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.
Your post is racist and devoid of facts.
Your post is racist and devoid of facts. Period.
strange results
When I get away from the elites, some of the calmist, most laid back persons I know are conservatives. Also know a number of nosiey liberals with spouses responding, yes dear.
Have to know how to read it
This makes sense, liberals ARE lazy, now we have scientific proof. If it wasn't for conservatives, Darwin's law of natural selection would have made liberals extinct...long ago.
Lazinees vs. hard working
I think the study forgot to see if the liberals were calmer merely because they are lazier. Liberals tend to want the government to do everything for them and have the hard working conservatives pay for it.
I think it also translates into not caring and caring. Liberals tend to think only of themselves (and let the government take care of the rest) and conservatives give generously to those in need (proven in another study).
Perhaps this all adds up to explaining the study that said conservatives are much happier than liberals.
Personally, if those doing the "study" would find much better things to do, instead of leaching money off those that work hard and justifying their skewed results for their own self supporting benefit, then perhaps conservatives wouldn't be so jumpy when some liberal pops in from sitting on his butt claiming he's entitled to the surplus funds of the hard working conservative.
Wow....such ignorance & generalization here
Wow, I'm a "hardworking" liberal. Didn't you know we existed? What rock have you just crawled out from under? If I were to stoop to the levels of insulting and "argue" like a few of these conservatives, I would label conservatives as unintelligent, selfish, war-mongering, environmentally gluttonous, small-minded, and arrogant, oh let's not forget hypocritical. But I won't.....I will say that I am a liberal and I've worked very hard my whole life at a job, as a mother, and someone who has given back to society in a number of ways. But unlike some people who never step out of their own "backyards" so-to-speak, I realize, as most liberals do that not everyone is on a level playing field and it's people like SOME conservatives that add to the segregation and then wonder why our nation may be falling apart. For those with a strong religious belief (like this liberal!) Jesus was far from judgemental and held out a helping hand with love. Hmmm, just like that bumper sticker....What would Jesus do? I doubt he would want us to continue killing polar bears and cutting down trees!!!!!!!
Riiiight...
This is why blue states pay more federal taxes than red states, and get less of the money back...
Face it, it's the democrats that are actually earning money...perhaps because they believe in being edjoomacated
Such Ignorance
I work close to a 12-hour day, everyday, running my own business and employ 19 people. I am a libereal that is extremely happy because I don't worry about all the social issues that conservatives worry about. I feel sorry for conservatives, actually. Most I know are very unhappy in life.