Neurons of stability

You are placed in a magnetic resonance tomograph. A series of photos is scrolling before your eyes, absolutely plowing and without hints of politics. After 10 minutes, scientists in the next room are already able to say that you prefer - “Crimean” or Maidan, swamp or bow. How do you feel about pussy Riot , gay, abortion and migrants.

More precisely, you are liberal or conservative.

This focus works, of course, not with all sorts of photos. Those used during the procedure have a feature: they are very unpleasant. And unpleasant to an unexpected degree. All of them are taken from a closed IAPS database (international affective images system). The most innocent examples are an ulcer between the middle and index fingers, dog feces on fresh grass, flies on the nested corn.

Psychologists cherish IAPS from non-professionals getting into the hands of no less carefully than once a set of spots of Rorshah: everything that the experimental will see in these pictures in the process of laboratory tests should be a complete surprise for him. Therefore, even academic publishers are included in the situation and allow scientists not to upload “affective images” in the section about materials and research methods.

Our political orientation is programmed in the brain no less rigidly than the tendency to write with the right or left hand.

In fact, it is not accepted in science. Learn the chimpanzees to disassemble letters - be kind to present all the cards that showed the monkey. We described a new optical illusion - give a video. But in the case of IAPS it is more important that the leak does not happen. Like virologists who work with dangerous pathogens.

The experiment reported at the end of October Current magazine Biology . Nine out of 11 authors - doctors, biologists and experts in the processing of tomograms. The name of John Higgins, a professor of political science from the University of Lincoln, Nebraska, is modest in the middle of the list. But it is he who owns the scientific formulation of the idea that our political orientation is programmed in the brain no less rigidly than the tendency to write with the right or left hand.

The difference is that left -handed people with right -handed people realize: this is innate, biological, you can’t do anything here. And the leftist or the rule in the views is still customary to explain with a conscious choice, life experience and the right upbringing. In extreme cases, the influence of propaganda.

At the request of scientists, 83 adult American answered questions from a long questionnaire about politics. How do you feel about the death penalty? To gay marms? To teach evolution at school? Can I have sex before the wedding? And to torture suspects in terrorism? Based on the results, everyone was divided into approximately equal groups - 28 liberals, 28 conservatives and 27 moderate views. Then each was laid in a tomograph, and the same photo from the IAPS base appeared on the built -in screen of the device.

The authors of the experiment at first honestly tried to put pressure on different emotions. Here are the images of pleasure: the evening in the Alps, children playing in the garden. And here is a threat: a person’s pistol in his mouth, a knife by the throat, a fighting dog without a leash. But the pictures of the activity of the brain when looking at all this are similar to all experimental ones.

As soon as it comes to disgusting, the difference is finally manifested. Especially if shown mutilated animals. “When the dog is cut with a saw with a saw, do not grimen” - this Brodsky invites readers to go against his intellectual (liberal, we think out on the machine) nature. But, apparently, it offers not that. Because judging by the results of the experiment, it is conservatives. On the tomogram, Amigdal, the subcortical center of emotions flashes brightly, and after it the whole orchestra of the zones of the brain is included in the work. An additional motor cortex begins to prepare the body to escape, and the pre -slatteric prefrontal cortex, responsible for rational thinking, is forced to suppress panic with all its might: you are in a tomograph, this is just a photo, you don’t have to run away and turn away.

“The paradox of the insulted feelings of believers”: those who are easily offended are ready to devote more time and attention to the stimulus.

Instead of all this variety, the liberals light up two barely noticeable sites in the Reil Island area, and neurophysiologists do not attribute special meaning to this activity. Of course, the rest of the brain does not sleep, behind the named zones, he simply does - for those and others - the same routine work: the visual bark processes the image, the frontal share finds familiar objects on it. And so on.

The sensitivity and vulnerability of conservatives, says Higgins, is a consequence of the "negative attitude of consciousness." Ugly, it should be loosened on the horizon, receives the highest priority from the conservative brain, because any deviation from the norm is a signal about the problem that needs to be eliminated. This mechanism of thinking, it seems, evolution has fixed a long and a half million years of the Pleistocene for long, when maintaining the old order of things, circular defense and constant vigilance gave more advantages in the struggle for survival than, for example, ingenuity.

Playstocene ended only 12 thousand years ago. Around the same time, people domesticated the dog - a live alarm - and got rid of the need to throw themselves at every rustle. But the genes responsible for this skill have not disappeared from the population. By that time, the brain was, as paleontologists say, “anatomically modern”, that is, no longer differed from ours.

One of the side effects of the prehistoric mechanism of vigilance among conservatives is what can be called the "paradox of offended feelings of believers." Those who are easily offended are ready to devote more time and attention to the stimulus. Although, it would seem, I don't like it - do not eat.

In laboratory experience, arranged in 2012 by the Higgins team, it looked like this. There are four photos on the computer screen at the same time, the joint in the joint. One neutral or even attractive - well, for example, playing children. And three repulsive (for example, all the same fecal ulcer).

