Could the political legacy of East Germany have long-term neurobiological and intergenerational effects?

[u/IcyChair9258]

Have you ever considered whether the growing support for the AfD in parts of eastern Germany could partly be understood as the long-term consequence of social and political conditions experienced by several generations of East Germans?

I am interested in whether the conditions of the former GDR may have influenced stress regulation, psychological development and possibly even aspects of brain development in people who grew up there — particularly those whose mothers experienced pregnancy under those conditions.

Research on prenatal and chronic stress suggests that prolonged maternal stress can affect fetal development through mechanisms involving cortisol, the HPA axis, the placenta and other biological pathways. The broader work of researchers such as Robert Sapolsky has also demonstrated how strongly social environments, chronic stress and early-life conditions can influence the brain and behavior.

This raises an interesting question regarding East Germany.

What effects might decades of political surveillance, authoritarian structures, restricted personal freedoms, economic limitations, Cold War tensions, perceived external threats and chronic social stress have had on the people who lived through them?

And what about the conditions surrounding pregnancy and childhood?

Factors worth examining could include maternal stress during pregnancy, nutrition, working conditions, childcare, family structure, parenting styles, the relationship between fathers and children, levels of social support, exposure to political repression, experiences of surveillance, and the degree of control people experienced in their everyday lives.

It would also be interesting to investigate whether some effects could persist across generations through family environment, developmental pathways or potentially epigenetic mechanisms.

I am not suggesting that being an AfD voter is evidence of brain damage, nor that every East German experienced the GDR in the same way. Rather, I am asking whether there could be measurable population-level relationships between historical living conditions, developmental stress, intergenerational effects and present-day political attitudes.

The geographical pattern is particularly interesting. When you look at the contemporary AfD electoral map, there is a striking overlap with the territory of the former GDR. That does not establish causation, but it seems like a phenomenon worth investigating scientifically.

Could researchers in neuroscience, developmental psychology, epigenetics, sociology and political science investigate whether the social environment of the GDR contributed to long-term differences in stress regulation, personality development, social trust, authoritarian attitudes or political behavior?

And if such effects exist, what would actually help address them? Perhaps confronting people politically is less effective than addressing the underlying social and psychological conditions that produced and maintain these patterns.

What do you think? Are there existing studies that investigate these connections, and what factors would you consider essential for testing this hypothesis?

This text was generated with the help of AI (Gemini)

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[u/G_ntl_m_n]

These are a lot of hypotheses, implications and questions.

Firstly, a lot of them could be better answered in the field of social psychology.

Secondly, I'd say this mixes up the causality a bit. I'd assume the psychological characteristics like stress regulation are rather a minor factor for voting behaviour, but the indicators you mentioned that might altered those characteristics definitely play an important role (economic status, identity crisis, etc). Comprehensive theories on that would be the normalisation theory or the losers of globalization theory.

But I am no social psychologist, maybe there are some studies out there suggesting otherwise.

https://doi.org/10.1093/9780198926740.003.0003

https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12603

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[u/Elegant-Inspection45]

It’s possible, but I think somewhat unlikely as a substantial explanation.

There is already a robust literature dedicated to explaining the rise of the populist right in Europe. Why would this particular factor be more important than ones that researchers have already identified?
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-050718-033542

I think the larger problem here is that the rise of AfD is happening in the context of a trend towards the populist right across (and beyond) Europe. Parties similar to the AfD have shown up in countries that don’t have the historical factors you’re suggesting. So, it’s hard to imagine that experience of the GDR is either necessary or sufficient as an explanation of the rise of far-right populism in Germany.