Donald Trump's contribution to the study of politics and the life sciences

If the life sciences are to have much to say about politics, there needs to be a universal element to political orientations. In this essay, I argue that the recent prominence of nativist, law-and-order, populist politicians reveals the nature of this universal element. All social units have to address bedrock dilemmas about how to deal with norm violators and how welcoming to be to outsiders as well as to proponents of new lifestyles. Might differences on these core dilemmas be the universal element of political life? Using the followers of one of the most prominent examples of a nativist political leader-Donald Trump-as an example, I present data showing that Trump's most earnest followers are different from others-even those who share their general ideological leanings-not on traditional economic or social issues, but rather on the group-based security issues that grow out of the bedrock dilemmas of social life.

Populists, authoritarians, or securitarians? Policy preferences and threats to democratic governance in the modern age

What really motivates the hardcore followers of leaders, such as Viktor Orban in Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Narendra Modi in India, and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines? According to standard accounts, it is either a desire for strong authoritative leaders or a desire to empower ordinary people at the expense of elites. Using the ardent supporters of Donald Trump as a case study, I argue that conventional wisdom is unable to explain important recent events such as the documented tendency of Trump supporters to defy COVID-19-inspired authoritative mandates to wear masks and socially distance. On the basis of original survey data, I suggest that the real motivation of Trump supporters and by extension the supporters of similar leaders around the world is an intense desire for policies that protect the insider core of society from the threats posed by human outsiders, such as immigrants, minorities, and norm violators.

Friends, relatives, sanity, and health: The costs of politics

Political scientists have long known that political involvement exacts costs but they have typically defined these costs in relatively narrow, largely economic terms. Though anecdotal evidence suggests that the costs of politics may in fact extend beyond economics to frayed personal relationships, compromised emotional stability, and even physical problems, no systematic evidence on these broader costs exists. We construct and validate batteries of survey items that delineate the physical, social, and emotional costs of political engagement and administer these items to a demographically representative sample of U.S. adults. The results suggest that a large number of Americans believe their physical health has been harmed by their exposure to politics and even more report that politics has resulted in emotional costs and lost friendships.

The selfish voter Jason Weeden and Robert Kurzban Princeton University Press, 2014. 369 pp

A closer look at the factors that influence our political preferences

Cortisol and politics: variance in voting behavior is predicted by baseline cortisol levels

Participation in electoral politics is affected by a host of social and demographics variables, but there is growing evidence that biological predispositions may also play a role in behavior related to political involvement. We examined the role of individual variation in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) stress axis parameters in explaining differences in self-reported and actual participation in political activities. Self-reported political activity, religious participation, and verified voting activity in U.S. national elections were collected from 105 participants, who were subsequently exposed to a standardized (nonpolitical) psychosocial stressor. We demonstrated that lower baseline salivary cortisol in the late afternoon was significantly associated with increased actual voting frequency in six national elections, but not with self-reported non-voting political activity. Baseline cortisol predicted significant variation in voting behavior above and beyond variation accounted for by traditional demographic variables (particularly age of participant in our sample). Participation in religious activity was weakly (and negatively) associated with baseline cortisol. Our results suggest that HPA-mediated characteristics of social, cognitive, and emotional processes may exert an influence on a trait as complex as voting behavior, and that cortisol is a better predictor of actual voting behavior, as opposed to self-reported political activity.

The deeper sources of political conflict: evidence from the psychological, cognitive, and neuro-sciences

Political disputes ruin family reunions, scuttle policy initiatives, and spur violence and even terrorism. We summarize recent research indicating that the source of political differences can be found in biologically instantiated and often subthreshold predispositions as reflected in physiological, cognitive, and neural patterns that incline some people toward innovation and others toward conservatism. These findings suggest the need to revise traditional views that maintain that political opinions are the product of rational, conscious, socialized thought.

The political left rolls with the good and the political right confronts the bad: connecting physiology and cognition to preferences

We report evidence that individual-level variation in people's physiological and attentional responses to aversive and appetitive stimuli are correlated with broad political orientations. Specifically, we find that greater orientation to aversive stimuli tends to be associated with right-of-centre and greater orientation to appetitive (pleasing) stimuli with left-of-centre political inclinations. These findings are consistent with recent evidence that political views are connected to physiological predispositions but are unique in incorporating findings on variation in directed attention that make it possible to understand additional aspects of the link between the physiological and the political.

Biology, ideology, and epistemology: how do we know political attitudes are inherited and why should we care?

Evidence that political attitudes and behavior are in part biologically and even genetically instantiated is much discussed in political science of late. Yet the classic twin design, a primary source of evidence on this matter, has been criticized for being biased toward finding genetic influence. In this article, we employ a new data source to test empirically the alternative, exclusively environmental, explanations for ideological similarities between twins. We find little support for these explanations and argue that even if we treat them as wholly correct, they provide reasons for political science to pay more rather than less attention to the biological basis of attitudes and behaviors. Our analysis suggests that the mainstream socialization paradigm for explaining attitudes and behaviors is not necessarily incorrect but is substantively incomplete.

Disgust sensitivity and the neurophysiology of left-right political orientations

Disgust has been described as the most primitive and central of emotions. Thus, it is not surprising that it shapes behaviors in a variety of organisms and in a variety of contexts--including homo sapien politics. People who believe they would be bothered by a range of hypothetical disgusting situations display an increased likelihood of displaying right-of-center rather than left-of-center political orientations. Given its primal nature and essential value in avoiding pathogens disgust likely has an effect even without registering in conscious beliefs. In this article, we demonstrate that individuals with marked involuntary physiological responses to disgusting images, such as of a man eating a large mouthful of writhing worms, are more likely to self-identify as conservative and, especially, to oppose gay marriage than are individuals with more muted physiological responses to the same images. This relationship holds even when controlling for the degree to which respondents believe themselves to be disgust sensitive and suggests that people's physiological predispositions help to shape their political orientations.

Political attitudes vary with physiological traits

Although political views have been thought to arise largely from individuals' experiences, recent research suggests that they may have a biological basis. We present evidence that variations in political attitudes correlate with physiological traits. In a group of 46 adult participants with strong political beliefs, individuals with measurably lower physical sensitivities to sudden noises and threatening visual images were more likely to support foreign aid, liberal immigration policies, pacifism, and gun control, whereas individuals displaying measurably higher physiological reactions to those same stimuli were more likely to favor defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism, and the Iraq War. Thus, the degree to which individuals are physiologically responsive to threat appears to indicate the degree to which they advocate policies that protect the existing social structure from both external (outgroup) and internal (norm-violator) threats.