The sensitivity and vulnerability of conservatives, says Higgins, is a consequence of the "negative attitude of consciousness."

A special device, Aitrecter, monitors the movements of the eyeballs at the experimental experiences. The score goes to milliseconds: it seems to us that the brain absorbs the picture instantly, into one sitting. Consciousness really does not have time to intercept control. But the technique lays out this unconscious gathering on the phases. As a slow shooting - the bullet hit the balloon.

Liberals slowly study the entire field of vision, then stop in some random picture of four and focus on it. And if it is unpleasant, they swiftly switch to the next one - until they reach neutral. And the conservatives find some repulsive picture quickly-and adhere to it for a long time.

Does this shone from this that the conservative is doomed to vulnerability, irritability, constant vigilance and an artificially narrowed picture of the world? Rather, on the contrary: who was born vulnerable, vigilant and irritable - he will grow up as a conservative. Political orientation, Higgins say with colleagues - a consequence of innate qualities and, therefore, also a congenital thing.

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When it is necessary to separate the "innate" from the "acquired", the twins enter the stage. In one -tide, the entire genome coincides, in multi -tier - only 50 percent of genes. Regardless of this, both children, unless they were given to different foster families, receive the same upbringing: they live in the same house, go to the same school and listen to the same fairy tale for the night.

And if in multi-tier twins political views differ more often than in the same one, it means that the matter is still in the genes. In 2005, the Higgins team was convinced of this based on statistics, accidentally assembled by doctors 20 years before. In the late 80s, doctors sent 5670 to the couple of twins and their closest relatives of the questionnaire with questions for all occasions-about health, biography and, in particular, about political views. (This last series of questions exactly coincided with those who asked 83 volunteers in 2014 before the tomography session - the same research was the same and the same questionnaire Wilson -Patterson.) The twins answered, scientists sat down to analyze - and found out that the contribution of genes to different points of the questionnaire is unimportant. The heredity manifests itself most of all in the assessment of school prayer, and weaker than all in relation to modern art and distribution of apartments to the poor at the expense of the state.

One way or another, it became clear: DNA, which does not change since birth, significantly limits the freedom of political will.

Does this mean that we have a gene of liberalism and the gene of conservatism? It is unlikely. A year ago, clarity decided to introduce James Fowler, a classic of new sociology (his popular science book “A bound network” was translated into 19 languages, including Croatian and Thai). The Fauler team gathered in Sweden 1000 pairs of male twins aged 52 to 67 years and asked about economic policy. And I also got the results of IQ tests from the army archives, which they took place several decades ago during military service (Sweden refused to call only recently, in 2009).

Young conservatives have more gray matter in Amigdal, the center of emotions, in young liberals - in the front waist -waist bark.

IQ , as genetics are neatly expressed, has a strong hereditary component. Political addictions too. Fowler and colleagues suggested that one is just a consequence of the other. Those whose IQ above opposed high taxes and redistribution of wealth. Accordingly, they spoke as typical American right. That is, it seems to be conservatives. It was quite unexpected.

Fowler clarifies: Sweden is not America, but a state with hypertrophied social policy. High taxes, subsidies to the poor and other values ​​of the left - this is the current state of things. Therefore, “to take and divide as before” is the most conservative slogan. And the right in this context are liberals, a batch of change. The higher the IQ , the stronger the desire to change something.

You can go the other way and look for differences directly, at the level of the brain structure. In 2011, it turned out: young conservatives have more gray matter in Amigdal, a center of emotions, in young liberals-in the anterior waist bark. This zone has a difficult mission: when we learn, our successes are encouraged by the dopamine “reward system”. But she does not know how to evaluate our successes herself, and the anterior waist cortex helps her.

The hypothesis is confirmed by the experiment itself with repulsive photos and a tomograph described in Current Biology . The bark is studying, the subclar is not very, so the difference in subcortical activity is difficult to write off on life experience. If a professional military smiles, standing against the wall in anticipation of the execution, or a professional canine man walks along the cable between skyscrapers - this does not mean that they weaned their subcortex to generate fear. On the contrary, two brain zones provide calmness at the same time: one, subcortical, sends an alarm, the other, in the bark, is trained to suppress the reaction to this signal. The psychopath, in which Amigdal does not work since infancy, can behave just as fearlessly, but both zones, in the bark and in the subcorta, are just sleeping on his tomogram.

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How to live with this knowledge? At first the bad news: if conservatism is sewn in genes, then it will not come out to redate a person to liberals, no matter how you honed your skill of the polemicist. Navalny for your uncle will remain an American spy, and Ebola - the machinations of the Pentagon. Another question is that liberalism and conservatism in different circumstances are manifested in different ways. In the United States, this will be a dispute about the right of Gaia to be a priest, in conditional Uganda - about how best to execute the death penalty for homosexuality: with the help of a loop or a machete. The difference is worth fighting for her.