Physiology and Politics

Olivia Judson blogged yesterday (10/21/2008) on her NYT blog about a potential link between obesity and political attitudes. While most students and observers of politics would immediately think of a story involving health care policy (e.g. "Obese people need more expensive medical care for related chronic diseases and therefore would support candidates who lower the cost of care and increase access"), or underlying determinants of both obesity and attitudes (e.g. "If obesity is related to low income, education or being a minority, then it is desire for higher taxes, more education spending and expansion of minority rights that drives political attitudes, not obesity."). But Dr. Judson has something else in mind. Her question is: "Could the obesity epidemic have a political impact? In particular, could obesity in a pregnant woman influence the eventual political outlook of her child?" Namely, can physiology (and especially endocrinology of early development) explain political preferences? Her article is available here.

The controversy stirred up by Dr. Judson is based on evidence published last month by a team of political scientists led by Oxley at U Nebraska-Lincoln and Kevin Smith at Rice. In a small-sample experimental study of voters with "strong" political attitudes, they found out that right-wing political orientations (e.g. support for defense spending, war in Iraq, capital punishment, wire-tapping) were associated with heightened physiological responses to sudden noises and threatening visual images. The team's article, published in the journal Science, is tittled "Political Attitudes Vary with Physiological Traits," and was published by Science. Here is the abstract provided free by the journal:

Although political views have been thought to arise largely from individuals' experiences, recent research suggests that they may have a biological basis. We present evidence that variations in political attitudes correlate with physiological traits. In a group of 46 adult participants with strong political beliefs, individuals with measurably lower physical sensitivities to sudden noises and threatening visual images were more likely to support foreign aid, liberal immigration policies, pacifism, and gun control, whereas individuals displaying measurably higher physiological reactions to those same stimuli were more likely to favor defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism, and the Iraq War. Thus, the degree to which individuals are physiologically responsive to threat appears to indicate the degree to which they advocate policies that protect the existing social structure from both external (outgroup) and internal (norm-violator) threats.