Quote:
Originally Posted by Michaelangelica
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This is the same article that questor pointed out in
Brain Wiring Redux. I looked in depth at the study the article was talking about and it is not nearly convincing. I'll quote myself from the other thread:
Quote:
Originally Posted by modest
Your first post is one sentence long and doesn't explain anything. It does, however, have a link to a real media source
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Which talks about a Los Angeles times story found here: Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain Which talks about a study published in Nature Neuroscience. It doesn't name the study, but fortunately gives the name of the lead author: David Amodio of NYU. Looking him up, I found his website with a list of publications: David Amodio From this I deduced that the study you're refering to is titled: Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism 2007.
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available free and online: http://www.psych.nyu.edu/amodiolab/A...re%20Neuro.pdf |
Quote:
Originally Posted by modest
OK, alright, I read it cover to cover. All 2 pages - and I even looked at the graph 
Rather than writing a big, long summary and critique I'll just say: this study had nothing to do with genetic predisposition toward political ideology or left brain / right brain tendencies. If you read it and want to discuss particulars I'll be around. Otherwise, I'll not get into what I thought of it.
~modest |
Quote:
Originally Posted by modest
There are some odd things about questor's study that I link in post 14:
http://www.psych.nyu.edu/amodiolab/A...re%20Neuro.pdf
Looking at the graph, it has 7 people who identify themselves as conservative and none of them say they're strongly conservative. It has 29 liberal participants and four with no preference. Why so many more liberals in the stuy? More importantly - why so few participants at all? This type of study is prone to error. What if someone is not as conservative / liberal as they say they are? What if they used to be liberal, but as society has changed they now consider themselves conservative?
In a study with so many subjective variables it's a must to have a large sample which this study doesn't have. It also doesn't give other data on the participants. What if the conservatives in the study have a higher mean age than the liberals? The results of the study are far more likely to represent age in my mind because it basically measures what happens in someone's brain when they push a button repeatedly and occasionally push the wrong button.
The results could be biased by which group of people play more video games or which have better visual acuity. There is no control on this study - no way to know if they really are testing something that has anything to do with political ideology. The proper thing to do would be a blind test where they get a few hundred participants and run the test without asking them what their ideology is (or even what the test is testing). When the test is over they try to guess the participants' ideology and see if the test is correct. But they didn't do this.
They didn't set up controls or assure any kind of fair sample. No, I don't like that study at all. Way too many assumptions. If you read the introduction which questor really likes, you see way too many assumptions. It's like the author was trying to get some quick newspaper headlines. I mean - It's a 2 page study - with graphs!
~modest |
I hope you don't take this wrong Michaelangelica. I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with the article you link. But, I have looked into it and I think the study it's talking about is very weak and the conclusions seem at odds with the results which I think makes it dishonest.
~modest
