AUTHOR=Kremláček Jan , Musil Daniel , Langrová Jana , Palecek Martin 

TITLE=Neural Correlates of Liberalism and Conservatism in a Post-communist Country

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

VOLUME=13

YEAR=2019

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00119

DOI=10.3389/fnhum.2019.00119

ISSN=1662-5161

ABSTRACT=<p>A previous experiment showed that there was a strong correlation between conservatism/liberalism and brain activity, linked to an error response (<italic>r</italic> = 0.59, <italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.001) in the USA political environment. We re-ran the experiment on a larger and age-homogeneous group (<italic>n</italic> = 100, 50 females and 50 males, aged 20–26 years) in the Czech Republic; a European country with a different sociocultural environment and history. We did not find a relationship between the brain activity connected to conflict monitoring and self-reported conservatism/liberalism orientation (ρ = −0.11, <italic>p</italic> = 0.297) or conservatism/liberalism validated for the USA agenda (ρ = −0.01, <italic>p</italic> = 0.910). Instead of replicating the previous study, we decided to test the hypothesis under a different socio-cultural context. Our results support a view of self-reported or validated, conservative or liberal attitudes as a complex behavioral pattern. Such a behavioral pattern cannot be determined with statistical significance, using a simple Go-NoGo detection task, without accounting for confounding factors such as age and socio-cultural conditions. Sufficiently powered studies are warranted to evaluate this neuro-political controversy.</p>