Are Your Political Beliefs Hardwired?

[Polly]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070909/hl_afp/scienceneuroscience_070909173324

According to this, I'm a conservative. :giggle Yeah, that'll happen. When pigs (or, in my case, donkeys) fly.

Did you learn your political beliefs from your parents? Is it nature or product of your enviornment (religious beliefs, economic status-like being in a union, etc.)?

Because I think most moms like order. It's how we get stuff done.

Polly

[Mary]

Very interesting! I am pretty liberal and I do fit the description they provided. Additionally, my parents are extremely conservative and they have ENORMOUS issues with deviating from routine. You'd think the world was going to come to an end for my dad if you ask him to do something that isn't in The Routine. :rolleyes

[Jejune]

I think it's more complicated than just how you vote. I live a fairly conservative life, though, admittedly, without much routine, but my politics are liberal. My grandparents all were Democrats, but one of my grandmothers was really very conservative, and while she remained a registered Democrat, she voted Republican toward the end of her life. She was somewhat routine oriented. On the other hand, my other grandparents, who ate in the same restaurants at the same time on the same day of the week with the same waitress and the same meal, have always been pretty liberal. But they grew up during hard times, and having routine was important to them. My grandfather is still alive and will be 94 in March. He's still going to the same restaurants, with my mom now, and he still has the same waitress and orders the same meal. He's also a left leaning Jewish atheist who feels strongly about Israel and religion and thinks the world is going to hell in a handbasket. None of those factors are considered in the very basic and probably true idea that people who are generally conservative like routine and people who are generally liberal tend toward more chaotic arrangements. You can be a liberal person who has conservative politics and vice versa. I think any of these ideas tends to hold up well in the most general terms, but not in individual terms.

[Lori]

It sounds like the study determined whether people were liberal or conservative based upon how they self-reported, and so I think the study is flawed from the start. Two people could have the same set of views, and one could consider themselves a liberal and the other a conservative, depending on a lot of things. The person living in a very conservative part of the country and/or from a very conservative family might be more likely to consider views that deviate from that liberal, whereas a person from a liberal community and/or family might consider those same views quite conservative. A person who has negative associations with the word liberal or the word conservative would probably be less likely to identify that way, even if that's where their views fit.

I'm pretty liberal across the board, I think, and I'd say I'm sort of middle-of-the-road when it comes to things like routine and organization. But I know people who consider themselves extremely liberal who I would actually consider fairly conservative, because they're liberal on social issues but tend to be quite economically conservative, and I know people who would absolutely say they are conservatives, whereas I'd say they were moderate or even somewhat liberal, because they have conservative views on some social issues but pretty progressive ideas about economics. So I don't think it's that easy to determine who exactly is a liberal or conservative, much less figure out if their brains are hard-wired that way.

[Christine]

Growing up, my parents were probably at the extreme opposite ends of the spectrum. My father has always been very conservative and my mother was very liberal. I started out very liberal - way more than my mom - and have gone farther towards the conservative end than my father.

I don't buy that it's hardwired.