Humans naturally seek connections. Sometimes the results are surprising. We tend to believe that we think independently and rationally, and that our political views and moral values arise from reasoning and processing objective information. But is that really so?

This time the story is based on the book by journalist and media entrepreneur Turi Munthe titled "Why We Think What We Think: The Unexpected Origins of Our Deepest Beliefs". Munthe surveys achievements in history, biology, geography, psychology and sociology to reveal the hidden forces shaping our worldview.

Seven years ago, he and several collaborators launched an ambitious project: to compile a global encyclopedia of opinions, called Parlia. When I looked at its homepage at the end of August, there were 1,776 opinions, about 7,700 comments and fewer than one and a half million participants in the voting. For a global reach, that is not very much, but many ideas accumulated during the process. This side project has in fact been more fruitful and enriching.

Much of the research has explored how various phenomena relate to politics, directly or indirectly. For example, studies show that among voters in the United States and the United Kingdom, right‑leaning voters prefer Burger King over McDonald's. Centrists tend to enjoy ice cream occasionally, and liberals are more inclined than conservatives to eat spicy food — which conservatives generally dislike.

Cambridge Analytica used this insight during the 2016 U.S. presidential election to tilt the campaign toward Donald Trump. Their political targeting assumed that if a person had visited an ethnic restaurant in the past month, they were likely a Democrat. This illustrates the possibilities of collecting and using different types of data.

Munthe cites a 2020 study from Cornell University suggesting that conservatives have more taste receptors on their tongues than liberals. It sounds absurd at first, but researchers reached that conclusion. Another surprising finding: brain scans can identify a person's political affiliation with about 70 percent accuracy.

Political attitudes cluster in specific regions of the brain, and without going into detail, conservative and liberal brains differ in the size of certain areas. This topic is explored in another book, Leor Zmigrod's "The Ideological Brain."

Broadly speaking, the conservative brain tends toward rejecting differences and irregularities. The liberal brain is better at detecting exceptions and nuances. In other words, the conservative brain leans toward simplification and rationalization, while the liberal brain leans toward accepting differences.

This may partly explain why conservatives often strongly oppose foreigners and immigration, and are frequently critical of certain groups in society, such as sexual minorities, women or Jews.

From here it is appropriate to go even further, into the realm of genetics, because that is said to have a connection with politics as well. The matter has been studied using identical twins in situations where the twins have for some reason been separated and raised in completely different environments.

Namely, even in such a case the political views of the twins largely coincided, although not completely, because environment and upbringing still have their own influence. Human intelligence, or IQ, is said to be 70 percent influenced by genetics and 30 percent non‑genetic.

Genes have a strong influence on our religiosity and on our political opinions. It is claimed that the influence of genes is greatest in the case of right‑wing authoritarian views. But if we take our views in the field of the economy and tax policy, then genes help explain 50 percent of our views. The other half then comes from upbringing, life experience, but perhaps also from climate, history, personality and other factors.

Overall, roughly 60 percent of our position on the conservative–liberal spectrum is genetic. Society needs both perspectives for development, just as a parliament needs both a governing coalition and an opposition.

Fortunately, genes do not influence us in a vacuum — other factors are just as important. Otherwise, one could imagine giving every 18‑year‑old a genetic test and a brain scan, and skipping elections altogether because political views would already be known. This highlights a danger, recalling the darker side of genetics — eugenics. If gene editing can change IQ, why not political views?

In a broader view, Munthe also describes how geography and climate shape our opinions. Rural residents tend not to support big government, because its presence is less felt in rural areas. Thus, in Europe, Asia and North America, rural populations are generally more conservative.

Geography also explains major differences such as those between East and West. Researchers have concluded that in the West, the individual comes before the community — individualism. In the East, collectivism dominates — the community is more important than the individual.

One reason, Munthe argues, lies in the difference between rice farmers and grain farmers. Grain, wine and olive oil could be produced alone or with family. Rice cultivation requires irrigation, dams, canals and other infrastructure — all of which require large collective cooperation.

A map in the book shows that regions with rice‑farming traditions overlap with shame‑based cultures, while grain‑farming regions overlap with guilt‑based cultures. The West is a guilt culture, because guilt is personal. The East is a shame culture, because shame is social — arising from the sense that one has not met the community's expectations.

Interestingly, Russia falls into the rice‑farming and shame‑culture area — a collectivist culture. It is possible that collectivism extends not only to rice farmers but also to nomadic steppe peoples. Muscovy is in many ways a successor to the Mongol Golden Horde. The absence of a guilt culture may help explain why most Russians do not feel personal guilt over the war in Ukraine.

Further reading

• Turi Munthe, "Why We Think What We Think. The unexpected origins of our deepest beliefs", 2026
• Leor Zmigrod "The Ideological Brain"
• Opinions on Parlia

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