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Politically, Americans are more divided than ever.
When it comes to issues of race, immigration, national security, and environmental protection, they disagree about how the government should handle things like never before.
Relative to polls in the 1990s, Republicans are now much more likely to say poor people have it easy, while Democrats are less likely to say so. Conservatives are also more likely to say that environmental regulations are costing the US too many jobs. Liberals now seem less convinced that peace can be achieved through military strength than they were decades ago.
The Pew Research Center reports that the country’s political divisions now far exceed “divisions along basic demographic lines, such as age, education, gender and race.” The share of Americans who sit in the middle of the political spectrum is lower, too.
Russian bots are taking advantage of these widening differences on Facebook and Twitter in an attempt to drive Americans’ opinions further apart.
But what in the brains of conservative and liberal voters actually drive their belief systems? Scientists have been researching the psychological differences between people with different stances, and there are a few key ways that people on opposite ends of the political spectrum see the world. Here’s what the data shows:
Being scared can make you more conservative.
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Decades of research has shown that people get more conservative when they feel threatened and afraid.
Threats of terrorism make everyone less liberal — researchers found this was especially true in the months after 9/11. During that time, the US saw a conservative shift, and Americans displayed increased support for military spending and for President George W. Bush.
Americans aren’t the only ones whose political leanings are influenced by fear. A 2003 review of research conducted in five different countries looked into 22 separate tests of the hypothesis that fear fuels conservative viewpoints and found it was universally true.
A conservative brain is more active in different areas than a liberal one.
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Brain scans show that people who self-identify as conservative have larger and more active right amygdalas, an area of the brain that’s associated with expressing and processing fear. This aligns with the idea that feeling afraid makes people lean more to the right.
One 2013 study showed conservative brains tend to have more activity in their right amygdalas when they’re taking risks than liberals do.
On the other hand, feeling safe and endowed with strength might make you lean a little more liberal than you otherwise would.
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Groundbreaking research that Yale psychologists published in 2017 revealed that helping people imagine they’re completely safe from harm can make them (temporarily) hold more liberal views.
The authors of that study said their results suggest that socially conservative views are driven, at least in part, by people’s need to feel safe and secure.
That finding didn’t hold true for people with economically conservative views, though.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
- President Trump wants to arm teachers to prevent mass shootings — here’s what the science says about guns in schools
- An NRA spokeswoman blamed an ‘insane monster’ for the mass shooting in Florida — here’s the truth about mental illness and guns
- There’s no such thing as ‘auditory’ or ‘visual’ learners
SEE ALSO: A Yale psychologist’s simple thought experiment temporarily turned conservatives into liberals
