Brave, cheerful socialists and cowardly, fearful conservatives

I have to email this to a friend of mine. He will really love this bit of info...Thanks so much. You will really make his day. Shalom~Adoniah

this will go down a treat in here i think.

Lol...that explains A LOT!! Those on the right who constantly speak of how bad things are and how bad they're going to get - Glenn Beck comes to mind - certainly aren't optimistic and they love to scare the heck out of everyone who will listen to them. Annie

Link please??? that is funny

I would point out that it is a very skewed study. But it regards, to the study, you are misrepresenting it. The actual part of the brain that was studied is the flight or fight response. Furthermore, the study is does not distinguish between young and old, why people shift from Democrat to Republican as they age, when the brain develops the flight or fight response, and the fact that is was conducted on British subjects. I should note here that the American definition of conservatives and socialists is very different than the British definition. But disregarding all of that, this is just another media characterization that disregards basic Science in favor of classic misrepresentation.

I am a conservative and am a member of the british conservative party but i don't think i am overly pessimistic.However some members of the right can be overly pessimistic and no offence it tends to be more the american right such as glenn beck but seriously does anyone take that ranting moron seriously me and most british people i know whatever there views think he is ridiculous.

I resisted responding to this for a couple of days, but since only Sierras noticed that your particular spin on the results wasn't quite accurate, I decided to stop by. Although you don't include a link, I found and read the original press release from the University of London. You have somewhat misrepresented the findings. For instance, cowardice and optimism are not even mentioned. The amygdala has been studied extensively in regards to fear responses, not in "determining fear" but rather in creating fear when a situation requires it. Experiments on mice, for instance, prove that if you lure a mouse with food onto a pad which you then send electricity through, the mouse will think twice before venturing onto that pad again. The amygdala will become active and remind the mouse to be afraid of electrocution. If your hypothesis about liberals always bravely and cheerfully going forward without fear, they would all go straight for the cheese and burn the bottoms of their feet. See, there are times when it is right and intelligent to be afraid of known dangers. Using your spin on the report, one could conclude that this cavalier optimism and failure to learn from past experiences would explain why liberals continue to pursue policies which have always historically failed. Perhaps it explains why, when faced with conflicting information, they choose poorly. It may explain why they are afraid of global warming without having experienced it, they don't learn from experience, they react from emotion. But the truth is that one cannot extrapolate such theories from this particular study. Neither can one hypothesize depending entirely on the size of any particular region of the brain, nor do scientists mapping the brain know what functions each region is responsible for in their entirety. What we do know is that both the amygdala and the anterior cingulate cortex are involved in emotions, both positive and negative. It would be simple to spin this study either way but neither would be correct.

Boy, you pseudo-wanna be liberals will believe anything.