Monday, September 10, 2007

Breaking: Water is Wet!

An article in the Los Angeles Times today tells about a study that demonstrates
liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

We are also open to new experiences, and those mindsets apply to our everyday decisions as well as politics. (Of course, for some of us, politics IS an everyday decision!)

People who identified as conservative tended to respond in a "knee-jerk fashion" during the test.
Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives

A researcher who was not connected with the study said

the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry... as a "flip-flopper" for changing his mind...
He added that liberals could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.

Even with the danger of uncritically accepting every new bit of information that passes my way, I still see the liberal mindset as a better way to live in a constantly changing world. It certainly makes life a lot more interesting and fun when you're always learning and enjoying new experiences.

(This isn't a partisan thing. I know plenty of Republicans who are educated, informed and able to look at all facets of a situation. And there are an awful lot of Democrats, at least here in Alabama, who want to do things the way they've always been done and are interested only in perpetuating the existing power structure.)

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