Every baboon troop is led by an alpha who holds power until ousted by a challenger. Brute force makes you alpha among small-brained mammals like bovines, but in the primate world, power is won by trading favors. Baboons have curiously familiar ways of winning support. They share meat after a hunt. They groom the fur of influential troop-mates. They fight lions while their troop-mates climb up trees and watch. Patronage works. A baboon becomes alpha when his alliance is capable of overpowering the reigning baboon’s alliance.

But once an alpha baboon consolidates power, he starts dominating the troop’s food and mating opportunities. He only shares with his supporters. He demands more groomings from his troop-mates than he offers them.  If his troop-mates don’t like it, they can leave, which means instant death in the jaws of a lion; or they can support a challenger, which either means more meat and mating opportunity, or gaping wounds from the alpha’s huge incisors.

Female baboons have a dominance hierarchy of their own. An alpha female will grab food from her female troop-mates to favor her own child. But female baboons tend to follow their leader when foraging because she’s good at finding food and keeping the group safely together.

It behooves a baboon to choose its alpha wisely. Following a leader who fails to find food or repulse lions has harsh consequences in the state of nature. One’s genes are likely to get wiped out. Natural selection produced a brain that’s good at sizing up leaders and social alliances.

Yet baboons have realistic expectations about their leaders. They don’t expect the alpha to relieve them from the daily challenge of meeting their own needs. They keep foraging for food even though they get an occasional chunk from the alpha. They stay alert for lions even though they get help chasing them off from the alpha. Today’s baboons were naturally selected for their ability to meet their own survival needs.

Researchers find high cortisol levels in troops whose alpha is facing a challenger. Stress hormones surge because conflicts flare up when dominance is contested. Eventually, power is consolidated, conflict dies down, and cortisol returns to normal. These eruptions are the price primates pay for the opportunity to choose sides in a power struggle instead of having fixed dominance hierarchies determined by butting heads, as smaller-brained species do.

Baboons don’t intellectualize about their preferences. They follow the patronage without illusions about the common good. That’s because feel-good brain chemicals are released when a mammal perceives food, protection, grooming, and mating opportunity. Neurochemicals pave neural pathways, so the baboon’s brain keeps associating the patron with the good feeling.

Humans have a much bigger cortex than other mammals. A big cortex can manage enough detail to build abstractions, such as words. Beneath the cortex is the “limbic system” that all mammals have in common. It releases feel-good chemicals when it sees something good for survival. When you feel good about a leader, you may think your response is motivated by the information in your cortex. But the cortex works by scanning for information that explain the neurochemistry already released by the limbic brain. We don’t realize this because the cortex can use words but the limbic brain cannot. Your limbic brain can’t tell you in words why it’s motivating you toward X and away from Y. A big-brained human can always find words to explain good feelings about a social alliance, but the words are not the source of impulse. We are not slaves to our mammalian impulses, but we must be aware of them in order to transcend them. More information about mammalian social alliances is here.

Loretta BreuningThe Political Mammal - Brian Science and Politics: Voters are mammals, and so are the researchers who study us. Politics makes sense when you understand the mammal brain.

Debates are structured to convey fairness, but the moderators are always Democrats. If the moderators were Republican, people would notice. Why are Democrat journalists presumed “neutral,” while Republican journalists are suspect of bias?

Many Americans do not perceive liberal views as a bias, but they perceive conservative views as a bias. We humans are not aware of our own biases. Electricity flows through your brain the way water flows in a storm, finding the paths of least resistance. You make sense of the world reaching your senses by sending the electricity down one of your existing pathways. When electricity lights up one of your big circuits, you have the experience of “knowing.” The neural circuits you’ve built over time channel your thoughts, but you don’t notice the circuits themselves.

Your brain builds most of its circuits in youth because that’s when “neuroplasticity” is high. Most of us spend our youth with teachers trained to equate liberalism with education. Mainstream teacher training presumes that liberals are normal and decent, while conservatives are mentally defective, and “the enemy.” Teachers and students wire their brains to see the world through this lens without seeing the lens itself. Separate schools exist for separate modes of thought, and their bias is noticed but mainstream schools are imagined to be “objective.”

