To Think or Not To Think

There is an expanding body of evidence pointing to innate neurocognitive differences between liberals and conservatives. It is well known that conservatives are more likely to be religious, and liberals to be atheistic. It is also well-established that liberals and atheists tend to be better educated and to score higher on IQ tests.

Conservative religious and liberal atheists differ in their criteria for making moral judgements, and these differences parallel Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development.

I'll start with a partial list drawn from familiar material, and I will continue to expand the information.

1. Reduced activity of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), an area devoted to detecting discrepancies, in conservatives versus liberals. The ACC has been dubbed the "truth center":

Differences in brain activity of conservatives & liberals [ Amodio, D. M., et al. (2007). Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism. Nat. Neurosci. doi:10.1038/nn1979. [Abstract] ]

2. Differences in personality profiles of believers versus atheists:

Personality and Religiosity

Here are a couple of pertinent videos: