what do you know? it is genetic

It seems that stubborn behavior is genetic.

From the study:

"The test showed that men carrying the A1 mutation responded less to negative feedback, implying that they were less successful at learning to avoid mistakes than the men in the other group. Brain imaging of both groups also supported this result, revealing that during the learning sessions the men carrying the A1 mutation had diminished neurological activity in the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC), an area in the brain involved in monitoring errors."

And, unlike what seems to be a lot of studies, the scientist running this one weren't declaring their work to be the final word on the matter, and instead offered up this:

"Our subjects worked in an artificial laboratory setting, the reward and punishment they received was highly abstract, whereas a real world situation in which you could learn from feedback is normally much more complex. More research is needed to show how our findings apply to real world situations," Klein says.

Given what I posted about yesterday, I'm left to wonder how broken my error monitor is.