A brain learns from rewards and threats. Teachers reward you when you mirror their views and you learn to repeat behaviors that get rewarded. If you challenge the teachers’ world view, your work will get extra scrutiny and criticism. A brain learns avoid risk without conscious awareness of the paradigm it is building. You wired yourself to think business and racism are the cause of all problems long before you’re old enough to vote. You don’t notice your wiring, but when you look at the world, you see the information that triggers your pathways.

The solution is not to impose quotas on teachers or debate moderators. That would only saddle us with more biases. We are better off learning to notice our biases. Humans cannot do this easily. It requires an investment of effort, like digging more ditches for water to flow in more directions. This effort is our civic duty. Citizenship is more than just a way to get free stuff.

We don’t notice our filters until we are exposed to people with different filters. When people speak disdainfully of those who don’t share their filters, it motivates us to stay inside our communities of thought. But opportunities for respectful dialogue across mental borders are everywhere, and the IVN Online Presidential Debate this Thursday is one of them. Instead of having a debate molded by one party, you can find information that may not fit your well-worn circuits.

Loretta BreuningThe Political Mammal - Brian Science and Politics: Voters are mammals, and so are the researchers who study us. Politics makes sense when you understand the mammal brain.

I’m usually very choosy about my information sources, but a walk through an airport yesterday assaulted me with headlines on newsstands and monitors. One caption stopped me in my tracks : “Can government create jobs?”

I’ve waited decades for that question. When I studied Economics in college, it was taken for granted that government can and should create jobs. Since then, candidates and media have continued presupposing this role for government. At long last, this election cycle may stimulate debate on an issue that needs debating.

But the timing of the question is curious. It appeared on a major news channel whose editors are almost exclusively Democrats. Why would Democrats be editorializing about government’s lack of accountability for jobs after positioning themselves as the good-for-jobs party for so many years? Obviously, because Democrats would benefit from the “don’t blame the economy on us” perspective at this moment. But what about after the election? Would all those Democrats stop expecting the government to put chickens in their pots?

That would be a win for the country as far as I’m concerned. If Democrats won votes by shifting thinking toward realistic expectations, I would celebrate. If Republicans won by appealing to realistic expectations, I would celebrate. Partisans of both stripes might see it as cynical retreat, but independents know that political discourse must help adults come to terms with the fact that a leader cannot really protect you the way an alpha baboon protects a baboon troop from a lion. Politicians cannot lead you to food the way an alpha chimpanzee leads a troop to food. They can’t find you water in a drought the way an alpha elephant does. Instead of expecting too much from your leaders and being frustrating, we can appreciate the fact that we don’t give up our autonomy to our leaders as much as baboons, chimps and elephants do.

My hopes were dashed this morning. No tidal wave of challenge to the job-creation view of government appeared in the media. I should have known that from the wording of the question. If the question were “Does government affect job creation?” instead of “Can the government create jobs?” then broader issues would be on the table. Such complex questions may not appeal to poets who are listening for a New-Deal-style job corps for poets. Some people may be waiting for the government to promise them their dream job saving puppies, designing computer games, or planting organic nettles. But voters in the privacy of their homes may be saying: “it’s not realistic to expect leaders to get everyone their dream job.”

Loretta BreuningThe Political Mammal - Brian Science and Politics: Voters are mammals, and so are the researchers who study us. Politics makes sense when you understand the mammal brain.

Greed is a big theme in this election. It’s easy to blame this on politicians, but they are playing to the prevailing mindset of voters. Psychologists did much to create that entitlement mindset. Modern psychology spins rationalizations that support the politics of greed, helping people feel good about their own greed by pointing to the greed of others.

The most egregious example is what psychologists call the “ultimatum game.” Researchers give a laboratory subject a cash gift of ten dollars, and the right to decide how much of it to share with another subject. The second participant can veto the whole deal if he doesn’t like the offer, and no one gets anything. Research shows that people tend to veto a three-dollar offer. They will pass up three bucks for the pleasure of depriving someone else of seven.

To me, this is greed. If you’ll spend money to stick it to someone who has more than you, I think it stinks. But psychologists think it’s “equity.” They flaunt the ultimatum game as evidence of a basic human urge for fairness. You can’t study psychology these days without being treated to the idea that it’s “fair” to deprive others of what they have unless they hand over a big chunk of it to you.

