On Liberal and Conservative Cognitive Styles

The LA Times is reporting that recent research published in the journal Nature Neuroscience indicates that liberals and conservatives have different cognitive styles.

Here's a quote:

Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at UC Berkeley's Institute of Personality and Social Research who was not connected to the study, said the results "provided an elegant demonstration that individual differences on a conservative-liberal dimension are strongly related to brain activity."

Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.

Apparently, this research shows that conservatives have a cognitive style that is error prone when dealing with conflict.