tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post8576723271448428365..comments2024-03-14T23:52:09.893-07:00Comments on The Neurocritic: Liberals Are Neurotic and Conservatives Are AntisocialThe Neurocritichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-15835944498206815842007-09-16T02:42:00.000-07:002007-09-16T02:42:00.000-07:00Hi DA,Thank you for taking the time to respond and...Hi DA,<BR/><BR/>Thank you for taking the time to respond and for being so gracious despite some...well...highly critical remarks. Some of which are not my own, so perhaps I should not have been such a "sounding board." I just have a couple of replies to your comments.<BR/><BR/>1) I (personally) didn't have an issue with possible gender differences, but it's good to have that clarified.<BR/><BR/>2) I'm rather ignorant of standard rating systems in political psychology, but is self-rating always used? Aren't there more "objective" questionnaires used to classify American participants along the liberal-conservative continuum?<BR/><BR/>I'm not familiar with <A HREF="http://tigger.uic.edu/~lskitka/Skitka.html" REL="nofollow">Linda Skitka</A>'s work. I wouldn't know where to start [even if I had time to read her papers], perhaps with Skitka & Tetlock (1993)? Hmm, Mullen et al. (2003) looks quite interesting, if not entirely relevant here.<BR/><BR/>3) Your correlations are strong, yes. It seems people had more of a problem with the restricted range of the conservative sample.<BR/><BR/>4) You're right, he's wrong, not sure which points would be considered outliers. I went back to the original post and put the offending passages in strikeout font. However, it does seem the 7 conservatives' ERNs were quite variable (values from -2 to -23).<BR/><BR/>5) I was basing my comments about group analyses on the fact that you <B>had</B> to do them to show the EEG data in Figure 1b. And the fact that mean accurate rates were reported in (ahem) newspaper articles. My criticism about the lack of RT data in the paper still stands:<BR/><BR/><I>There was absolutely no information about RTs at all, so we don't know whether there was a speed-accuracy trade-off in the conservatives (a reckless and disinhibited response style) or whether they were "conscientious" (RT comparable to [or slower than] liberals), but just couldn't stop themselves from pressing the key on No-Go trials.</I><BR/><BR/>That could comprise part of an alternate explanation, along with "3rd variables at play" as I've sarcastically suggested with my <I>Liberals Are Neurotic and Conservatives Are Antisocial</I> quip.<BR/><BR/>At any rate, I would beg to differ that good science critique <B>must</B> provide an alternate interpretation. Some science critique can be based on methods, analysis, reporting of results, etc. <BR/><BR/>My closing remarks are based on the assumption that the ERN wave is a direct measure of conflict monitoring in the ACC. [I've focused on the ERN rather than the N2 because the former is illustrated in the paper and the latter is not]. A quick review of the literature indicates that's not necessarily the case. First, not everyone agrees that the ERN measures response conflict rather than error processing more specifically (Carbonnell & Falkenstein, 2006), or that ACC hemodynamic activity during error commission is a reflection of response conflict (Garavan et al., 2003; Critchley et al., 2005). Second, when people make mistakes, it seems that more of the brain is active than just the ACC (Klein et al., 2007; Ullsperger & von Cramon, 2006).<BR/><BR/>At least, these are my impressions...The Neurocritichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-77282578945695763232007-09-15T15:48:00.000-07:002007-09-15T15:48:00.000-07:00Hi Neurocritic,I like your blog – it’s important t...Hi Neurocritic,<BR/><BR/>I like your blog – it’s important to a have a critical voice out there. However, given how this study has been misconstrued and sensationalized in the media, as well as among science bloggers, it’s important to address the criticisms directly. Though I’ve generally not worried about the “lay” coverage (how can you argue science with pundits?), it might be worthwhile to respond to a blog that is read by neuroscientists (including myself from time to time):<BR/><BR/>1) There were no gender differences on any variable. Moreover, 63% women is actually fairly balanced for a psychology study, so I’m surprised this has even come up. We didn’t report gender effects for the sake of brevity, though in hindsight, I wish we had slipped it in.<BR/><BR/>2) People have complained that there were more liberals the conservatives in the sample. True, in an absolute sense. But this is typical in political psychology: 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). It’s a scaling issue that psychologists deal with all the time.<BR/><BR/>Nevertheless, we’re talking about a correlation. The clear linear effect suggests the stronger liberalism is associated with greater conflict-related ACC activity. Not sure how anyone can argue with that.