Why Liberals Are Smarter

The LA Times has an article on a new study comparing the way liberal and conservative brains process information. Unsurprisingly, they concluded that liberals are more open to new experiences and more flexible in their thinking. OK, that's not quite the same as "smarter," but I'll take it. The current experiment compared what happened when students were presented with a very simple task: recognizing the letter M vs. W. Subjects were conditioned to expect a higher frequency of one letter than of the other, and when the frequency changed, conservatives made more mistakes and learned the new pattern more slowly.

It certainly seems to fit a lot of conservatives I know - once they get an idea they become more or less impervious to fact.

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