Most people would see the flaw in this thinking if their child acted this way. If your kid threw a tantrum when his brother got a seven-dollar gift, letting his three-dollar gift fly in the wind, you would not praise that kid for his sense of justice. You would (hopefully) take him in hand and teach him to focus on his own path instead of preoccupying himself taking inventory for others.

Where I live in Berkeley, California, everyone would applaud a $3 contribution to the cause of taking from someone with more. People here rage about bankers, yet they thrill at the chance to cheat a bank in any way possible. They love to talk about the injustices of “the system,” and feel entitled to break the rules whenever they can.

Feelings of injustice are natural. All mammals have a sense that the big guys are grabbing more of the carcass, and that their own grabs are small potatoes in contrast. The mammal brain creates feelings of relative deprivation because it constantly compares itself to others. But such feelings do not exempt you from the law. In a democracy, the law applies to everyone. You do not get to put yourself above the law, even though you can rationalize it with polysyllabic constructions about injustice.

Anyone can justify their own greed by pointing to the misdeeds of others. If a child did that, you would recognize it as an immature impulse, not a model of civic duty. Psychologists and politicians might appeal to your primitive impulses because it advances their careers. They help you dress your naked greed in the cloak of the greater good. But as an adult, you might reject the politics of greed and define civility for yourself.

Here in Berkeley, people love to declaim on civility, but uncivilized behavior is notoriously common. Our iconic supermarket, the “Berkeley Bowl,” is known as the “Berkeley Brawl” because of recurring behavior in the aisles and the parking lot. (LA Times: Where the Nuts Are Off the Shelf) Chaos would reign if we were all free to exempt ourselves from the rules whenever we felt frustrated. Being a citizen in a democracy requires more of you than being a mammal in herd. You get a lot in exchange, however, because the rule of law protects you from the law of the jungle.

More information about the impulses of the mammal brain can be found at my website, imammalthebook.com.

Loretta BreuningThe Political Mammal - Brian Science and Politics: Voters are mammals, and so are the researchers who study us. Politics makes sense when you understand the mammal brain.

Good news is everywhere, but it’s widely  ignored. There’s good news about energy supplies (increasing), economic innovation (thriving), and Third World democracy (all-time high). The facts about positive developments don’t get a lot of attention, but they’re easily available to anyone who wants them.

Energy
US natural gas supplies are increasing, and solar photovoltaic panels have fallen in price dramatically with production in China. The down side of these developments is lamented so loudly that the up side is obscured. It’s as if a kid got a shiny new penny and said, “How awful! Now I’ll be tempted to buy candy and my teeth will rot.” If you can’t see the good side of cheap, abundant natural gas and solar panels, you are seeing the world through a very negative filter.

Economy
US manufacturing is  globally competitive. Opportunity is surging on the mobile/social platforms. New industries have always sprouted during recessions. Tough times accelerate the death of old weeds, helping new seedlings to take root. Some wins and some losses result. If you focus on the losses, you can construct a sense of crisis that’s not real. For example, shopping malls lose when online shopping grows. Most of us are better off, even as crisis-mongerers shed crocodile tears over the decline of retail shopping.

Third World democracy
Civil society is flourishing worldwide. It’s hard to notice because democracy rewards the airing of grievances. A few years ago, military dictators ruled most of the southern hemisphere, and critics quickly landed in jail, or worse. Now these countries have flawed elections, which is a huge step toward imperfect elections. Nastiness is displayed in public as new coalitions emerge and compete for the limelight. But much nastier conflict took place behind the scenes in the past. When you know that context, it’s easy to see that global communication has transmitted new norms, and democracy is busting out all over. No one supplies this context for you, but you can provide it yourself.

Why focus on bad news about these issues and overlook the good? Political partisanship is a big reason. Partisans extract information that promotes their shared agenda. They accentuate the negative because insecurity promotes group loyalty.

But negative bias has a deeper cause. Every voter is a mammal. We’ve inherited brain structures from earlier mammals which motivate the scanning for danger, and the clinging to a herd for safety.

We are more than herd animals, of course. We are free to choose the information we focus on. You can courageously choose to let good news in. You will only see a world full of crisis and decay if you let the herd choose your information for you.

