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Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults

2011; Elsevier BV; Volume: 21; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.cub.2011.03.017

1879-0445

Ryota Kanai, Tom Feilden, Colin Firth, Geraint Rees,

Functional Brain Connectivity Studies

Substantial differences exist in the cognitive styles of liberals and conservatives on psychological measures [1Jost J.T. Glaser J. Kruglanski A.W. Sulloway F.J. Political conservatism as motivated social cognition.Psychol. Bull. 2003; 129: 339-375Crossref PubMed Scopus (3032) Google Scholar]. Variability in political attitudes reflects genetic influences and their interaction with environmental factors [2Alford J. Funk C. Hibbing J. Are political orientations genetically transmitted?.Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 2005; 99: 153-167Crossref Scopus (595) Google Scholar, 3Settle J.E. Dawes C.T. Christakis N.A. Fowler J.H. Friendships moderate an association between a dopamine gene variant and political ideology.J. Polit. 2010; 72: 1189-1198Crossref PubMed Scopus (93) Google Scholar]. Recent work has shown a correlation between liberalism and conflict-related activity measured by event-related potentials originating in the anterior cingulate cortex [4Amodio D.M. Jost J.T. Master S.L. Yee C.M. Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism.Nat. Neurosci. 2007; 10: 1246-1247Crossref PubMed Scopus (386) Google Scholar]. Here we show that this functional correlate of political attitudes has a counterpart in brain structure. In a large sample of young adults, we related self-reported political attitudes to gray matter volume using structural MRI. We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala. These results were replicated in an independent sample of additional participants. Our findings extend previous observations that political attitudes reflect differences in self-regulatory conflict monitoring [4Amodio D.M. Jost J.T. Master S.L. Yee C.M. Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism.Nat. Neurosci. 2007; 10: 1246-1247Crossref PubMed Scopus (386) Google Scholar] and recognition of emotional faces [5Vigil J.M. Political leanings vary with facial expression processing and psychosocial functioning.Group Process. Intergroup Relat. 2010; 13: 547-558Crossref Scopus (69) Google Scholar] by showing that such attitudes are reflected in human brain structure. Although our data do not determine whether these regions play a causal role in the formation of political attitudes, they converge with previous work [4Amodio D.M. Jost J.T. Master S.L. Yee C.M. Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism.Nat. Neurosci. 2007; 10: 1246-1247Crossref PubMed Scopus (386) Google Scholar, 6Rule N.O. Freeman J.B. Moran J.M. Gabrieli J.D.E. Adams Jr., R.B. Ambady N. Voting behavior is reflected in amygdala response across cultures.Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 2010; 5: 349-355Crossref PubMed Scopus (65) Google Scholar] to suggest a possible link between brain structure and psychological mechanisms that mediate political attitudes.