tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post7417420465204177021..comments2024-03-19T02:52:27.788-07:00Comments on The Neurocritic: David Amodio RespondsThe Neurocritichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-39409541612372483572012-02-25T16:14:43.473-08:002012-02-25T16:14:43.473-08:00This issue brings up a number of titilating resear...This issue brings up a number of titilating research directions in whch to take these results.<br /><br /> 1. The most important thing here is the attempt to associate behavior with neurophysiology. Regardless, of the actual conclusions reached by this study, if [eventually] destructive behaviors are linked to brain structures and genetic determinations of them, we can undertake to discuss destructive "people" impersonally, rather than fearfully or confrontationally, and reduce the effectiveness of manipulation by "structured" individuals.<br /><br /> 2. Assuming Dr. Amodio's findings demonstrate fact *for the sake of argument* (at least), it would be logical to expect opposition (as opposed to rational contradiction) from "structured" individuals to the extent that such opposition could be taken to prove the hypothesis. Therefore, the psychology of persons expressing "rigid" antithetical comments needs to be determined in order to interpret those comments. "Rigid" comments could not be taken at face value. Science itself, being an inherently "analytical" activity (and capable of exposing "structured behaviors") would necessarily be opposed by "structured" persons as well. <br /><br /> 3. It would be practical to expand the study to include persons expressing "psychopathic" traits (Hare Checklist) and to determine whether any of the traits observed in the experiment subjects match the traits on the Hare Checklist, in order to relate the "structured" mentality to the "psychopathic" mentality.<br /><br /> 4. IMHO, all historical examples of destructive behaviors (e.g. Hitler has been mentioned, "terrorists" have to be so categorized) have resulted from aberrant brain structures in perhaps 20% of populations, with extremes (Psychopathy per se) in 1-3% of populations. It would be practical to work toward developing neurophysiological explanations of historical human aberrations (e.g. see the work "Political ponerology"). Start by correlating the similarities between historical examples and experimental results.<br /><br />5. In the same regard, it would be highly desirable to make lists of all potentially "structured" and anti-analytical human behaviors, starting with analysis of political discourse, since manipulative "structured" individuals in positions of power can be highly detrimental to society. Religion might get on that list, of course, but I have some ideas as to how it can be rescued. <br /><br />6.I have proposed that, thanks to the theory of "neuroplasticity", the brains of "structured" persons and be influenced to become analytical (within the necessary parameters of intelligence). I would do this by requiring all secondary school students to pass a course in "critical thinking" that includes explication of "rigidity", "bullying" and psychopathy. This theory of resolving "rigidity" could turn out to be self-proving, in that opposition to it could be categorized as a form or defense of "rigidity" that is destructive.<br /><br />7. Needless to say, I also advocate unlimited collaboration between all disciplines (and experts in those disciplines) capable of examining the negative aspects of human behavior and correlating them with causes, solutions, and historical consistency: some are obvious (neurophysiologists, psychologists, sociologists), some are not (discourse analysts, data miners, educators, etc.) First, make a full list of all possibilities and a directory of all persons. <br /><br />John G. Marr<br />jmarr@flash.netAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-8314354124190824252010-01-20T08:19:48.529-08:002010-01-20T08:19:48.529-08:00This is some of the worst research I have ever see...This is some of the worst research I have ever seen! I'm glad my kid doesn't go to NYU.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-81565892001916397652007-09-21T09:33:00.000-07:002007-09-21T09:33:00.000-07:00Congratulations, you won a Thinking Blogger AwardT...Congratulations, you won a Thinking Blogger Award<BR/><BR/>The participation rules are simple:<BR/><BR/>1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,<BR/><BR/>2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,<BR/><BR/>Please, remember to tag blogs with real merits, i.e. relative content, and above all - blogs that really get you thinking!<BR/><BR/>This all started at:<BR/>http://www.thethinkingblog.com/2007/02/thinking-blogger-awards_11.html<BR/><BR/>The post in which I tagged you can be found at:<BR/><BR/>http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/09/21/thinking-blogger-award-and-our-top-five-thinking-blogs/DocJohnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15433142039455953946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-34650831514124308452007-09-19T00:47:00.000-07:002007-09-19T00:47:00.000-07:00Kudos to Amodio for responding directly to your co...Kudos to Amodio for responding directly to your comments. Unfortunately, his defense is characterized by the same intellectual sloppiness that I found so objectionable in the presentation of his study. One would have to have considerably more detail about the work in question to essay the sort of scientific critique he claims to prefer; notwithstanding his disclaimers, however, the basis for media reaction is to be found in the casual assumptions which proliferate at every turn.