What Makes Liberals and Conservatives \'Tick\'?
Are you interested in what makes some liberals and conservatives tick, so to speak? If so, read on. (And if you're just interested in what makes certain people tick, I think you'll like this short read!)
This came from a white paper I was reading for my professional work I do (leadership development). Of course it caught my attention and I couldn't wait to see 'which side they were on.'
But what I discovered was way better than that...
"Westen et al. (2006), recruited a group of strong conservatives and a group of strong liberals and put them in an fMRI scanner (although not all at once, which would have been a pretty interesting study). They had both groups come up with logical arguments against their own political party.
The parts of the brain that lit up were what you would expect: those associated with higher order and executive reasoning— primarily, the prefrontal cortex.
Then the researchers asked participants to generate arguments against the other side.
Tellingly, there was much less activity in the prefrontal cortex. Disturbing, but probably not shocking. So what parts of the brain were uniquely active?
One isn’t a surprise: the area of the brain that processes disgust. The other, however, is a bit less expected: an area of the brain associated with pleasure. These aren’t two sensations you normally associate with each other, but when you pair them together, you get an emotion with which most of us are familiar: self-righteousness. We take delight in the negative emotion, even though it seems like anything but delight." (Under the Hood, The Secret Engine that Drives Destructive Behavior, Wiley 2019).
This kind of behavior is also what is happening with some people when it comes to conflict in the workplace. But what do we do about it?
Luckily there is a solution, and a way to harness conflict and make it productive. After all, an organization without conflict is missing out on innovation and higher quality outcomes.
Contact me if you'd like to hear more about this topic. There are options to run your own conflict assessments, or have me come in and work with you on it.
If you're an HR leader, contact me for your free webinar and productive conflict assessment!
This came from a white paper I was reading for my professional work I do (leadership development). Of course it caught my attention and I couldn't wait to see 'which side they were on.'
But what I discovered was way better than that...
"Westen et al. (2006), recruited a group of strong conservatives and a group of strong liberals and put them in an fMRI scanner (although not all at once, which would have been a pretty interesting study). They had both groups come up with logical arguments against their own political party.
The parts of the brain that lit up were what you would expect: those associated with higher order and executive reasoning— primarily, the prefrontal cortex.
Then the researchers asked participants to generate arguments against the other side.
Tellingly, there was much less activity in the prefrontal cortex. Disturbing, but probably not shocking. So what parts of the brain were uniquely active?
One isn’t a surprise: the area of the brain that processes disgust. The other, however, is a bit less expected: an area of the brain associated with pleasure. These aren’t two sensations you normally associate with each other, but when you pair them together, you get an emotion with which most of us are familiar: self-righteousness. We take delight in the negative emotion, even though it seems like anything but delight." (Under the Hood, The Secret Engine that Drives Destructive Behavior, Wiley 2019).
This kind of behavior is also what is happening with some people when it comes to conflict in the workplace. But what do we do about it?
Luckily there is a solution, and a way to harness conflict and make it productive. After all, an organization without conflict is missing out on innovation and higher quality outcomes.
Contact me if you'd like to hear more about this topic. There are options to run your own conflict assessments, or have me come in and work with you on it.
If you're an HR leader, contact me for your free webinar and productive conflict assessment!
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