Valium for President

In this article [Current Biology Vol 21 No 8]

"We speculate that the association of gray matter volume of the amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex with political attitudes that we observed may reflect emotional and cognitive traits of individuals that influence their inclination to certain political orientations. For example, our findings are consistent with the proposal that political orientation is associated with psychological processes for managing fear and uncertainty. The amygdala has many functions, including fear processing. Individuals with a large amygdala are more sensitive to fear, which, taken together with our findings, might suggest the testable hypothesis that individuals with larger
amygdala are more inclined to integrate conservative views into their belief system. Similarly, it is striking that conservatives are more sensitive to disgust, and the insula is involved in the feeling of disgust. On the other hand, our finding of an association between anterior cingulate cortex volume and political attitudes may be linked with tolerance to uncertainty. One of the functions of the anterior cingulate cortex is to monitor uncertainty and conflicts. Thus, it is conceivable that individuals with a larger ACC have a higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept more liberal views. Such speculations provide a basis for theorizing about the psychological constructs (and their neural substrates) underlying political attitudes. However, it should be noted that every brain region, including those identified here, invariably participates in multiple psychological processes. It is therefore not possible to unambiguously infer from involvement of a particular brain area that a particular psychological process must be involved."

This ties to the Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives
TED Talk about the objects of focus for Liberals (sic) vs. Conservative (sic) which I have blogged about before the Five Frameworks ( ideology, politics and policy) of political value focus.

1. Harm - Behaviors that cause harm
2. Fairness - Level playing field
3. Authority - provisional beliefs vs. ideological support for increased security
4. Ingroup - outsiders have energy and ideas vs. they are the other
5. Purity - individuals choose ideology and morality within fuzzy boundaries vs. purity is supernaturally dispensed.

Perhaps liberal/progressives want less economic freedom and more social and cultural openness while conservatives want more economic freedom for rewarding exceptional financial acumen by much less social freedom to 'preserve the precious bodily fluids' of the Father land. These diverse motivations and cognitive sets predict the effects of an ensemble of conditioned behaviors.