What is the difference between conservative and liberal

When they encountered such a position, it took them longer to make a decision about whether it was good or bad. How do out-of-the-ordinary positions affect later voting? Haas suspects that engaging more with such information might make voters more likely to punish candidates for it later.

Motivated reasoning, in which people work hard to justify their opinions or decisions, even in the face of conflicting evidence, has been a popular topic in political neuroscience because there is a lot of it going around.

While partisanship plays a role, motivated reasoning goes deeper than that. Just as most of us like to think we are good-hearted human beings, people generally prefer to believe that the society they live in is desirable, fair and legitimate.

Nam and her colleagues set out to understand which brain areas govern the affective processes that underlie system justification. They found that the volume of gray matter in the amygdala is linked to the tendency to perceive the social system as legitimate and desirable.

In short, we derive our identities from both our individual characteristics, such as being a parent, and our group memberships, such as being a New Yorker or an American. These affiliations serve multiple social goals: they feed our need to belong and desire for closure and predictability, and they endorse our moral values.

And our brain represents them much as it does other forms of social identity. Among other things, partisan identity clouds memory. In a study , liberals were more likely to misremember George W. Bush remaining on vacation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and conservatives were more likely to falsely recall seeing Barack Obama shaking hands with the president of Iran.

Partisan identity also shapes our perceptions. If the objective was liberal opposing the military barring openly gay people from service , the conservatives were more likely to want the cops. The opposite was true when participants thought it was a conservative protest opposing an abortion clinic. The more strongly we identify with a party, the more likely we are to double down on our support for it.

Lead study author Carola Salvi said the results were consistent with what scientists already knew about the brains of people with different political leanings. In , researchers at the University of Nebraska tested whether conservatives and liberals physically see the world in different ways. They found that when it comes to matching the gaze of other people, the two groups differ. The scientists measured this by having individual study participants watch a certain point on a computer screen and wait for a ball to show up in the frame.

Then they added a distracting human face on the screen before the ball appeared. The face's eyes would look around. The scientists watched their participants to see if they followed the wandering gaze. The researchers found that the liberal participants tended to follow the direction of the eyes on the screen.

Conservatives, on the other hand, weren't as swayed by their pixelated peers, and kept waiting for the ball. A review of decades of research on conservative people suggested that their social views can help satisfy "psychological needs" to make sense of the world and manage uncertainty and fear.

Studies from the s showed that conservatives preferred more simple paintings, familiar music, and unambiguous texts and poems, while liberals enjoyed more cubist and abstract art. Although that research dates back to a drastically different political climate, the findings hold up in more recent studies from , and In , Time magazine conducted an online survey and found that conservative readers tended to say they'd rather visit Times Square than the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The finding fits with other research that indicates conservatives tend to avoid uncertainty and dislike ambiguity more than their liberal counterparts. A study of US high school students found that conservative students at that time were more likely to describe themselves as "responsible," "organized," "successful," and "ambitious," while liberal students might describe themselves as "loving," "tender," or "mellow.

Surveys suggest that today's adults aren't much different than those 80s kids. A Pew Research Center study from showed that liberals were more likely than social conservatives to describe themselves as compassionate, trusting, upbeat, and optimistic, while conservatives were more likely to say they were people of honor, duty, religion, and proud to be American.

The self-reports go along with research from that suggested liberals' top moral concerns tend to be about compassion and fairness, while conservatives are more concerned with loyalty, tradition, respect for authority, and purity. One study found that conservative students were often better at focusing their attention on a cognitive task called the Stroop color and word test.

The common psychological study tool asks participants to quickly name the correct color of a word that's written on a different color background. In the study, conservative students seemed to correctly answer the color questions faster than their liberal peers. The researchers think that's because the conservatives were more likely to believe in the concept of self-control.

But the conservatives didn't always out-perform the liberals. When they were told that their free will might undermine their own self-control, they performed worse than their liberal peers. New research finds that conservatives tend to express compassion to smaller social circles than liberals.

