A study found that a person's political party identification can
be predicted with a high degree of accuracy by examining which
part of their brain processes risk. Democrats, or liberals,
showed greater activity in their left insula; Republicans, or
conservatives, showed greater activity in their right amygdala,
found researchers Darren Schreiber, Greg Fonzo, Alan N. Simmons,
Christopher T. Dawes, Taru Flagan, James H. Fowler and Martin P.
Paulus. The results of the study were published by PLoS ONE in
an article called, "Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes
Differ in Democrats and Republicans." For the study, 82
participants were asked to complete an exercise in which they
were required to choose between risky or safe choices in order
to get a financial reward. They could choose a safe bet for an
automatic small reward, or they could choose a risky bet in
which they could get nothing or they could get a much larger
reward. Both the Republicans and the Democrats took about the
same amount of risk, but t