Liberals More Sensitive to Ambiguity than Conservatives, Says Science

Ronald Bailey | September 10, 2007

Psychological researchers from New York University and UCLA are reporting what I am sure was for them a completely unanticipated discovery in Nature Neuroscience. According to the abstract:

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.

Of course, libertarians enjoy both the informational complexity and novelty of markets and a social world rife with differing lifestyles. 

See my earlier reporting on similar research where I asked, Is conservativism an unfortunate evolutionary holdover, or the product of bad upbringing?