America's Political Divide: Red Brains vs. Blue Brains

Oct. 15, 2007— -- Spend a day on the campaign trail, and you'll get an earful about what conservatives and liberals think of one another.

You'll hear things like "liberals are liberals. They wanna remake the world in their own image, which is, of course, contrary to the beliefs of conservatives."

And " The Democrats, the liberals, are more concerned about people. The conservatives are more concerned about greed."

Partisan stereotypes? Perhaps. But take a step back and ask how the members of each side got their beliefs. Could it be that your brain is wired liberal blue or conservative red? Some researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles and New York University believe they have the science to prove that very well may be the case. They tested their theory on college students and found that political orientation in large part depends on how our brains process information.

"Personality researchers have identified five major traits or characteristics or dimensions of personality," says John Jost, associate professor of psychology at NYU and one of the lead authors of the study. "They spell out the acronym OCEAN -- openness, continuousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism or emotional stability/instability. And I can tell you that research has shown that liberals and conservatives differed on two of these, and they don't differ on the other three."

Can you guess on which two they differ? "They differ on the first two -- openness and continuousness," Jost said. "So liberals score higher on measures of openness to new experiences, whereas conservatives score higher on measures of consciousness that include aspects such as need for order, structure, discipline, duty and obligation."

When "Nightline" went to NYU to talk with Jost and fellow author David Amodio, they showed us how they conducted their research. Their subject was a 24-year-old psychology graduate student named Margarita. Margarita was first given a questionnaire that asked about her political leanings. She identified herself as "somewhere left of center."