Since the time of ancient Greece, political scientists and campaign managers alike have been studying society for clues on how political attitudes and behaviors are shaped. But could the nature of our politics be less about society and more about us? Could it all come down to biology?

Inheritance

We inherit many attributes from our parents like height, eye color and even some behaviors like altruism. But it’s only in the last 15 years that the concept has emerged that our genes are helping shape complex behaviors like our political nature.

Of course even simple things like our height aren’t as straightforward as pure genetics – a poor diet during childhood or by your mother while you are in the womb will lower your height below your theoretical genetic maximum. And so it is with our social and political leanings, a mix of inheritance and environmental influences underlies everything about us.

Social attitudes like shyness, compassion, altruism and attitudes towards risk all have well-established biological bases in neuronal circuitry, and hence have very heritable patterns. That these traits are part and parcel of our political conduct and can be influenced by our genes certainly points to a role for genetics, but the big question is why? Why would we evolve these traits? Why have we developed such a complex concept as politics?

Many of these attributes aren’t actually unique to humans. Our fellow primates are also well equipped to manage complex social interactions and have cognitive abilities to solve technical problems. But this doesn’t mean that learning a complex social behavior like politics is the same as learning how to find food and build shelter.

And this where is the work of two political scientists, Fowler and Schreiber, highlight an interesting concept: That there is a network of brain activity that differs between people who are knowledgeable and naïve about politics.

Politics on the brain

People who were either Democrats, Republicans or politically naïve were asked to answer a series of questions about national politics while being examined by fMRI. In each case the neuronal activity of two particular brain regions varied – the medial prefrontal cortex and the medial parietal cortex. However it was only Democrats and republicans that showed increased activity here while the politically naïve people actually experienced a decrease in activity below normal.

The key conundrum that this data solves is that these regions of the brain are pretty active most of the time and actually switch off when doing more technical problem solving type tasks. It’s conundrum because it takes an awful lot of energy to keep neurons firing and it’s not an evolutionary advantage to go wasting precious calories when you don’t need to.

But apart from being even more active when pundits are asked about politics, these regions have been previously linked to times when we are making moral judgments or observing social interactions. The implication is that political behavior is a form of social cognition. Political situations require that we consider the mental states of others and assess the social and emotional environment around us – exactly what these brain regions are great at. And when the politically naïve are forced to consider these issues they approach the questions like they were technical problems and deactivate these brain regions.

So now we have an idea about what this neural network does, but considering it is so energetically costly to operate why did we evolve it?

Cooperation and trust

We’ve all heard the quote “Survival of the fittest” as the neat catchall summary of the theory of evolution but how do we explain altruism where an individual reduces their “fitness” to enhance the survival of others? This is one of the big questions in terms of evolutionary biology.

This goes broader than the level of the individual – politics and political groups are merely more sophisticated examples of coordinated mass behavior where the actions of any one individual campaign member does not affect the outcome of an election.

We are now entering the realms of evolutionary speculation, but it is clear from an observational point of view that a coordinated group of people should be able to out-compete a lone individual. And by extension, a large coordinated group can outcompete a smaller coordinated group. Hence it is advantageous for otherwise fit individuals to assist the less fit members of their group.

The sum of its parts

Our genes regulate our neurons and our neurons coalesce to form our brain so it is not surprising to find that biology can impact our social and political behavior. But biology is fuzzy by nature. We can never point to a particular clump of neurons or genes and say “This makes a George Bush or an Obama”.

While I’m a staunch neuroscientist, every discipline has its limitations. The really huge discoveries in this area actually still lie ahead of us, at the intersection of neuroscience and political science.

In the meantime there’s still heaps to discover by getting instant Email or RSS updates here at Very Evolved.

Original image by nathangibbs remixed by Patrick

Fowler, J., & Schreiber, D. (2008). Biology, Politics, and the Emerging Science of Human Nature Science, 322 (5903), 912-914 DOI: 10.1126/science.1158188

March 30th, 2009