Science shows: Liberals are smarter.

Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

Yeah, yeah. but its just a theory, you know. Like evolution. Anyway, here’s the original paper abstract:

Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism

David M Amodio¹, John T Jost¹, Sarah L Master² & Cindy M Yee²

¹ Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washington Place, New York, New York 10003, USA.

² Department of Psychology, 1285 Franz Hall, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.

Correspondence should be addressed to David M Amodio david.amodio@nyu.edu

Political scientists and psychologists have noted that, on average, conservatives show more structured and persistent cognitive styles, whereas liberals are more responsive to informational complexity, ambiguity and novelty. We tested the hypothesis that these profiles relate to differences in general neurocognitive functioning using event-related potentials, and found that greater liberalism was associated with stronger conflict-related anterior cingulate activity, suggesting greater neurocognitive sensitivity to cues for altering a habitual response pattern.

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