<BR/><BR/>For example, he defends the glaring disparity in numbers between "liberal" and "conservative" participants with a questionable generality which has virtually nothing to do with why such a disparity is or is not seriously problematic: "Americans are more conservative on average, and so more extreme conservatives usually rate themselves as moderate conservatives, whereas moderate liberals tend to rate themselves more extremely (see Linda Skitka’s work and comments on the paper)." <BR/><BR/>More conservative than whom? Even Skitka doesn't explicitly fill in that blank, per Judy Peres at the <A HREF="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-politicalbrain_bothsep10,1,6328755.story?ctrack=2&cset=true" REL="nofollow">Chicago Trib</A>: "'We're not a very liberal country,' she said. 'We're more likely to find extreme conservatives in the U.S. than extreme liberals.'" This falls into the "everybody knows" class of assertions made by political groups of almost every persuasion. Like many of Amodio's citations, it is neither as persuasive nor as definitive on the actual point at issue as one might have expected.<BR/><BR/>Essentially, both Amodio and Skitka operate from a vaguely postulated underlying presumption of what is, in reality, a patently Eurocentric international "norm." It's certainly helpful to know this in terms of bias, but it doesn't begin to make up for the stark imbalance in his study. As an aside, if he's arguing that the study therefore included 11 conservatives, not 7, one can hardly be blamed for wondering if the 85% predictability factor which he cited to bolster his self-selecting criterion is not also in play. Self-designation basically has only one advantage; it saves Amodio the almost impossible task of actually defining his terms. That fundamental lack of rigor strikes me as emblematic.<BR/><BR/>Amodio's claim that this is just a typical "scaling issue" to the contrary, there's simply no good reason for buidling such an obvious disproportion into this sort of research project. I suspect he simply went with whoever walked in the door, and only 7 conservatives showed up. That, in itself, could have significant ramifications with regard to the psychological profiles of his volunteers. If the limited number of conservatives available for testing indicate they are a distinct minority on a liberal campus, for example, one would also have to factor in an environment decidedly at odds with the very presumption of a conservative norm that Amodio has just asserted. Indeed, it would become one of numerous independent reasons to question the use of college students to profile liberals and conservatives generally. The jury is still decidedly still out on whether the specified "associations between political orientation and cognitive styles have been shown to be heritable, evident in early childhood, and relatively stable across the lifespan" -- a statement which is, itself, considerably broader and, I daresay, more categorical than the supporting studies Amodio cites in that regard can be claimed to suggest.<BR/><BR/>Amodio states, "The sample was actually rather large for a neuro study." Although most "neuro studies" are also scanning subjects at rest, not recording ERP's, size is only really problematic here because of the study's ambitions with regard to neurological political profiling. Fatal sampling flaws kick in before total size can even begin to matter. For methodological contrast, here's another <A HREF="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0902/is_3_32/ai_n6076678" REL="nofollow">Error Monitoring</A> based study. In terms of relevance, I would note that ADHD can also be construed as a continuum, vs. a discreet category too. <BR/><BR/>In defiance of the way he, himself, has framed this study, Amodio says that they did not conduct group analyses because: "Group analyses would have been psychometrically problematic, and furthermore, we didn’t want to suggest that political orientation is categorical." Problematic? No joke. If you look at conservatives as a group here, you would almost think that greater <I>conservatism</I> is also "associated with greater conflict-related ACC activity" than "lesser" conservatism too! Given the limited number of conservatives, I'd certainly stipulate that it's hard to make the case that they actually constitute a group -- but that also weakens the case for <I>inferring</I> that they're representative of conservatives generally. It also makes it impossible to assess whether the two lowest scoring conservative subjects might actually be outliers or not, even though the other 5 have more than a little company on the liberal side of Amodio's vaguely defined divide. <BR/><BR/>There's plenty more to critique here, but what's really astonishing is that having acknowledged that there are, indeed, <I>probably</I> "3rd variables at play" here, Amodio proceeds to call an interpretation which completely ignores such probabilities altogether not just "plausible" but essentially immune to criticism on that basis. The question, of course, is not whether others can offer up competing interpretations, but whether there's enough "there" there to interpret in the first place. <BR/><BR/>Maybe conservatives just don't sweat the small stuff. Or if we want to dress it up a bit: perhaps conservative ACCs are less inclined to high intensity conflict montioring when there's no moral dilemma involved or no particular outcome-based reward for error free performance, while in contrast, liberals just personalize everything. Perhaps liberals are best suited for athletics where superior hand eye coordination is a must, while conservatives are better suited for intellectual pursuits. In fact, however, it takes a huge leap to get from Botvinick and the primitive state of the relatively recent science here to the kind of sweeping generalizations from which it appears this study was born, per Amodio's intro, and toward which it is clearly headed. The proverbial blind man with an elephant springs to mind -- in more ways than one.