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In my experiments I’ve found that the most rigid thinkers have genetic dispositions related to how dopamine is distributed in their brains.

Rigid thinkers tend to have lower levels of dopamine in their prefrontal cortex and higher levels of dopamine in their striatum, a key midbrain structure in our reward system that controls our rapid instincts. So our psychological vulnerabilities to rigid ideologies may be grounded in biological differences.

In fact, we find that people with different ideologies have differences in the physical structure and function of their brains. This is especially pronounced in brain networks responsible for reward, emotion processing, and monitoring when we make errors.

For instance, the size of our amygdala — the almond-shaped structure that governs the processing of emotions, especially negatively tinged emotions such as fear, anger, disgust, danger and threat — is linked to whether we hold more conservative ideologies that justify traditions and the status quo.

  • JustinA
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    4 days ago

    Pretty sure the field of political science is not moral relativism

    • VagueAnodyneComments@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 days ago

      Moral relativism is, in fact, pretty closely related to Political science, which is a field of sociology for which the “science” part is a moniker.

      Also I didn’t mention Political science.

      • JustinA
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        3 days ago

        The ideological brain

        In political science, a political ideology is a certain ethical set of ideals, principles, doctrines, myths, or symbols of a social movement, institution, class, or large group that explains how society should work, offering some political and cultural blueprint for a certain social order.

        Saying political science and sociology aren’t real science is silly.

        • VagueAnodyneComments@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          3 days ago

          I’m open to a definition of science broad enough to include sociology, but political science is a philosophy. Really don’t think this is an assailable position if we are dealing in popular fact.