A neuroscientist explains what may be wrong with Trump supporters’ brains

[Torie]

Just in case you were wondering. And there is this thread out there about getting more scientists into politics and office. It should be interesting!

Anyway, to our Trumpster friends out there, if you want to savor that liberating feeling of revealing just what is wrong with your brain, out of the possibilities that are listed (feel free to pick more than one), this is the place to do it. Just a thought.

[mencken]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldwater_rule

[Torie]

Get back to us when he has an account of whatever is wrong with yours.

I most certainly will!

[mencken]

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So taking Trump's word at face value¹ makes one ignorant, but taking Bloomberg's word at face value makes one enlightened. Interesting.

¹Most Trump supporters do not actually do this; we have a certain brain defect called humor that causes us to reach the conclusion that Trump does not always speak literally.

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Given that much of the left has treated the election and swearing-in of a candidate they find distasteful as Kristallnacht 2.0, this is particularly amusing.

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Unless you are fearmongering that your opponent is a racist bigot who hates minorities, in which case stoking existential terror in a community is perfectly acceptable.

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I guess this is why Clinton's Russophobic fearmongering was ineffective.

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I concede this, but I do not think it takes a psychologist to tell you that running a boring uninspiring candidate is generally not a recipe for electoral success.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Not this crap again.

[DC Al Fine]

Not this crap again.

[publicunofficial]

I get my post censored for personal attacks and then you make a thread basically implying Trump supporters are all mentally ill/retarded. Nice.

[Virginiá]

So taking Trump's word at face value¹ makes one ignorant, but taking Bloomberg's word at face value makes one enlightened. Interesting.

It's not just Bloomberg. That was one example, and you honed in on it to make your argument. Why? Putting Trump aside, are you debating the validity of this entire theory - that some people have a cognitive bias that makes them unaware that they are misinformed? Or do you dispute its use in explaining Trump voters?

You could use this on Clinton supporters too, as she had plenty of problems that were brushed off.

Given that much of the left has treated the election and swearing-in of a candidate they find distasteful as Kristallnacht 2.0, this is particularly amusing.

It is amusing, but I'm not sure if it means anything. Both sides use fear, but conservatives are probably more receptive to it due to noticeable differences in parts of their brain related to processing fear. Would it really be surprising that certain politicians use strategies based on fear and that long-term, people sort themselves politically based on those strategies?

Unless you are fearmongering that your opponent is a racist bigot who hates minorities, in which case stoking existential terror in a community is perfectly acceptable.

That text you quoted - I don't think it actually stated what was acceptable or not. It was just explaining the idea they put forth.

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I think the biggest problem with these articles & politicos like ourselves is that if it only focuses on one party/person/ideology, the other is going to go on the defensive. I think there has been some decent evidence that conservatives have some different brain structures than liberals (or that liberals have diff structure than conservatives!) and that causes noticeable differences in some types of behavior, but that doesn't mean they are lesser or even that its a bad thing. Furthermore, at least with the first theory in this article - that applies to everyone. The last theory is really an indictment of Americans in general.

I see a lot of pushback on this article for its focus on Trump supporters, and that is understandable of course, but what about the theories and ideas it put forth? The somewhat offensive implications one could draw from this shouldn't entirely negate the ideas being debated in it.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I'm trying to decide whether this school of thought is dangerous, or just stupid.

Longform response to this trash would be that, regardless of whether there is some identifiable difference in mental structure or capacity between members of two political parties, such a fact would fail to explain the shift of the political orientations of individuals and entire peoples over time, or how this would function in a multi-party system. And that is assuming that this is true, when it's clear there is some level of fear response manifesting on both sides of the political spectrum right now, as recent riots have doubtlessly demonstrated. I suppose this makes an Irishman in California in the 1870's "conservative" because his labor party's newspaper published something stoking fears about Chinese immigration.

Ultimately, seeking neuropsychological explanations for political behavior will lead to ruin, in my opinion, as it risks treating the subjects as evolution-driven animals rather than the product of (among other things) social factors such as economics, demography, and atomization.

[mencken]

So taking Trump's word at face value¹ makes one ignorant, but taking Bloomberg's word at face value makes one enlightened. Interesting.

It's not just Bloomberg. That was one example, and you honed in on it to make your argument. Why? Putting Trump aside, are you debating the validity of this entire theory - that some people have a cognitive bias that makes them unaware that they are misinformed? Or do you dispute its use in explaining Trump voters?

I do not think the theory is invalid, just that its application here is, to say the least, a tad selective. Virtually everyone on either side of the spectrum is susceptible to cognitive biases; better to point out
fallacious arguments when they come rather than castigate an entire subset of the populace as mentally deficient.
 

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It is amusing, but I'm not sure if it means anything. Both sides use fear, but conservatives are probably more receptive to it due to noticeable differences in parts of their brain related to processing fear. Would it really be surprising that certain politicians use strategies based on fear and that long-term, people sort themselves politically based on those strategies?[/quote]

The point is that both sides clearly use fear to their advantage; I am at the very least skeptical of ideology-based response differences.

