Key points

Brain scans of disgust reactions predict political orientation with 95-98% accuracy from just one image.

Conservatives show stronger neural disgust responses; liberals use reappraisal to override gut reactions.

Political differences may reflect different emotional processing systems, not just opposing values.

Understanding these brain differences could improve political communication across the divide.

Why do political conversations seem so pointless? The answer might not be in our ideas but in how differently our brains react to a photo of maggot-covered meat. Behavioral neuroscience has found the reason: we're not just disagreeing about what to think—we're using completely different tools for thinking itself.

The most surprising discovery in political psychology might

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