Justin Mohn, a 32-year-old Pennsylvania man, is in police custody after allegedly murdering and decapitating his father, claiming the latter was a “federal employee” and a “traitor.” Before his arrest, Mohn posted a 14-minute video to YouTube in which he displayed his father’s severed head, proclaiming: "This is the head of Mike Mohn, a federal

  • antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    9 months ago

    conservatives are literally, physiologically hypersensitive to fear

    I don’t have a background in psychology either, but the prefix hyper- in medical contexts usually means something is abnormally and dangerously excessive in size, amount, etc. Yet from your quote there’s no reason to conclude the on-average increased amydagla is necessarily abnormally increased. It isn’t, it’s just bigger, it’s not automatically pathological.

    • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      ‘hyper’ doesn’t have a qualifier in scale; it’s just an increase. Your arm muscles will hypertrophy after a single pushup… not by a significant amount, but by a higher than zero amount.

      My understanding of the amygdala situation is that it follows basically the same model: conservatives aren’t born with a massive amygdala that leaves them extra susceptible to fear and emotion; they do fear work-outs throughout their life by over-consuming shit like Fox News telling us the scary immigrants are here to out-breed us, or some preecher explaining how Jesus won’t let you into heaven if he sees you masturbating… over time they become the fear/emotional equivalent to a body builder; but when you start to look at the other parts of their brain, you might find they didn’t just skip leg day; but that the very concept of leg day is something they find offensive and actively oppose.