Neural Correlates of Liberalism and Conservatism in a Post-communist Country

• Main Authors: Jan Kremláček, Daniel Musil, Jana Langrová, Martin Palecek
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-04-01
• Series: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
• Subjects: error related negativity; political attitude; liberalism; conservatism; neuropolitics
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00119/full

A previous experiment showed that there was a strong correlation between conservatism/liberalism and brain activity, linked to an error response (r = 0.59, p < 0.001) in the USA political environment. We re-ran the experiment on a larger and age-homogeneous group (n = 100, 50 females and 50 males, aged 20–26 years) in the Czech Republic; a European country with a different sociocultural environment and history. We did not find a relationship between the brain activity connected to conflict monitoring and self-reported conservatism/liberalism orientation (ρ = −0.11, p = 0.297) or conservatism/liberalism validated for the USA agenda (ρ = −0.01, p = 0.910). Instead of replicating the previous study, we decided to test the hypothesis under a different socio-cultural context. Our results support a view of self-reported or validated, conservative or liberal attitudes as a complex behavioral pattern. Such a behavioral pattern cannot be determined with statistical significance, using a simple Go-NoGo detection task, without accounting for confounding factors such as age and socio-cultural conditions. Sufficiently powered studies are warranted to evaluate this neuro-political controversy.