19 Aug 2022
Introducing the book “The Spirit of Compromise.”
1.1. Compromise exists in our daily lives. For example, two people argue to decide which restaurant they go to, French or Japanese, or politicians make a decision when implementing a law.
1.2. In a book called “The Spirit of Compromise” (citation), the authors say, “Without compromise on health care and taxation or other major issues, the status quo prevails, even if it preserves a policy that serves everyone’s interests poorly and even if it leads to a major crisis (Gutmann and Thompson, 2012, p. 30).”
How compromise matters in society: ex. Election
2.1. Ex. In Japan, an election is one of the ways to compromise (more detailed discussion is in “Problem of compromise in Japan”!)
2.2 The majority gets more votes than the minority; therefore, those who got more votes need less compromise in the latter decision-making process. That’s because they can easily pass bills.
How could political compromise have experimented in biology
3.1. For now, there is no clear explanation of political compromise by biology
3.2. However, the concept of compromise has been studied in a pharmaceutical field
3.3. Compromise can be interpreted as “intolerance” and studied with mentally-depressed people -> keyword: serotonin (Carhart-Harris & Nutt, 2017)
3.4. By manipulating serotonin levels, humans’ compromising behavior was observed (Lichters et al., 2016)
Imaginary research proposal
4.1. Although a key neurotransmitter, serotonin, was kind of identified and connected to compromising behavior
4.2. Politics has not been explored by biology yet.
4.3. The research by Arceneaux (2019) says, “Absolutists are more likely to adopt extreme opinions, display intolerance toward political disagreement, and punish politicians who make compromises.”
4.4. But political science has not been able to test if such inclination occurs because of biological substances like serotonin.
4.5. Therefore, my proposal was created to test “the levels of serotonin in the brain influence the ability to compromise political differences.”
4.6. The Research Proposal describes in detail!
References:
Arceneaux, K. (2019). The roots of intolerance and opposition to compromise: The effects of absolutism on political attitudes. Personality and Individual Differences, 151, 109498. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.07.008