THIS JUST IN: Being a Republican is caused by brain damage...

[MazeRat7]

Well not exactly... but check this out..

Moll and Jordan Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health, had been scanning the brains of volunteers as they were asked to think about a scenario involving either donating a sum of money to charity or keeping it for themselves.

snip

The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.

Their 2006 finding that unselfishness can feel good lends scientific support to the admonitions of spiritual leaders such as Saint Francis of Assisi, who said, "For it is in giving that we receive." But it is also a dramatic example of the way neuroscience has begun to elbow its way into discussions about morality and has opened up a new window on what it means to be good.

snip

Grafman and others are using brain imaging and psychological experiments to study whether the brain has a built-in moral compass. The results -- many of them published just in recent months -- are showing, unexpectedly, that many aspects of morality appear to be hard-wired in the brain, most likely the result of evolutionary processes that began in other species.

The more researchers learn, the more it appears that the foundation of morality is empathy. Being able to recognize -- even experience vicariously -- what another creature is going through was an important leap in the evolution of social behavior. And it is only a short step from this awareness to many human notions of right and wrong, says Jean Decety, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago.

You can read the entire article @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/27/AR2007052701056.html

I guess this explains a lot. Certainly why I'm a democrat. I get the same pleasure from helping people as from food or sex... B-)

MZr7


edit: Changed the OP Title... I should not exclude non-freeper republicans from my analysis if any should exist.

[EstimatedProphet]

1. This just in?!?!

They're just finding this out? Have they READ Free Republic?

[Kurovski]

2. The lizard brain.

It's not for nothing that Swamp Rat portrays the Busheviks as lizards.

[Swamp Rat]

6. Way'at Kurovski!

:hi:

[Kurovski]

8. Bonney-jour!

:hi:

[TygrBright]

3. Well, DUH!!

Trust the "scientific community" to be the last to figure THAT one out. They don't get out much, do they?

Ah, for life in the ivory laboratory.

wistfully,
Bright

[TygrBright]

4. The article does raise some interesting questions...

...but I thought the questions it DIDN'T raise were more interesting. For instance, the article said:

Neuroscience research, Greene said, is finally explaining a problem that has long troubled philosophers and moral teachers: Why is it that people who are willing to help someone in front of them will ignore abstract pleas for help from those who are distant, such as a request for a charitable contribution that could save the life of a child overseas?

What I think is far, far more interesting is why people are willing to support a kid through Christian Children's Network, send money to the Red Cross after an earthquake halfway across the world, etc., and WALK RIGHT PAST a homeless person without even a nod or a smile or an acknowledgment of their existence.

What's up with THAT?

When are we gonna get a scientific study that explains THAT?

curiously,
Bright

[Swamp Rat]

5. Then "altruism," perhaps, functions as a mechanism for our survival as a species.

I suppose that if we continue to elect people who have a retarded "altruism," then we should expect our country to self-destruct.

[Bitwit1234]

7. This falls in line

with the study some committee did. They found after the ten year study that most republicans were psychotic. That most did not have leadership qualities. That is why once they had a mind set they would follow the leader over a cliff if necessary. They said that the reason they found republicans to be mostly psychotic, is that those are the type of people who gravitate to the republican party, because they are in line with republican views.

Can remember his name but it was all over the net about six months ago. It was even talked about here.