Rocketman

What Stops You from Killing Yourself

I will admit that I am quite a suicidal person. I have been since I was young, and it is something that I consider frequently to this day. A lot of the times I think about it I try to come up with reasons not go through with it.

I'm interested in the perspectives of both those who are in a similar situation to myself, who have contemplated taking their own lives, as well as those who haven't. What reasons do you have for someone not to kill themselves.

Genetics Determine Political Ideology

Liberal and conservative in the global sense, in that conservatives wish for society to remain traditional, while a liberal would go against tradition and desire change.

Genetics Determine Political Ideology

The Nexerus said
Neuroplasticity seems to be more likely an explanation than genetic conservatism.

Something that's interesting to think of though is that genetic predispositions could affect our personalities and behavior in order to guide us towards developing our brains in the first place. If a child is naturally curious about the world around it, they may seek out sources of mental stimulation which bring about the change caused by plasticity. It could also well be that the environment that a child is born into can enable their genetics to be fully realized. Both have similar end results, it's just a matter of identifying which is the cause. What can be agreed on though is that there is a definite correlation between the two.

Another thing to keep in mind are studies conducted with identical twins reared in separate home environments due to being adopted separately. The twins, despite not sharing the same upbringing, both developed along similar trajectories and shared common values. The thing that was least similar among them was intelligence, which still was pretty high. I don't remember the exact figure, something in the 0.6~ ball park in terms of positive correlation. The implication behind this is that perhaps genetics play much more of a role than people would like to think.

Jannah said
I'm pretty sure I have heard of this before, although it kind of makes me wonder where people who fall into radical ideologies on both sides of the spectrum fit in.

I would imagine there would be a pronounced difference in activity in key areas of the brain between the two extremes. It would be interesting to compare the two, though gathering enough people for that kind of study to be valid where the participants involved identify themselves as being "extreme" in their ideologies would be, at best, excruciating.

Brovo said
Illogical. A person's thought processes are generally more complex than that. Besides, this does not account for people who change sides based on which side they think is the most convincing at the time, all sorts of other inbetween states.Sexuality is an example of genetics hard coding. Political affiliation, a purely ideological concept, is not. At least, there needs to be far more concrete evidence than this.EditEssentially: A mix of nature and nurture is the most logical conclusion. The only question is, to what extent.

Political ideologies and the person you vote for aren't the same thing. One is much more concrete than the other. Your values will remain, on the whole, consistent throughout life, while who you vote for is much more dependent on external input. I imagine becoming more conservative in ideology with age may be reflective of degradation of brain activity dealing with novel information, which would be consistent with the idea that by that age, evolutionarily, we have established a comfortable routine to survive with. I mean if you look at the graph below, you'll see that who you align with politically has a negligible contribution from genetics. Your ideology, on the other hand, is accounted for by over half of it.



There is no gene that determines the party you are going to vote for. It would be naive to think so, in the same way there isn't a gene that makes you racist. However, it is possible that we can be predisposed towards certain beliefs due to our personality, which is determined largely by our genetic codes. For example, being racist applies to a single matter, which is race. Being prejudiced, on the other hand, is a personality trait, and one that applies throughout life. One brings about the other, and that one is influenced by your genes.

Genetics Determine Political Ideology

Just something I found interesting in one of my psychology lectures. The idea is that there is a difference in brain structure between politically conservative individuals compared to those who are more liberal. The part of the brain itself is the anterior cingulate cortex, an area that “signal[s] the occurrence of conflicts in information processing, thereby triggering compensatory adjustments in cognitive control” (Botvinick et al., 2004).

What was found was that “conservatives show more structured and persistent cognitive styles, whereas liberals are more responsive to informational complexity, ambiguity and novelty”, with brain functioning within the ACC being found to be greater, on average, within someone who identified themselves as liberal. The “results are consistent with the view that political orientation, in part, reflects individual differences in the functioning of a general mechanism related to cognitive control and self-regulation” and that “stronger conservatism (versus liberalism) was associated with less neurocognitive sensitivity to response conflicts”

Now, we could all get our knickers in a twist and suggest that the paper in question is garbage and should be ignored so that we don't have this conversation. It would also be interesting to measure the brain activity of those who would rather do that instead of entertaining the possibility of genetic predetermination and see if their brain activity matched those who identified themselves as conservative within the study.

Something else that may be worth considering is the plasticity of the brain, so it may be that those areas that cope with cognitive dissonance came about due to nurture rather than nature. This could be due to a mentally stimulating home environment, good schooling or some natural predisposition towards cognitive challenges, in which case it would be genes and the environment correlating. Just to bear in mind that this is a possibility, though the brain activity difference between the two groups still stands, suggesting that there is still a difference that requires addressing.

So what do you guys make of this? Do you accept that what you believe is mediated by biology, that who you are as a person is determined by your DNA, or do you think otherwise?