You could blame politicians for creating a sense of crisis to flaunt their leadership role. You could blame journalists for building a hell-in-a-handbasket mindset to compete for your attention. You could blame teachers for molding young minds to equate criticism with intelligence.

But blaming external powers distracts you from your internal powers. You can control where you allocate your attention. You decide which information to focus on instead of letting hell-in-a-handbasket thinkers manage your attention for you.

It takes more effort to notice good news because no one spoon-feeds it to you. It takes courage to notice good news because you have to leave the safety of the herd. It takes equilibrium to accept good news because your mammal brain would rather be monitoring threats.

But independent information processing is worth the extra effort because it frees you to see the good as well as the bad.

Loretta BreuningThe Political Mammal - Brian Science and Politics: Voters are mammals, and so are the researchers who study us. Politics makes sense when you understand the mammal brain.

Life throws me chances to practice being independent every day. Yesterday, I landed in the middle of a political conversation when I sat down to get my hair cut. The customer in the next chair was condemning big companies for causing obesity. Her haircutter agreed that businesses have malicious ways of getting us to overeat. The young lady with her hands in my hair chimed in exuberantly.

I don’t share their view, and I usually run the other way when people start blaming their problems on corporations. I was stuck there, alas, and part of me wanted to scream, “Can’t you take responsibility for what you put in your mouth!” Another part of me wanted to say nothing, because I knew this was a mammalian bonding ritual rather than a real discussion. When mammals unite against a common enemy, their brains release oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine, which feels great. If I disrupted this in-group feeling, I would become the out-group and the herd would turn on me.

I weighed the risk of speaking up against the risk of stuffing my feelings, and settled on a polite way to participate in the discussion.

“I think we’re free to choose what we eat.”

My haircutter seethed in response. That didn’t surprise me. Here in Berkeley, you’re expected to agree when people say they’re oppressed. No dissent from “progressive” orthodoxy is tolerated. If you dare challenge someone’s claim to victimhood, you’re treated like an evil person who must be reformed. The coiffeuse sanctimoniously told me what I should read and watch and think about the food industry.

I already knew these scriptures, but I didn’t share her fundamentalist interpretation of them. I calmly explained, “I don’t see it as a wealth-and-poverty issue because unprocessed food costs less than processed food.”

She erupted into a full boil. Her hands shook as she declaimed on the price of broccoli. Since she was holding a sharp instrument near my throat, I did not feel protected by platitudes like “everyone has I right to their opinion” or “the customer is always right.” I stopped talking.

Being independent means knowing when to open up and when to shut up. It does not mean winning arguments. I don’t try to dominate arguements because the mammal brain perceives that as a survival threat. If I cede the dominant position to the other person, it allows them to absorb new information.

Everyone talks about equality and empathy, but we have inherited a brain that seeks dominance. In the state of nature, social dominance promotes survival. Natural selection produced a brain that seeks status and control. There are myriad ways to achieve this in your own mind. Moral superiority is one of them. If you fancy yourself a victim of oppression, you can feel superior to those you deem “oppressors.” You instantly belong to the herd that shares your sense of oppression. Your victim theory helps you feel safe and strong. To your mammal brain, threats to this theory feel like threats to your survival.

I do not expect to persuade people with facts. But if I let another person have the dominant position, I can plant a seed. Sometimes the new information takes root and they believe they thought of it themselves.

I am a mammal too, of course. My limbic brain knows that predators eat individuals who stray from the herd. It knows that dominants get the good reproductive opportunities. Accepting my mammal brain helps me manage it without being a self-righteous herd-follower.

After the haircut, I handed the young lady a tip. Suddenly, I noticed that she was a little chunky. This fit my theory that people project their personal frustrations onto the system. The political is personal (Gloria Steinem had it backwards). I wanted to tell her, “I would never judge a person for their weight. But I admit to judging a person for playing the victim.” I shut up instead. I reminded myself that she’s responsible for her mammal brain and I’m responsible for mine. I soothed my inner mammal with the thought that I had planted my seed for the day, and another opportunity would come tomorrow. It did.

Loretta BreuningThe Political Mammal - Brian Science and Politics: Voters are mammals, and so are the researchers who study us. Politics makes sense when you understand the mammal brain.