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Absolutely, Scott Adams has been doing interesting work on this subject for some time.

[Torie]

I get my post censored for personal attacks and then you make a thread basically implying Trump supporters are all mentally ill/retarded. Nice.

You didn't figure out that I think this is all totally absurd yet? 

It actually isn't against the terms of use, because it isn't a personal attack on individual posters. Rather it's passing along someone's opinion that Trump fans have mental issues. Even posting that one thinks that those who support Trump are idiots would probably pass muster, although that one would be close to the line. I am just sharing with you as to how I think about these issues.

[Virginiá]

Ultimately, seeking neuropsychological explanations for political behavior will lead to ruin, in my opinion, as it risks treating the subjects as evolution-driven animals rather than the product of (among other things) social factors such as economics, demography, and atomization.

I think I could agree with that, but probably for different reasons. In the grand scheme of things, we really don't know that much about the brain, and wading into politics with so many theories and so little definitive proof can create a lot of tension when the answers divvy people up or make them feel lesser.

I don't think we should purposefully cloister ourselves from knowledge of how we think about politics and why, but that maybe that theories that have little supporting evidence should be carefully promulgated. Not to mention that there is probably a self-preservation issue here too, as conservative donors might not want to fund scientific research that aims to make their political views seem lesser or deficient in some way, although that's a different conversation I guess.

[longtimelurker]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldwater_rule

That didn't stop Dr. Ablow on Fox News when speaking about President Obama.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Ultimately, seeking neuropsychological explanations for political behavior will lead to ruin, in my opinion, as it risks treating the subjects as evolution-driven animals rather than the product of (among other things) social factors such as economics, demography, and atomization.

I think I could agree with that, but probably for different reasons. In the grand scheme of things, we really don't know that much about the brain, and wading into politics with so many theories and so little definitive proof can create a lot of tension when the answers divvy people up or make them feel lesser.

I don't think we should purposefully cloister ourselves from knowledge of how we think about politics and why, but that maybe that theories that have little supporting evidence should be carefully promulgated. Not to mention that there is probably a self-preservation issue here too, as conservative donors might not want to fund scientific research that aims to make their political views seem lesser or deficient in some way, although that's a different conversation I guess.

Hmm. My own viewpoint is more motivated by general suspicion of "biopolitics", a term employed for a class at Wayne State University (and possibly elsewhere) that appears to seek easy analogies between the social and the biological world (I'd heard one professor joke to another at a graduate school open house that 2016 saw the resurgence of the "lizard brain"). I think such a way of looking at the world can lead quite easily to a dangerous set of policy proposals and an over-simplification of the mental processes of one's opponents or objects of observation. I take the same stance in regards to my own "field" (in this case, criminology); there is one theory, the name of which escapes me, that explicitly transposes the r/K distinction from zoology onto people.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Besides, it seems both far more amusing, and far more relevant, to sarcastically spew Hannah Arendt quotes, rather than absurdist biosocial theories.

[pbrower2a]

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So taking Trump's word at face value¹ makes one ignorant, but taking Bloomberg's word at face value makes one enlightened. Interesting.

¹Most Trump supporters do not actually do this; we have a certain brain defect called humor that causes us to reach the conclusion that Trump does not always speak literally.

I see no humor in sexual assault or other violence. As for humor -- it works best when it is honest and somewhat civil. It is acceptable to mock people as evil as Charles Manson  or Saddam Hussein.  

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Given that much of the left has treated the election and swearing-in of a candidate they find distasteful as Kristallnacht 2.0, this is particularly amusing.[/quote]

I am conservative on child welfare, drugs, and law-and-order. I think that we all find images of the Holocaust or Cambodian killing fields disgusting. But that is because I can see a dead body of someone shot, overworked, or starved to death for offending the sensibilities of a tyrant and start wondering what sort of person was killed. Was that Jew all that different from me? Was that Jew someone that I would have wanted as a friend, colleague, or business partner? If I were thirty years older and a Jew in Germany, would I too have been murdered?

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Unless you are fearmongering that your opponent is a racist bigot who hates minorities, in which case stoking existential terror in a community is perfectly acceptable.[/quote]

Donald Trump had the choice to avoid saying horrible things about ethnic minorities. He chose to do so. We all know what his words mean.

It is the responsibility of leaders to appeal to the best in us and not to the worst. There is plenty of genuine danger in the world at any time; inculcating and exploiting new fears when, as Franklin Roosevelt put it, "All we need to fear -- is Fear ". Contrast Hitler, who created a   climate of fear in which vilified pariahs  were to be scapegoats for anything that went wrong.

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I guess this is why Clinton's Russophobic fearmongering was ineffective.[/quote]

Russophobic? Russia has a great and glorious culture. Russian politics have been horrible throughout most of modern history, and they are horrible now.  We Americans could learn about it. It is the politics of Vladimir Putin and not Dostoevsky or Tchaikovsky that Donald Trump expounds.

