Forget crowd sizes — a new study confirms that conservatives boast slightly larger amygdalas, the part of the brain that plays a key role in identifying and reacting to potential threats, compared to liberals. “A slightly larger amygdala simply highlights a brain’s increased sensitivity to issues related to [the] need for security , reduction of uncertainty and threat, or perhaps more careful processing of negative stimuli,” study author Diamantis Petropoulos Petalas told The Post. The amygdala is about as big as a shelled peanut — and the difference between conservatives and liberals is about the size of a sesame seed, Petropoulos said.
Having a larger amygdala could be attributed to genes, the environment, or most likely, a combination of the two, he added. It is possibly related to a “larger proclivity for understanding danger.” Petropoulos’ research, published Thursday in the Cell Press journal iScience , aimed to replicate a widely shared 2011 University College London study criticized for only having 90 participants .
Petropoulos’ team examined brain scans from 928 Dutch adults 19 to 26 years old. The researchers paired the brain data with insight into the participants’ politics. The volunteers were asked about their social and economic identity, such as where they view themselves on a sliding scale of progressive to conservative and which political party they identify with.
Other questions touched on their social and economic ideology, like where th.