Were you born conservative or liberal?

Conservatives and Liberals just don’t see eye to eye – and according to some new data, there’s a biological reason for that...

Researchers at the University of Nebraska put political preference to the test and determined that conservatives have a stronger reaction to negative stimuli and potential threats than liberals.

48 adults who were either strongly conservative or strongly liberal agreed to participate in the experiment. They all viewed a series of images while their physical reactions were measured. Among the random images were photos of polarizing politicians. Conservatives responded more strongly to politicians they disagreed with, while liberals had a stronger physiological reaction to politicians they liked.

When viewing a collage of positive and negative images, the conservatives would orient to the negative images and potential threats twice as fast - and spend longer looking at them than the liberals, who focused more on the positive images.