currentsinbiology: The poor conservatives - the world must seem a bit scary?Is your political ideolo
currentsinbiology: The poor conservatives - the world must seem a bit scary?Is your political ideology in your head? Conservatives and liberals know there is a chasm between their policy and social ideals. But a new study shows that their differences may be psychologically fundamental.The research, led by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Mark Mills, revealed that negativity bias – where greater weight in our cognitive processes is given to negative information over positive or neutral information – is stronger in political conservatives and that the negativity bias transfers to how well they remember stimuli.In other words, conservatives in the study were more likely to remember things that evoked negative emotions – images of war, snakes, dead animals – than their more liberal counterparts. Mark Mills, Frank J. Gonzalez, Karl Giuseffi, Benjamin Sievert, Kevin B. Smith, John R. Hibbing, Michael D. Dodd. Political conservatism predicts asymmetries in emotional scene memory. Behavioural Brain Research, 2016; 306: 84 DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2016.03.025 Mark Mills (left), a graduate student in the Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior, sets up an eye track computer as part of a study. Credit: Craig Chandler | University Communications -- source link