This Machine Can Tell Whether You're Liberal or Conservative

[Sarah Ibarruri]

2. What's really really weird about this...

Is that the testing shows that the biggest difference between liberals and right wingers is that right wingers get more easily disgusted, and yet it is the right wingers that consistently commit evil against other human beings, things that shock, and see no problem with it, feel it isn't wrong, and show no sensitivity toward that evil.

How do you figure?

One of the biggest differences clearly involves the emotion of disgust. Hibbing isn't the only one to have found a relationship between conservatism and stronger disgust sensitivity—this result is also a mainstay of the very influential research of moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who studies how deep-seated moral emotions divide the left and the right (see here). In one study, Hibbing and his colleagues showed that a higher level of disgust sensitivity is predictive not only of political conservatism but also disapproval of gay marriage. It is important to underscore that your disgust sensitivity is involuntary; it is not something under your control. It is a primal, gut emotion.