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  • In an interview with PsyPost, lead study author Jesús Adrián-Ventura said that he and his team found that right-wing authoritarianism was associated with lower grey matter volume in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex — a "region involved in understanding others' thoughts and perspectives," as the assistant Zaragoza psychology professor put it.

    So subscribing to "right-wing" beliefs (they merely describe it as adhering to conservative or traditional values) literally makes you less able to understand others. So even the brain shows signs of a lack of community and mutuality between people. While it doesn't surprise me that right-wingers are less understanding, it's intriguing that there seems to be a visible change in the brain. What I'm curious about now is if this can be reversed.

    The left-wing authoritarians of the bunch — we don't know exactly how many, as the results weren't broken down in the paper — had less cortical (or outer brain layer) thickness in the right anterior insula, which is "associated with emotional empathy and behavioral inhibition." Cortical thickness in that brain region has been the subject of ample research, from a 2005 study that found people who meditate regularly have greater thickness in the right anterior insula to a 2018 study that linked it to greater moral disgust.

    Ok so... left-wingers, according to this study, are less empathetic and more impulsive...

    Kidding aside, if we take the article at face value, I think it'd be safe to say that we all need to mediate more and go on as we are. Still, more research would be nice. Hope they don't stop with this study.

    • The beauty of these studies is because the words they use mean nothing the study can mean anything. "Right wing authoritarianism" What is right wing? Biden? Trump? They both are to me. But likely the study doesnt think biden is right wing. Did they count all Israel supporters as right wing? What were the left wing authoritarian supporters? Democrats? Green party libs? Based Stalinists?

      Its like saying i did a study of cool people and found they all have bigger toes than average. What makes someone cool? Who decides whats cool and isnt cool? All governments are authoritarian so was this study just on anyone that isnt a full blown anarchist? Where do they draw the line?

    • As the researchers defined them, right-wing authoritarians are people who ascribe to conservative ideologies and so-called "traditional values" who advocate for "punitive measures for social control," while left-wing authoritarians are interested in "violently overthrow[ing] and [penalizing] the current structures of authority and power in society."

      Not that I believe the political compass is a valid representation, but whatever definition these folks are using is even weirder. Then again, they agree with Engels that revolutions are authoritarian by nature, so maybe i'm the wrong one.

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      |What?} From the paper: "LWA anti-hierarchical aggression was negatively related to the insular thickness"

      I find it hard to believe that leftists would be associated with less empathy--but empathy is a very flexible word in psychology.

      • Ah, here we go, quote from the study:

        Importantly, the right anterior insula is strongly related with affective empathy

        Disclaimer: not a shrink and I generally believe most "social" sciences are unworthy of the title, but I really do like to read

        They cite studies that do fMRIs to test cognitive vs affective empathy; more recent trends in psychology/neurology tend toward defining more than two kinds of empathy; most often using cognitive, affective/emotional, and compassionate.

        • Cognitive empathy: detecting and analyzing the emotional state of another
        • Affective/Emotional empathy: experiencing the emotional state of another or tying it to one's own experiences
        • Compassionate empathy: a desire or drive to alleviate another's emotional distress

        Compassion is a big-brain thing--as in it requires a bunch of the brain bits working together, instead of a couple areas firing up.

  • The author, who is also part of an interdisciplinary research group called PseudoLab

    Presenting the findings of my new scientific research group, Bad Science LLC.

    ...but seriously I guess it's mildly interesting but entirely predictable that right- and left-wing brains have physical differences from each other and from more centrist types. That's just materialism being proven correct once again. But I wouldn't put any stock at all into the association between parts of the brain and specific personality traits because personality traits are far too squishy and hard to measure to be meaningfully correlated with the size of your post-anterior phalanges or whatever.

  • Surprisingly the study isn't paywalled https://www.ibroneuroscience.org/article/S0306-4522(25)00304-5/fulltext

    • [T]he key trait linked to LWA is anxiety, especially in relation to the AHA and AC subscales (r = 0.30 and 0.31, respectively). This relationship is not surprising, given that LWA has been associated with neuroticism and higher sensitivity toward threatening situations and grievance

      Ok nevermind they understand me completely

    • On the other hand, and less studied, Left-Wing Authoritarianism (LWA) has gained increasing relevance within the social and behavioral sciences. Recent advances have been made in understanding authoritarian attitudes among left-leaning individuals and groups across diverse sociopolitical contexts and languages (see Conway et al., 2018; Conway & McFarland, 2019; De Regt et al., 2011; Fasce & Avenda˜no, 2023; Manson, 2020; Van Hiel et al., 2006).

      In fact, Costello et al. (2022) have recently made an important contribution on the conceptual elucidation

      Can anyone tell me the structural reason why scientists write their papers like this? Do journal editors not take your paper seriously if you're not writing things like "conceptual elucidation"? genuinely curious.

      and psychometric measurement of LWA. According to their model, there are three dimensions of LWA: Anti-Hierarchical Aggression, which is the disposition to violently overthrow and penalize the current structures of authority and power in society; Anti-Conventionalism, characterized by a sense of moral superiority and a desire for ideological uniformity within the group; and Top-Down Censorship, the drive to use group authority to coercively and punitively control ideologies and behaviors that do not conform or are not consistent with left-wing standpoints. In the work of Costello et al. (2022), this construct displayed a nomological network reflecting cognitive rigidity, coercive group behavior, and moral absolutism. The same LWA construct has also been linked to support for authoritarian policies and rejection of fundamental civil liberties and rights (Fasce & Avenda˜no, 2022; Manson, 2020).

      Left-wing authoritarianism (LWA): We used the Spanish adaptation (Avenda˜no et al., 2022) of the 39-item scale recently developed by Costello et al. (2022). The questionnaire consists of 3 subscales: Anti- hierarchical aggression (LWA AHA), Anti-conventionalism (LWA AC), and Top-down censorship (LWA TDC).

      the 39-item scale can be found here: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspp0000341

      If any comrade has access through an academic institution or wants to pay $17.95 for the pdf that would be great

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