Calm people are more likely to be liberal in their political and social outlook, a new study suggests.
Credit: British Government
WASHINGTON DC: Calm people tend to be liberals, while those who react strongly to sudden noises and threatening images tend to be political conservatives, says a study in the U.S. journal Science today.
"Individuals with measurably lower physical sensitivities to sudden noises and threatening visual images were more likely to support foreign aid, liberal immigration policies, pacifism, and gun control," said the study conducted by U.S. researchers from Rice University in Texas, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the University of Illinois, and the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioural Genetics.
Strong beliefs
"Individuals displaying measurably higher physiological reactions to those same stimuli were more likely to favour defence spending, capital punishment, patriotism, and the Iraq war," the authors write.
Participants in the study were selected randomly by phone and screened to determine if they held strong political beliefs, regardless of which way they leaned. Forty-six people who were retained for the study were then asked to fill out a questionnaire asking them, among other things, about their political beliefs.
Later, two common physiological reactions to a perceived danger, blinking and skin moisture levels, were measured after the participants had heard a sudden noise and seen threatening images; a large spider on a frightened person's face, a person with a bloody face, and a maggot-infested wound.
Cause or effect?
Those who supported conservative policies – such as military spending, school prayer, and the death penalty – reacted strongly to the stimuli, while people who backed liberal policies such as foreign aid, pacifism, gay marriage and abortion rights were calmer.
The researchers were unable to say whether political attitude causes the physiological reaction or vice versa.
But the link that the study suggests exists between the two traits "provides one possible explanation for both the lack of malleability in the beliefs of individuals with strong political convictions, and for the ubiquity of political conflict," they said.
Study:calm people are liberal,skittish are conservative
what about validity of this study....-Shone Jose,Nilambur/Kannur
Now..
All they have to work out is why there are congregations of Conservative people in some areas (towns, states, countries), but not in others - if it's an individual phenomenon.
Bias
Why was my earlier comment removed? Apparently Cosmos is a liberal website and biased against conservative Americans.
Yes, biased - against offensive comments
Why was my earlier comment removed? Apparently Cosmos is a liberal website and biased against conservative Americans.
You can say what you like, and express any political opinion - so long as you do so without using profanity or being offensive to other participants. If you're going to post, we ask that you show some respect - for the site, and other readers (even if you don't agree with them). Otherwise, your posting is edited or deleted.
Editor-in-Chief
Really?
The United States military, largely conservative, doesn't seem skittish to me.
Oh really?
This must explain why there are screaming hoards of liberals at most major national and international events. WTO, G8, Democratic Convention, Republican Convention, etc, etc, etc.
I seem to remember a study announced a year back that said Conservatives are happier than liberals. I love studies that try to pigeon-hole and stereotype people. So beneficial to society.
There are two main
There are two main motivators in the human psyche, and it just so happens that:
Conservative people are driven by fear (of loss), while
Liberal people are driven by hope (of gain).
Nice study but....NO DOY p
Trey in Texas
Results don't seem to mesh with reality.
The number of stories of keyed paint, spitting on soldiers, rushing stages to prevent speakers, etc would speak to the opposite of this 'study'. I suspect the researchers went into this with the intention of proving - and not testing - their hypothesis.
additional theories
Many white liberal areas of America are also the wealthier and more homogenous parts (or if they are diverse areas, the other ethnic groups are Asians, who are usually richer and less criminalistic than whites).
Meanwhile, many white conservative areas are poorer and more culturally diverse (read: black populations within).
Wealthy areas have far less violent crime than poorer areas. In other words, many white conservatives live in the more violent areas of America. While most violent crime in the US is black-on-black crime, it can spill over to white areas, and much of the property crime is black-on-white. So I think the study is pretty reasonable sounding, if we factor in this data. It could make sense that white conservatives are used to remaining vigilant.
I mean, if you're Albert Einstein or Bill Gates (two famous and brilliant guys who were notoriously liberal -- Einstein was in fact a Communist), how often do you get scared by some thug while you're at work in the science lab or office place? You probably live in some community full of wealthy, educated people.
Missing the point of the study?
Reading some of the comments, it seems that some of the readers didn't quite grasp that the study isn't trying to "pigeon-hole" anyone. Without knowing explicitly who funded the research, I would hesitate to put full certainty behind what I'm saying, but overall I believe the point of the study was to advance human knowledge and contribute to our ever-expanding map of the human brain.
As for the results, the study simply shows a correlation of data. It doesn't even begin to answer the question of WHY, which is the next step. But it does state that there is a difference in physiological reactions between two groups of people (while saying nothing of their subsequent behavior afterwards) when presented with certain stimuli. There are likely a number of reasons for this correlation, not the least of which is that the two major political parties seem to have already figured out how to get their base to react, and such actions would, over time, reinforce such a correlation. Look at the two major presidential campaign slogans. "More of the Same" seems to be suggesting that caution and reason should win out in the next election, while "Country First" is clearly meant to stimulate feelings of patriotism, some of which is naturally built on primal emotional response to a dangerous world.
I tend to think that there is a strong case for the findings here based on the fact that I could have measured these same results just studying the liberals and conservatives that I know. It doesn't mean one group is better than another, it simply posits that their brains react differently at a chemical level to the same stimuli. Such reactions seem to have effects for their favored system of beliefs.