2016 Postmortem

Schreiber thinks the current research suggests not only that having a particular brain influences your political views, but also that having a particular political view influences and changes your brain. The causal arrow seems likely to run in both directions—which would make sense in light of what we know about the plasticity of the brain. Simply by living our lives, we change our brains. Our political affiliations, and the lifestyles that go along with them, probably condition many such changes.

This helps explain why the most conservative age group today is roughly 45-52. They were the youth for Reagan activists back in the day. Now that they are all grown up they still cling to the lifestyle that brought them there. It helps explain how people are set in their ways, even long after available evidence should be pointing them in a new direction. It probably even explains why things such as deprogramming have so little success. It's that "can't make me do it" side of people that give birth to all sorts of weird behavior.