Political Attitudes Are Predicted By Physiological Traits, Research Finds
Monday, September 22, 2008 - 09:14
in Psychology & Sociology
Is America's red-blue divide based on voters' physiology? A new paper in the journal Science explores the link. The study finds that those 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, whereas individuals displaying measurably higher physiological reactions to those same stimuli were more likely to favor defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism and the Iraq War."