The Los Angeles Times reports on a study to appear in nature conducted at New York University and UCLA which shows political affiliation is linked to differences in how the brain processes information. Put short “conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences”.

It sounds interesting and follows other experiments that show similar results. The problem? I wouldn’t go racing out to declare these results as gospel truth anytime soon. The study was conducted on college students and only 43 of them, which wasn’t noted in the article but I asked the author. (Note a great deal of research like this is done with college students because they are the available population).

The article also did not note how many of those 43 were self appointed conservatives and how many were liberals and to what degree their political affiliation went. In addition there is an obvious point. Students who are in college tend to be liberal and they are open to new experiences. Their minds are developing because they are often outside their home environment/comfort zone, meeting new people and just experiencing things.

In addition we also know many of these students go on to become conservatives. There is the old expression “If you are conservative when you are twenty you are heartless if you are liberal when you are forty you are mindless” or something to that effect. So in the end if there are specific brain differences why would people change and/or how do they change physically?

Again interesting article and research but I don’t know if I would put much weight in it.