Conservatives are more sensitive. In an article published recently:
“The researchers, whose findings were published today in the journal Science, looked at 46 people who fell into two camps — liberals who supported foreign aid, immigration, pacifism and gun control; and conservatives who advocated defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism and the Iraq war.
In an initial experiment, subjects were shown a series of images that included a bloody face, maggots in a wound and a spider on a frightened face. A device measured the electrical conductance of their skin, a physiological reaction that indicates fear.
In a second experiment, researchers measured eye blinks — another indicator of fear — as subjects responded to sudden blasts of noise.
People with strongly conservative views were three times more fearful than staunch liberals after the effects of gender, age, income and education were factored out.” Kevin B. Smith, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a study author.
In another comment on the same study: “Thus, the degree to which individuals are physiologically responsive to threat appears to indicate the degree to which they advocate policies that protect the existing social structure from both external (outgroup) and internal (norm-violator) threats.”
Seems like conservatives can relate to events outside themselves. Those who are more liberal generally avoid any emotional reaction that may lead them to doing something about it. Liberals are, literally, more hard-hearted.
