, just out, is discussed in detail in my recent Huffington Post piece entitled “Want to Understand Republicans? First Understand Evolution.”

Second, there are the studies on the genetics of politics. I’ve listed eleven of them here. To understand how genes could influence our political views, I’d recommend reading this paper most of all. To quote one key sentence: “In this paper, we present the individual steps by which genetics connect to neurotransmitter systems which connect to cognitive and emotional processing tendencies which connect to values and personality traits which connect to orientations to bedrock principles which finally connect to preferences on specific political issues of the day.”

All of this is still just the tip of the iceberg, as the largest number of studies are in psychology and personality, and I haven’t listed those yet. I’ll discuss those further in the talk, though.

Any questions?

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