<BR/><BR/>3) The sample was actually rather large for a neuro study. Also, please note our use of *inferential statistics* – I’ve been surprised by the criticism of the size given the strength of the effect! <BR/><BR/>4) Outliers? There weren’t any. (Not sure what Broussard was referring to in the highly-critical comment you posted. Maybe someone should lend him a stats book…)<BR/><BR/>5) On reporting group differences in RTs and error rates – to be clear, we did not conduct group analyses (though one graph displays the median split of ERN waves). We looked at correlations along a continuum. Group analyses would have been psychometrically problematic, and furthermore, we didn’t want to suggest that political orientation is categorical. Though of course this didn’t stop the media and bloggers to speak in terms of categories…<BR/><BR/>In the end, the study reports a correlation. You can’t “disprove” it – you can only interpret it. Our interpretation was face valid – this measure of political orientation was strongly correlated with the ERN and No-Go N2 from the Go/No-Go task. Simple as that. Might there be 3rd variables at play? Probably. But that doesn’t contradict our interpretation or cast doubt on the quality of the study.<BR/><BR/>Good science is an art. But so is good science critique. Without a plausible alternative interpretation, you don’t have a critique. I suppose people are just cranky because this bullet-point of a study has been so over-sensationalized. Or maybe some folks just aren’t familiar with how you do this kind of research. So I hope this post clarifies some things.<BR/><BR/>DAAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-9481653556946786492007-09-15T14:27:00.000-07:002007-09-15T14:27:00.000-07:00Thanks for your comment, JM Hanes. First, I agree ...Thanks for your comment, JM Hanes. First, I agree with you that <I>Nature Neuroscience</I> should not have published the paper in its current form. And it's a shame that those without institutional subscriptions (e.g. through a university) have to pay $30 to read it. <A HREF="http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/nih/2007senatecalltoaction.html" REL="nofollow">Call to action: Contact your Senator with support for public access to NIH-funded research</A> urges individuals to:<BR/><BR/><I>remind your Senators of your strong support for public access to publicly funded research and – specifically – ensuring the success of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy by making deposit mandatory for researchers.</I><BR/><BR/>This prompted me to look at the funding source in the Acknowledgments section of the Amodio paper, and there wasn't one listed. This is most unusual, because authors are required to list the sources of funding for their publications.<BR/><BR/>Second, it's hard to know how the authors classified subjects as liberal or conservative, because they don't tell you. Although they used <A HREF="http://bp2.blogger.com/_IA5nokOFh84/RukJhH1fnrI/AAAAAAAAAdM/hetEe8W3wmA/s1600-h/amodio-F1a.jpg" REL="nofollow">correlation analyses</A> for most of their comparisons, one might conjecture that those self-described moderate subjects with scores of +1 and -1 (as well as zero, of course) would be excluded from group averages.<BR/><BR/>Finally, it seems that it wouldn't be too difficult to recruit students from the <A HREF="http://www.nyu.edu/clubs/republicans/" REL="nofollow"> NYU College Republicans</A> and the <A HREF="http://bruingop.bol.ucla.edu/" REL="nofollow">UCLA Bruin Republicans</A>.The Neurocritichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-45984333992569665932007-09-15T08:22:00.000-07:002007-09-15T08:22:00.000-07:00Nice critiques. I believe the study included 36 l...Nice critiques. I believe the study included 36 liberal participants, not 26 as stated in the Broussard comment though.<BR/><BR/>If I had the venue and the audience to do it, I'd sponsor a competition with prizes for the most convincing and the most outlandish set of conclusions drawn from the same set of data. Amodio certainly has the outlandish edge. <BR/><BR/>Using available college students as subjects is just plain lazy -- especially given growing evidence that physiological maturation of the brain continues far longer then previously assumed. The size of the sample and the disparity between liberal & conservative numbers, however, verges on scientific malpractice. Shame on <I>nature neuroscience</I> for publishing such dreck -- and charging $30 for it.JM Haneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01716562692206675312noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-86534068197905373562007-09-13T15:52:00.000-07:002007-09-13T15:52:00.000-07:00I suppose the person diagnosed with that disorder ...I suppose the person diagnosed with that disorder would NEVER know he made a mistake. That phenomenon is depicted <A HREF="http://bp3.blogger.com/_IA5nokOFh84/RubpG4JwxFI/AAAAAAAAAc0/fNETfH9qXtA/s1600-h/Bush_Kerry_ERN.jpg" REL="nofollow">here</A>, in Figure 1.The Neurocritichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-89356965466675308432007-09-13T15:43:00.000-07:002007-09-13T15:43:00.000-07:00I wonder how ERN rates might relate to World Domin...I wonder how ERN rates might relate to <A HREF="http://theicarusproject.net/culture-jamming/campaign-for-a-new-diagnosis-in-the-dsm-world-domination-disorder" REL="nofollow">World Domination Disorder</A>?Sandrahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04943949264511919698noreply@blogger.com