In 1931, a chemist at DuPont named Arthur Fox was handling a chemical compound called phenylthiocarbamide, and as he was pouring it into a container he accidentally wafted a cloud of the stuff into the air.
And then something weird happened. Some of his lab mates said, "Pee-eww! What's that horrible bitter smell?" And other ones said, "What smell? There's no smell."
It turns out, they had discovered something by accident — the ability to smell PTC is determined by your genetics, and it has now been narrowed down to one little chromosome in your DNA called TAS2R38. Some people have the gene for it and some don't. (You may pause reading this newsletter and go see if you have the TAS2R38 smell gene. I'll wait.)
Once the PTC gene was discovered, more weird discoveries followed. Girls who are PTC smellers have an earlier sexual maturation time, while boys are the opposite. Depression, alcoholism and oral pain go along with the PTC gene. And also ... researchers have found a correlation between smelling PTC and having conservative politics.
Without reading too much into a few weird correlations, this is part of a larger body of evidence that some part of our political orientation is built into our brains and our bodies. Conservatives and liberals have different brains.
Takeaway: Differences between liberals and conservatives are wired into our biology.
• Why Einstein had a liberal desk
As I write this from my palatial headquarters in Hoboken, New Jersey, I'm happy you can't see my desk. There are things I know I put on my desk six months ago and can't find anymore.
And I don't blame myself — that's just what liberal desks look like.
Psychologists have developed what they call the "Big Five" traits that can be used to describe a person's personality. They spell the word "OCEAN":
- Openness to Experience.
- Conscientiousness.
- Extraversion.
- Agreeableness.
- Neuroticism.
(aka emotional stability, but if you called it that, it wouldn't spell "OCEAN.")
(Which is important because … um … I don’t know.)
So psychologists have done the research and found that Republicans and Democrats have strong differences in the first two categories: Openness and Conscientiousness.
For now, let’s look at Conscientiousness. Conscientiousness means how much orderliness and structure you have or you need in your life, and Republicans score much higher on this. They tend to have tidier homes, stick to schedules, make their beds, shine their shoes, keep to a schedule and show up on time. Business, police and the military are happy domains for conservatives.
Takeaway: Conservatives are wired to value order and structure.
Meanwhile, creatives are a whole different breed. Thus the liberal desk. You may have one yourself.
(For your consideration, Mark Twain, Steve Jobs and Leonard Bernstein at their desks and/or piano.)
And conservatives prize order in society as well. They tend to see other people's behavior as disrupting the order in society. They see gay pride parades, for example, and can't believe they have to put up with inappropriate behavior right out in public.
Much of this is summarized in the book "The Republican Brain" by Chris Mooney, which is a good read. This is fertile ground for you as political communicators, so we'll talk more about how our brains differ on openness vs. closure and morality vs. immorality in the next few newsletters.
Hmm...I just cleaned up my cluttered at-home desk the other day. I still have some stuff on it that's meaningful to me: a Walkers Shortbread tin that holds pens and a pair of scissors, my laptop, a Hunter's plaid basket that keeps important materials handy, a clock radio and a Meilin Lee doll from Turning Red -- my favorite animated film.