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Ideology May Not Be What You Think but How You’re Wired (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 1 week ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/science@beehaw.org

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In my experiments I’ve found that the most rigid thinkers have genetic dispositions related to how dopamine is distributed in their brains.

Rigid thinkers tend to have lower levels of dopamine in their prefrontal cortex and higher levels of dopamine in their striatum, a key midbrain structure in our reward system that controls our rapid instincts. So our psychological vulnerabilities to rigid ideologies may be grounded in biological differences.

In fact, we find that people with different ideologies have differences in the physical structure and function of their brains. This is especially pronounced in brain networks responsible for reward, emotion processing, and monitoring when we make errors.

For instance, the size of our amygdala — the almond-shaped structure that governs the processing of emotions, especially negatively tinged emotions such as fear, anger, disgust, danger and threat — is linked to whether we hold more conservative ideologies that justify traditions and the status quo.

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[–] Commiunism@beehaw.org 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

It's quite interesting how the way a person thinks isn't necessarily universal - some people are more rigid in their beliefs which has some correlation with a different chemical balance within brains and vice versa.

However, I'm quite skeptical when it comes to the concept of "ideological thinking" or "being prone to ideology", as that's not really how ideology works. Everyone is an ideological thinker, its how we view the world, have it make sense, it encompasses our thoughts and opinions at our most honest, lowest level. If anyone says that they're not "ideological", it's only because they don't recognize/understand what ideology truly is - after all, the classical definition of ideology is "that which you do without realizing it".

Having the ability to change ones opinions and be a more "open thinker" can be part of ideology itself - after all, that's what most people are taught in schools, and is part of the liberal MO (but with lots of exceptions on what can be changed of course, like what is "moral"). Reactionary ideologies promote the opposite view: the perfect world was in the mythical past where all was well, we should turn back time and go back to exactly how things were in that past.

At least from my perspective, a better conclusion could be that those who aren't as rigid in their thinking can actually change their ideology easier. That's how someone can step from conservatism to liberalism and vice versa, from liberalism to marxism, from conservatism to ultra-nationalism, but I'd argue that it's mostly up to our environments to make us disillusioned with our current ideologies/removal of the social reinforcement of them rather than there being something inherent to our brains.

[–] porcelainpitcher@lemmy.today 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I agree with almost all of your comment. However, say you have two children (to keep it simple) they have the same environment as they age (except, of course home life - important). Same school, same neighbourhood, similar friends etc. Their macro is so similar but their micro could be very different. This, in the developing brain will have larger effects down the line and could create vast differences in ideology - especially rigid ideology. So whilst I agree with you that it may not be inherent (although developing brain in utero, who knows), I think there is something to be said for the dopaminergic deficit in the cortex and the abundance in the striatum.