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I concede this, but I do not think it takes a psychologist to tell you that running a boring uninspiring candidate is generally not a recipe for electoral success.
[/quote][/quote]

I prefer my politics boring. We need to remember that the three Roman emperors who best pleased the crowds were Nero, Caligula, and Commodus. But what the heck? This is America. We have plenty of books, video, sporting events, and music to which we can turn when we are bored.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I don't want to get caught up in this sad, sad thread, but I'll just say that Cathcon is doing excellent work here.

[Virginiá]

Hmm. My own viewpoint is more motivated by general suspicion of "biopolitics", a term employed for a class at Wayne State University (and possibly elsewhere) that appears to seek easy analogies between the social and the biological world

I guess it depends on how you want to look at it. To what extent can ideology/political leanings be based on biology? The positions on various issues are all relative, and I don't think there is anything inherent about, say, ditching the social safety net and conservatism. No one has genes that are specifically programmed to make them want to repeal ObamaCare (or do they.....)

I like to view it this way: our biological structures provide us a framework from which interaction with the world and other people will fill with knowledge and beliefs. It's like the physical constants - the universe has a set of hard rules that guide the events that unfold within itself. Nothing about gravity suggests that a world exactly like Earth will form, but only that it is possible based on what occurs in our galaxy. Our gravitational attributes encourage the formation of planets and stars, but do not force specific planetary landscapes. Likewise, if some people do have enlarged and more active amygladae, that means creative and persistent use of fear-based messaging could guide their political leanings, but it could also be just as easily used by liberals than conservatives.

I don't think there are easy answers, but I think if we understand the way people think (which is guided by the way their brain is structured), we can predict certain outcomes similar to how we can analyze the universe based on the physics we do have.

[Lincoln Republican]

So what this doctor? is saying is that 63,000,000 Americans who supported Trump are idiots, insane, or otherwise mentally unbalanced.

Did his certification come out of a cracker jack box or what?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Hmm. My own viewpoint is more motivated by general suspicion of "biopolitics", a term employed for a class at Wayne State University (and possibly elsewhere) that appears to seek easy analogies between the social and the biological world

I guess it depends on how you want to look at it. To what extent can ideology/political leanings be based on biology? The positions on various issues are all relative, and I don't think there is anything inherent about, say, ditching the social safety net and conservatism. No one has genes that are specifically programmed to make them want to repeal ObamaCare (or do they.....)

I like to view it this way: our biological structures provide us a framework from which interaction with the world and other people will fill with knowledge and beliefs. It's like the physical constants - the universe has a set of hard rules that guide the events that unfold within itself. Nothing about gravity suggests that a world exactly like Earth will form, but only that it is possible based on what occurs in our galaxy. Our gravitational attributes encourage the formation of planets and stars, but do not force specific planetary landscapes. Likewise, if some people do have enlarged and more active amygladae, that means creative and persistent use of fear-based messaging could guide their political leanings, but it could also be just as easily used by liberals than conservatives.

I don't think there are easy answers, but I think if we understand the way people think (which is guided by the way their brain is structured), we can predict certain outcomes similar to how we can analyze the universe based on the physics we do have.

I don't disagree that biological makeup can produce a range of dispositions and proclivities that would orient someone--socially, politically, or otherwise. I simply view reliance on that as a framework for understanding social behavior as of very limited, or otherwise dangerous, use. Noting a link between cognitive processes, impulse-control, and crime can be helpful, but it doesn't provide an answer to fundamental questions of social deviance, nor does it mean we ought to distribute and mandate ADHD medication as a practical or moral means of social control. Even if someone could say with confidence and accuracy that the bulk of a political party is filled with people with mental illnesses or low intelligence quotients, there is little way to act on that information to seek for some "solution" to the political system.

[Xing]

Obviously, the title of that article is ludicrous and unhelpful, and there are many different reasons why people  supported Trump. I do think there are psychological explanations for why *some* people are attracted to Trump, but phrasing that as "something is wrong with their brains" certainly isn't gong to win anyone over.

[Torie]

Obviously, the title of that article is ludicrous and unhelpful, and there are many different reasons why people  supported Trump. I do think there are psychological explanations for why *some* people are attracted to Trump, but phrasing that as "something is wrong with their brains" certainly isn't gong to win anyone over.

The title was no doubt penned to generate buzz honey. It is hardly a "mainstream" publication.

[Ban my account ffs!]

The only truth in psychology is that therapists are cheaper than a girlfriend.

[Virginiá]

The only truth in psychology is that therapists are cheaper than a girlfriend.

Hey! You are making remarks that will hurt our business ventures relationship prospects!

I will see you in court!

[publicunofficial]

God, I hope they'll come up with more of this in 2018 and 2020.

Hopefully the problem with Trumpers brains then will be easily diagnosed as "Suicidal Depression"