145
Chapter 5
POLITICS
Why we can’t just get along.
In which we learn how superpowers and hand
sanitizers affect our political ideology
THE AUTHORS REGRET . . .
In April 2002 the
American Journal of Political Science published a research
report, “Correlation not Causation: The
Relationship Between Per-
sonality Traits and Political Ideologies.” It was written by a group of
researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University who studied the
link between political beliefs and personality traits. They found that the
two were connected, and that the connection could be attributed to
genes. Along the way, they noticed that certain personality traits were
associated with liberals and others with conservatives.
They were particularly interested in
a collection of personality
features—what psychiatrists call a
personality constellation—called
P. The
Conservative: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as
distinguished from the liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
—Ambrose Bierce,
The Devil’s Dictionary
146
THE MOLECULE OF MORE
authors noted that people with low
P scores are more likely to be “altru-
istic, well socialized, empathic, and conventional.” By contrast, people
who have high
P scores are “manipulative,
tough-minded, and practi-
cal,” and present characteristics such as “risk-taking, sensation-seeking,
impulsivity, and authoritarianism.” They concluded, “As such, we expect
higher
P scores to be related to a more conservative political attitude.”
What they predicted was exactly what they found. The stereotypes,
they said, were true: conservatives tend to be impulsive and authoritarian
while liberals tend to be well socialized and generous. But in science, when
you find just what you expect, it can be a red flag. And in January 2016,
fourteen years after the original report, the journal published a retraction:
The authors regret that there is
an error in the published
version of “Correlation not Causation: The Relationship
Between Personality Traits and Political Ideologies.” The
interpretation of the coding . . . was exactly reversed.
Somebody had flipped the labels. The correct interpretation was the
opposite of what they reported. It was the liberals in their study—not
the conservatives—who were manipulative, tough-minded, and prac-
tical. And it was the conservatives, not the liberals, who tended to be
altruistic, well socialized, empathic, and conventional.
Many people
expressed surprise at this reversal. But if we consider what the study
found at its most basic level and how it relates to the dopamine sys-
tem, the revised results make good sense—certainly more sense than
the original findings, which were widely heralded but exactly backward.
THE LIMITATIONS OF
PERSONALITY MEASURES
Psychologists have worked for decades to develop ways
to measure personality. They found that personality can be
divided into different domains, such as how open a person is
147
POLITICS
to new experiences or how self-disciplined he is.
American
psychologists divide personality into five domains, while the
British prefer three. Either way, when a scientist focuses on
one of the domains, she is measuring only a slice of a per-
son’s personality, not the whole person.
Consider two nurses
who both have high compassion scores. At first glance, one
might imagine two similar people. But there are other per-
sonality domains as well. One nurse might be outgoing and
emotional, while the other is introverted and restrained.
Even though nurses may have some personality features in
common, they are a group made up of unique individuals.
Another limitation of personality measurements is that
scientists usually report a group’s
average
score. So if a
study finds that liberals are more risk-taking than conser-
vatives, it’s likely that within that
group of liberals there are
some who are safety-seeking. Studies of personality help us
predict what a group of people will do, but they are less
helpful in predicting what an individual will do.
PROGRESSIVES IMAGINE A BETTER FUTURE
The characteristics the study eventually associated with liberals—
risk-taking, sensation-seeking, impulsivity, and authoritarianism—are
the characteristics of elevated dopamine.
1
But do dopaminergic people
1 In fact, a group of scientists from the Institute of Psychiatry
in London found that
dopamine receptors were crowded together more tightly in the brains of people
with high
P
scores compared to those with lower scores. Dense receptor pack-
ing led to stronger dopamine signals, which in turn led to the emergence of the
distinctive personality features. The connection is also seen when we look at what
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