Republican vs. Democrat: A Matter of Brain Chemistry?

Research by New York University and UCLA researchers appearing in Nature Neuroscience shows that liberal or conservative leanings may come down to cognition rather than conviction.

In the experiment college students across the political spectrum were instructed to tap an M whenever it appeared on a computer monitor and to ignore a W that appeared about 20 percent of the time while an electroencephalograph recorded brain activity.Data showed that students who identified themselves as liberal scored higher for accuracy and were almost five times as likely to show activity in brain circuits associated with conflict, suggesting a strong capacity for dealing with change and novelty. Meanwhile, conservative students were better at blocking out distracting new information which may lead them to favor structure and tradition.

ABSTRACT: Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism