Chris C. Mooney's Blog, page 5

Major New Genetics of Politics Study

From PNAS[image error]:

The genetic architecture of economic and political preferences

Daniel J. Benjamin et al. (long list)

Preferences are fundamental building blocks in all models of economic and political behavior. We study a new sample of comprehensively genotyped subjects with data on economic and political preferences and educational attainment. We use dense single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data to estimate the proportion of variation in these traits explained by common SNPs and to conduct genome-...

The “We’re Against Everything” Political Right

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Bill Maher by David Shankbone

This is a guest post by Dylan Otto Krider,a skeptic, journalist and science fiction author whose work on the politicization of science has appeared in Skeptic, Dissent and other outlets(www.dylanottokrider.com).

The ideas of “I’m Rubber, You’re Glue” politics has gained some traction lately. The basic concept is to paint your opponent as guilty of your sins, so that balanced centrists split the difference and say “everybody does it.”

Thus, Democrats are waging a War...

What’s Your Political Personality?

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Cara Santa Maria

Over at the Huffington Post, science correspondent Cara Santa Maria has just done an awesome video about political personalities–how who we aredrives what we think–for her “Talk Nerdy to Me” series.

In the video, I play the role of talking head, via Skype.

The big scientific study this is all based on, by the way, is here.

I can’t figure out how to embed the video here–Wordpress issues getting to be a serious hassle–but it’s right at the link below. Plus, there’s a brief politica...

My Up With Chris Hayes Segment with Jonathan Haidt

[image error]Up with Chris Hayes is a television marvel: a deeply smart, highly intellectual show that nevertheless manages to be pretty entertaining. And all of that and more was on display yesterday on my more than 20 minute long segment with Jonathan Haidt, discussing U.S. polarization and the science of ideology.

WordPress will not cooperate and post the video right now, but it is here. And a picture is to the right.

There is tons to discuss about this segment, and most prominently, how Haidt and I diff...

My Appearance on TYT’s The Point with Cara Santa Maria

I just contributed a video for The Young Turks’ “The Point,” for a special science episode hosted by the Huffington Post’s Cara Santa Maria. Basically, I did a minute and a half video, and then a panel of science aficionados discussed it. Here’s the episode, also featuring the great Phil Plait!

Johannes Kepler’s Republican Brain? Not.

[image error]This is a guest post by Dylan Otto Krider,a skeptic, journalist and science fiction author whose work on the politicization of science has appeared in Skeptic, Dissent and other outlets(www.dylanottokrider.com).

Lee Harris has a critique of The Republican Brain up at The American, an “online magazine of the American Enterprise Institute.” So we already know where it is going. It manages to distinguish itself in how it can at once demonstrate a handle on history, and yet be so misguided it dese...

Who’s Afraid of the Neuroscience of Politics?

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Andrea Kuszewski

This is an guest post by Andrea Kuszewski, a Behavior Therapist and Consultant for children on the autism spectrum based in San Francisco, and a researcher and manager with VORTEX: Integrative Science Improving Societies,based in Bogotá, Colombia. She blogs atThe Rogue Neuronand tweets as @AndreaKuszewski. She is author of the widely read post “This is Your Brain on Politics: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Liberals and Conservatives” at Discover Blogs.

From the looks of things, i...

Strategies for Shutting Down Empathy–And How Those Help the Right

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(Creative Commons)

This is a guest post by Dylan Otto Krider,a skeptic, journalist and science fiction author whose work on the politicization of science has appeared in Skeptic, Dissent and other outlets(www.dylanottokrider.com).

Hurricane Katrina could have been a story like the boy stuck in the drain pipe, parodied by The Simpson’s star-studded “Sending Our Love Down the Well”episode.Those stories, while schmaltzy, are in the spirit of “a nation comes together.”

Instead, pundits of a particul...

Prominent Conservative Pundit Jonah Goldberg Attacks The Republican Brain

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(Credit: Gage Skidmore)

Yesterday, Jonah Goldberg extensively misrepresented The Republican Brainin a column for USA Today. He talks about Republicans having “bad brains,” as if this is something that I allege. This is both inflammatory and false. I say no such thing.

I’ve composed a letter and sent it to USA Today. In the meantime, though, it is hard to miss the irony here. Conservatives are reacting defensively to a book about how they react defensively…just as the book predicted they would.

M...

Conservatives, Psychology, and Disasters

[image error]This is a guest post by Dylan Otto Krider,a skeptic, journalist and science fiction author whose work on the politicization of science has appeared in Skeptic, Dissent and other outlets (www.dylanottokrider.com).

Days after 911, the FOX News science writer Steven Milloy published a column that fingered asbestos regulation for costing lives in the collapse World Trade Center towers. Immediately after the space shuttle disaster, Milloy blamed enviro-friendly foam.

Both charges, it turns out, were...