And so there's a recent
book called "Predisposed:
Liberals, Conservatives,
and the Biology
of Political Differences."
It was like, yeah,
let's get some science!
It's like, roll some science
into this conversation!
And it suggests that political
views may be hardwired
into our DNA, oh my gosh!
And we have the
author of that book,
political scientist John
Hibbing, standing by live right
now on video call.
John, are you there?
I am here.
Hello, Neil.
Hey!
So John, you operate a
political physiology lab.
That's right.
And you're at the University
of Nebraska at Lincoln?
- That's correct.
- Excellent.
So what is a political
physiology lab?
Well political
physiology is an attempt
to measure how people react
to stimuli without asking.
You just get them
thinking about stuff
and you get to see
how the brains differ?
That's right, exactly.
And the simple
thing to do would
be to show them pictures of
Barack Obama or Donald Trump.
But we actually go the
next step and show them
nonpolitical images and see
if there are differences
across the political
spectrum and how
they respond to those images.
Ooh.
So what have you found?
Well, our kind
of go-to measure
is electoral dermal activity.
We know that when the body
is aroused, even mildly,
the sweat glands
open up a little bit.
So this is easier to measure.
And we can see if people
are tending to respond more
strongly to negative
images, like a picture
of a bear, or positive images,
like a picture of a loved one.
And we know overall
that people respond
more to negative images.
We want to look at the
individual differences
and see if those
differences correlate
with political beliefs.
So not everyone has that
same reaction to something that
could harm them, basically.
Exactly.
Some people respond a lot more
to things that could harm them
than to things that they love.
Other people respond
about the same.
So it seems to me, if you
were to make a political career,
you could get everyone who
has that sensitivity to vote
for you by feeding that fear.
There's some truth to that.
And I think where
you're going with that
is that you might see
some of that happening
in the political arena today.
No, I wasn't.
No, I- I, no.
[laughs]
So who was more sensitive
to this threat of violence?
The conservatives are, yeah.
Across the board.
We do a lot of things.
For example, we do
things with memory.
We show them a whole
bunch of pictures,
some positive, some negative.
Then we'll do a distracter task.
Then we'll show them a
whole bunch more pictures,
some that they've seen before
and some that they haven't.
And we see who can
remember things.
Liberals and
conservatives remember
about the same overall.
But conservatives remember the
negative images much better.
The liberals remember the
positive images much better.
Whoa.
Wow.
OK, so did the
brains look different?
Did different parts lit up?
Yeah.
We have done some
neuroimaging work.
And it really is pretty easy to
predict who is a liberal, who's
a conservative, simply on the
basis of looking at the brain
activation patterns.
So it would have been fun to
have this conversation with you
with an image of your brain
like right next to you
just so we can see what's
lit up or not as you spoke.
I think that's none
of your business.
[laughs]