For example, conservative voters were found to be more likely to agree with statements like: "I often have tender, concerned feelings for my family members who are less fortunate than me. Liberals, on the other hand, were more likely to feel that same level of compassion for people around the world, and even to non-human and imaginary subjects like animals and aliens.

For liberals, every execution risks to kill an innocent person. Conservatives believe that death penalty is the appropriate punishment for certain crimes, including murder and terrorist acts. Liberals believe that the government should interfere in and regulate the economy of the nation in order to protect citizens from corporate power.

The support for governmental intervention is motivated by the belief that the government cares or should care about public interest. Conservatives support free market and the capitalist system. In their view, the free market system produces more economic growth, greater welfare ad higher standards of living. Conservatives believe that the government should not regulate the economic system of the nation.

Liberals believe that climate change — and consequently the use of fossil fuels — is a serious threat. Therefore, they think that the government should invest in alternative energy sources such as wind and solar power. Conservatives believe that oil, coal and gas remain the most reliable sources of energy. While not all conservatives deny the problem of climate change, most of them believe that alternative resources could never replace oil and coal.

Liberals acknowledge the fact that climate change and global warming are caused and exacerbated by the use of fossil fuels and the subsequent production of carbon dioxide.

As such, liberals believe that privates and companies should reduce carbon emissions and take all necessary steps to halt global warming and save the planet. Conservatives believe that climate change and global warming are natural and that there is no proof that supports the assumption that the use of fossil fuels can aggravate or accelerate the change in global temperature. Unfortunately, several conservative scientists support this theory — thus providing the conservatives with scientific evidence that denies climate change.

As such, they support euthanasia and assisted suicide, and believe that the government should not deprive the citizens of the possibility of terminating their lives whenever their condition becomes unbearable or the suffering is too intense.

Furthermore, they think that legalizing euthanasia would reduce health care costs. Such perspective is supported by several religious beliefs that value human lives and prohibit suicide. Liberals believe that the government should provide low-cost and equal health care services for all citizens, regardless of their income and their ability to pay.

Yet, liberals do not deny the possibility of having private healthcare systems running parallel to the public system. Conservatives believe that the healthcare system should be privatized and, while everyone should be entitled to healthcare, the government should not interfere in nor control it.

Liberals support legal immigration but believe that illegal migrants should be facilitated in receiving valid residence permits. Liberals support softer policies as far as border controls and immigration laws are concerned, and believe that passenger profiling — in particular on ethnic bases — should be avoided. Conservatives believe that soft policies regarding border controls and immigration gravely endanger the security of the country.

As such, they only support legal immigration and believe that illegal migrants should not enjoy the same rights of all other citizens. Illegal aliens should go back to their country, either voluntarily or following deportation, as they represent a threat to national security. Liberals advocate for equal rights for gay, lesbians, transgender and bisexual individuals. Conservatives, strongly influenced by traditional and religious values, believe that the marriage should only exist between a man and a woman.

According to their perspective, same-sex marriage are immoral and sinful. Liberals believe that every country, while being a sovereign nation entitled to territorial integrity, is part of a wide international community.

Conservatives believe that international institutions such as the UN and the NATO limit the freedom of action of individual countries and that the sovereignty of the nation should not be questioned by international organizations.

Liberals believe that wealthy people should pay higher taxes and that the government needs tax-money to address inequality within the society and to provide for all people, including the indigent. Conservatives believe in lower taxes for everyone. In their view, lower taxes create incentive local investments and that government programs do not benefit economic growth. The conservative approach and the liberal perspective lie at opposing ends of the political spectrum.

Conservatives are right-leaning while liberals are left-leaning. While they have opposing views on a number of key issues i. Conservatives want to maintain the existing structure and to preserve traditional values, while liberals believe in progress and strive for modernity and development.

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