<BR/><BR/>Coming from someone ostensibly researching political psychology, the idea that "people are just cranky because this bullet-point of a study has been so over-sensationalized" stikes me as disingenuously obtuse -- especially when, by his own lights, he should have been expecting a "fixed response style" from all the more conservative than average among us. By the time I hit his citation of Adorno's "Authoritarian Personality," I was hard pressed not to exit laughing. Conservative authoritarianism is a virtual idée fixe on the left.<BR/><BR/>Many thanks, btw, for the timely reminder on contacting Congress about <A HREF="http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/nih/2007senatecalltoaction.html" REL="nofollow">public access to NIH-funded research</A> in response to my earlier comment about the $30 threshhold to what was, alas, a very slim document.JM Haneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01716562692206675312noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-6485120281533126902007-09-18T14:24:00.000-07:002007-09-18T14:24:00.000-07:00Thanks for the reference to the Hodson & Costello ...Thanks for the reference to the <A HREF="http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01962.x" REL="nofollow">Hodson & Costello</A> paper. One would indeed predict that right-wing authoritarians might show an exaggeration of the extreme out-group "dehumanizing" pattern of brain activity reported by <A HREF="http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01793.x" REL="nofollow">Harris & Fisk (2006)</A>:<BR/><BR/><I>Dehumanizing the lowest of the low: neuroimaging responses to extreme out-groups. Psychol Sci. 17:847-53.</I>The Neurocritichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-63254821395232973102007-09-18T12:50:00.000-07:002007-09-18T12:50:00.000-07:00Another new study on political psychology in Psych...Another new study on political psychology in Psychological Science. Apparently RWAs also have issues with interpersonal disgust, which may mediate some of the previous prejudice findings associated with this trait.<BR/><BR/>Hodson & Costello (2007). Interpersonal Disgust, Ideological Orientations, and Dehumanization as Predictors of Intergroup Attitudes. Psychol Sci, 18, 691+<BR/><BR/>http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01962.x<BR/><BR/>Sure would like to see an fMRI study on this. I would assume we might get some decactivation of the mPFC (c.f. Harris & Fsike, 2006) and possibly some insula activity.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-23196479086610986192007-09-16T14:03:00.000-07:002007-09-16T14:03:00.000-07:00As they note in the paper, the self-report measure...As they note in the paper, the self-report measure (one question) does correlate with self-reported voting behavior as well. I suppose that's not a bad quick measure, though it would be nice to have a more nuanced measure. It sees odd to think of "conservative" and "liberal" as real psychological dimensions, rather than as clusters of values on several dimensions, with a significant amount of within-group variance on those dimensions. <BR/><BR/>Also, I think your point about the low number of conservatives is a good one. Because there aren't many on the conservative side of the spectrum (do conservatives sometimes rate themselves as liberal, 'cause we live in a conservative country?), I'd want to see how much of the variance is accounted for by liberals alone. If the conservatives aren't contributing much to the effect, then you have to wonder what the results say.<BR/><BR/>But the biggest problem with the study has to be the theoretical connection between monitoring conflicts in information processing streams (not the definition they give in the paper, but it is the actual definition of conflict monitoring) and anything associated with conservatism or liberalism. It's not that I question their data, just that I don't think there's any reason to believe that this is a political effect alone, and since it's correlation data, it's gonna take a lot of future research to change my mindChrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08417970139690159046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-37431296500548516832007-09-16T11:42:00.000-07:002007-09-16T11:42:00.000-07:00Neurocritic,My own modest contribution to the disc...Neurocritic,<BR/><BR/>My own modest contribution to the discussion:<BR/><BR/>My blood boiled when I read the abstract of the study, but I see no that Dr. Amodio is right to some degree that the results have been overexagerrated by the media. (The LA Times article on the study was simply journalistic malpractice; it wasn't for another several days that I read a more balanced article about it, which calmed me down a good bit).<BR/><BR/>The problem with using self-identification is that people tend not to do it honestly, as Dr. Amodio noted. It does not seem to me that they deviate to the right, as he said, but to the center -- everyone likes to describe themselves as moderates or independents. I suppose it's all a matter of where you stand, though. Nonetheless, there were actual objective measures that could have been used. I understand Kerlinger's scales of liberalism and conservatism are fairly reliable and valid.<BR/><BR/>My only other beef with Dr. Amodio at this point is his claim that Americans tend to be more conservative, which he used to justify a smaller sample of self-identified conservatives in the study. Politics is entirely a relative thing; in comparison to whom are Americans more conservative? Europeans/Canadians? One might just as easily respond that Americans are more liberal in comparison to, say, Middle Easterners and east Asians. In the long run, I sincerely doubt the results could be generalized to populations outside the United States, which seems to be what Amodio et al. were aiming for., so adjusting for "more conservative" Americans was probably unnecessary.<BR/><BR/>SWAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com