Brain chemicals cause herd behavior in politics. When a mammal runs with the herd, its brain releases a chemical called oxytocin. That produces a pleasant feeling, which motivates the mammal to stick with the herd. Separating from the herd triggers a mammal’s cortisol, the brain chemical that signals imminent survival threat. Sticking with a herd or pack or troop promotes survival in the state of nature, and natural selection produced a brain that makes you feel good when you do things that promote survival. No conscious deliberation is involved.

Humans have the same neurochemicals as other mammals. Underneath your big cortex, you have the same basic limbic system (amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, etc.) emitting them. You don’t always act on your mammalian impulses because a big cortex is good at inhibition. This cortex of ours is also good at hatching reasons for doing things that trigger good feelings without awareness of the underlying neurochemistry.

No one says to themselves, “I think I’ll follow the herd to protect myself from predators.” We don’t see herd behavior in ourselves, even though it’s easy to see in others. Our two brains are literally not on speaking terms. The mammal brain cannot process language, so when you talk to yourself, it’s all in your cortex.

Understanding the mammal brain gives you more power over it. For example, it helps me understand the icky cortisol feeling I get when I know I am separating from the herd. I remind myself that I am not about to be eaten by a lion, even though my limbic system sees it that way.

Everyone I know is a mammal. Their cortex generates lofty principles to justify the kind of herd behavior that comes natural to mammals. I often find myself wanting to scream at people “Don’t you realize you’re just repeating whatever the New York Times says!!!” But I don’t. I remind myself that they won’t realize it, because they are mammals with a big cortex attached.

That doesn’t mean I just give in to the herd behavior that surrounds me. Sometimes I go off in my own direction regardless of the potential threat. Sometimes I try reasoning with the herd. And sometimes I feel like the herd is approaching the edge of a cliff and I blurt out something crude.

This happened recently while I was watching Saturday Night Live. I used to love this show and my kids grew up watching it with me. But the partisan nastiness eventually triggered more cortisol than I could stand. “Don’t you see?” I snapped at my family. “The Republican is always portrayed as a moron! Nixon was a moron. Ford was a moron. Reagan was a super moron. The Bushes were extreme morons. And now, the enlightened information analysts at Saturday Night Live have discovered that Romney is a moron, too.”

You can probably guess that my family did not see. In their minds, Republicans are morons, so why shouldn’t they have a laugh over it. They could not imagine their sophisticated political positions being influenced by the good feeling of belonging to the ridicule-Republicans herd.

How can you convince a person that their cortex is not in charge? Oliver Sacks provides a great example in his encounter with a patient whose limbic-cortex connection was severed. The patient seemed normal but could not choose a date for his next appointment. He endlessly analyzed the pros and cons of each available slot without reaching a conclusion. The cortex is adrift in a sea of data until the mammal brain releases the neurochemicals that give you a good feeling or a bad feeling about an input. Your mammal brain transforms data into preferences.

Herd animals get their information from hostile jibes, witty innuendo, and nasty reparté. This is all the data they need because their neurochemicals are guiding the way. I am a mammal and so are you. The more aware you are of your neurochemical self, the less likely you are to act on your mammalian impulses.

But it’s not easy being a mammal. My next post will describe the “mirror neurons” that cause primates to mimic each other. Until then, there’s more about herd behavior on my website, www.imammalthebook.com.

Loretta BreuningThe Political Mammal - Brian Science and Politics: Voters are mammals, and so are the researchers who study us. Politics makes sense when you understand the mammal brain.

The “Political Mammal” Blog is founded by Loretta Breuning, who has been writing books about the mammalian brain since retiring from a career as Professor of International Management at California State University, East Bay. She has a blog on Psychology Today called “Your Neurochemical Self.”

As an expert in ‘brain science,’ Loretta challenges the ideological conformities that live on the intersections of politics and science.

Loretta has been an independent voter since the mid-90s. She became a Democrat in the 70′s when her high school teacher brought in speakers who told her that “all kids register as Democrats.”

“It took me a few decades, but I learned to resist the pressure for ideological conformity.”

Chad PeaceThe Political Mammal - Brian Science and Politics: Voters are mammals, and so are the researchers who study us. Politics makes sense when you understand the mammal brain.