Pro vs Con

[xoxoxoBruce]

Pro vs Con website has a list of 16 peer reviewed studies supposedly showing liberals and conservatives physiologically different.

In the 16 peer-reviewed scientific studies summarized below, researchers found that liberals and conservatives have different brain structures, different physiological responses to stimuli, and activate different neural mechanisms when confronted with similar situations. Each entry below cites the source document. The studies are arranged from most recent to oldest. We included all the peer-reviewed studies on this subject that we could find. If you know about others, please contact us with details.

The list titles are:
1. People right-of-center politically spend more time looking at unpleasant images, and people left-of-center politically spend more time looking at pleasant images.
2. Reliance on quick, efficient, and "low effort" thought processes yields conservative ideologies, while effortful and deliberate reasoning yields liberal ideologies.
3. People who react strongly to disgusting images, such as a picture of someone eating worms, are more likely to self-identify as conservative.
4. Liberals have more tolerance to uncertainty (bigger anterior cingulate cortex), and conservatives have more sensitivity to fear (bigger right amygdala).
5. Conservatives have stronger motivations than liberals to preserve purity and cleanliness.
6. Liberals are more likely than conservatives to shift their attention in the direction of another person's gaze.
7. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to interpret faces as threatening and expressing dominant emotions, while Democrats show greater emotional distress and lower life satisfaction.
8. Conservatives and liberals react similarly to positive incentives, but conservatives have greater sensitivity to negative stimuli.
9. Conservatives have more activity in their dorsolateral prefrontal cortices, the part of the brain that activates for complex social evaluations.
10. Conservatism is focused on preventing negative outcomes, while liberalism is focused on advancing positive outcomes.
11. Genetics influence political attitudes during early adulthood and beyond.
12. Conservatives learn better from negative stimuli than from positive stimuli and are more risk avoidant than liberals.
13. Individual political attitudes correlate with physiological traits, such as sensitivity to sudden noises and threatening visual images.
14. Liberals are more open-minded and creative whereas conservatives are more orderly and better organized.
15. When faced with a conflict, liberals are more likely than conservatives to alter their habitual response when cues indicate it is necessary.
16. Conservatives sleep more soundly and have more mundane dreams, while liberals sleep more restlessly and have a more bizarre, active dream life.

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

[url="http://2012election.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004818"]...

17) Liberals have more and better sex.

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[xoxoxoBruce]

Is that peer reviewed, or do you close your curtains?

[Sundae]

But what happens if you have a thin veneer of liberalism over a seething mass of right-wing fury when someone hurts you and yours?

Oh, wait. You end up a mentaller.
Fair enough.

[Carruthers]

It seems I am a Conservative Liberal.

But only when I'm not being a Liberal Conservative.

Why is life so bloody difficult at times?

[Lamplighter]

Maybe that's because you have a big anterior cingulate cortex and a big right amygdala,
along with certain other big body parts. (4)

.

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

...along with certain other big body parts.

Modesty forbids.

[DanaC]

Yeah - I'm as liberal as they come, but I'm a roiling ball of fear and anxiety and highly risk averse.

[Undertoad]

The idea that my psychology informed my politics stopped me in my tracks. Why would I want to spread my fucked-up notions to the rest of the world?

[xoxoxoBruce]

I give it little or no credence, reverting to the correlation/causation thing, but the link saying, "peer reviewed", sparked my clicker.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

The idea that my psychology informed my politics stopped me in my tracks. Why would I want to spread my fucked-up notions to the rest of the world?

Because that's what separates us from the other animals.

[xoxoxoBruce]

We're separate?!?

[Happy Monkey]

As long as you pick the right distinguishing feature. Long necks separate giraffes from the other animals, and wanting to spread our fucked-up notions distinguishes us.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

As long as you pick the right distinguishing feature. Long necks separate giraffes from the other animals, and wanting to spread our fucked-up notions distinguishes us.

Does that mean Donald Trump is a different animal?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Robert Reich is most definitely left wing. His article at Huffpost, "What I Learned on My Red State Book Tour" is interesting. OK, the truth is it jibes with what I suspected, so I naturally believe it, but still.

But something odd happened. It turned out that many of the conservative Republicans and Tea Partiers I met agreed with much of what I had to say -- and I agreed with them.

For example, most condemned what they called "crony capitalism," by which they mean big corporations getting sweetheart deals from the government because of lobbying and campaign contributions.

I met with group of small farmers in Missouri who were livid about growth of "factory farms" owned and run by big corporations, that abused land and cattle, damaged the environment, and ultimately harmed consumers. They claimed giant food processors were using their monopoly power to squeeze the farmers dry, and the government was doing squat about it because of Big Agriculture's money.