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→The causes in the light of brain research
The Amygdala is involved emotional learning, and especially fear conditioning <ref>LeDoux, J. E. (1992). Brain mechanisms of emotion and emotional learning. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 2(2), 191–197. doi:10.1016/0959-4388(92)90011-9</ref><ref>LeDoux, J. (2004). The Emotional Brain, Fear, and the Amygdala. Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology, 23(4-5), 727–738. doi:10.1023/A:1025048802629</ref>. The amygdala volume correlates positively with both the size (the number of contacts a person has) and the complexity (the number of different groups to which a person belongs) of social networks <ref>Bickart, K. C., Wright, C. I., Dautoff, R. J., Dickerson, B. C., & Barrett, L. F. (2011). Amygdala volume and social network size in humans. Nature neuroscience, 14(2), 163–4. doi:10.1038/nn.2724</ref>.
The Amygdala can be controlled by the rACC <ref>Etkin, A., Egner, T., Peraza, D. M., Kandel, E. R., & Hirsch, J. (2006). Resolving emotional conflict: a role for the rostral anterior cingulate cortex in modulating activity in the amygdala. Neuron, 51(6), 871–882.</ref>. The idea that threat is causing people to become more conservatives was further corroborated by an experiment that showed that under fear conditions, liberal students judge like conservative students<ref>Nail, P. R., McGregor, I., Drinkwater, A. E., Steele, G. M., & Thompson, A. W. (2009). Threat causes liberals to think like conservatives. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 901–907. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2009.04.013</ref>. Conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals <ref>Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D. A., & Bloom, P. (2009). Conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals. Cognition and Emotion, 23(4), 714–725.</ref>. Individuals with measurably lower higher physical sensitivities to sudden noises and threatening visual images were more likely to support foreign aidconservatives policies like defense spending, liberal immigration policiescapital punishment, pacifismpatriotism, and gun controlthe Iraq War, whereas individuals displaying measurably higher lower physiological reactions to those same stimuli were more likely to favor defense spendingforeign aid, capital punishmentliberal immigration policies, patriotismpacifism, and the Iraq War gun control.<ref>Oxley, D. R., Smith, K. B., Alford. John R., Hibbing, M. V., Miller, J. L., Scalora, M., Hatemi, P. K., et al. (2008). Political Attitudes Vary with Physiological Traits. Science, 321, 1667–1670.</ref>. Liberals are more trusting but have smaller social networks, while conservatives find faster threatening facial emotion and have larger social networks<ref>Vigil, J. M. (2010). Political leanings vary with facial expression processing and psychosocial functioning. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 13(5), 547–558. doi:10.1177/1368430209356930</ref>. Conservatives detect threatening faces more easly. With less stress<ref>Giuseffi, K. (2012). Processing Facial Emotions: An EEG Study of the Differences between Conservatives and Liberals and Across Political Participation. University of Nebraska.</ref>.
====Proposed Outcomes====
More intelligent people tend to adopt liberal ideology<ref>Kanazawa, S. (2010). Why liberals and atheists are more intelligent. Social Psychology Quarterly, 73(1), 33–57.</ref>.