The Molecule of More

THE MOLECULE OF MORE

individuals, who need to feel in control of their environment and often
have difficulty navigating complex human relationships.
As for politics, liberal views dominate Hollywood. According to
CNN, celebrities donated $800,000 to President Barack Obama’s reelec-
tion campaign, compared to just $76,000 to Republican challenger
Mitt Romney. The Center for Responsive Politics, which publishes the
website Opensecrets.org, reported that during this same election cycle,
people who worked for the seven major media corporations donated six
times as much to Democrats as they did to Republicans.
Next on the list is academia. Academia is a temple of dopamine.
Academics are described as living in an ivory tower (as opposed to an
earthen hut, for example). They devote their lives to the immaterial,
abstract world of ideas. And they are very liberal. You’re more likely
to  find  a  communist than a  conservative in  academia. A New York Times
opinion piece noted that only 2 percent of English professors were
Republicans, while 18  percent of social scientists identified themselves 
as Marxist.
The enforcement of liberal orthodoxy is more widespread on uni-
versity campuses than in any other setting. Comedian Chris Rock told
a reporter for The Atlantic that he won’t perform on college campuses
because the  audience is  too  easily offended by  speech that  runs  counter 
to liberal ideology. Jerry Seinfeld also said in a radio interview that
other comedians had told him not to go near colleges. “They’re so PC,”
he was warned.

ARE LIBERALS SMARTER?

A career in academia is generally a sign of superior intelligence, but does
superior intelligence extend to liberals in general, to people more likely
to have highly active dopamine systems? It probably does. Testing the
ability to manipulate abstract ideas, courtesy of the dopamine control
circuit, is a fundamental part of how psychologists measure intelligence.
To explore the question of the relative intelligence of liberals and
conservatives, Satoshi Kanazawa, a  scientist at  the  London School of