There are a few things that one is never supposed to talk about in polite company; religion, politics, and one’s health. The three are seemingly not connected, with religion being a belief, one’s politics determined by rational thought, and health being a potentially gross conversation. However, researchers at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln have found that psychologically, all three are fairly closely related. Even more, they have found that a person’s politics are heavily determined by the physiological responses to more primal feelings like revulsion, fear, and confusion. According to the authors, the study “suggests that people’s physiological predispositions help to shape their political orientations.”

With such a divisive political atmosphere, the neurophysiology of conservatives and liberals, an outgrowth of the study of morality, has become a hot topic in the field of cognitive research. Ultimately those who primarily identify conservative have a deeper and faster “disgust” reflex, a physiological reaction to images and ideas they find revolting. Neurologists focus on feelings of disgust because, as it’s such a fundamental sensation, an emotional building block so primal that feelings of moral repugnance originate in neurobiological processes shared with repugnance for rotten food. In the UNL study this was measured through the viewing of photos of a man eating earthworms. Those identifying conservative had a faster and stronger reaction to the photos than those identifying liberal.

The broader findings of similar studies equate this with a difference in cognitive flexibility. According to the broad consensus of data, conservatives tend to have greater level of discomfort with ambiguity and respond more quickly to feelings ot fear and disgust. Those identifying liberal tend to have greater comfort with ambiguity and are less emotionally reactive to stimuli. There are no judgements of intelligence, creativity, or any other inherent trait within either political ideology. Instead, it is simply a sensitivity to stimuli that is more active (or reactive, as the case may be) to unpleasant or undesired information.

How does this translate to a practical assessment of politics in life? The study found that the highest correlation between conservative feelings of disgust and liberals feelings of disgust was a question of support or opposition on the topic of gay marriage. In other words, that same neurological impulse in the brain was triggered. The authors were quick to point out that the study was correlative, not cause and effect. Rather, the study shows a hardwired neurological set of responses that may correlate to one political ideology over another. “The larger point,” the authors write, is “that certain political orientations at some unspecified point become housed in our biology, with meaningful political consequences.” Rather than assuming that these findings make reconciliation impossible (afterall, it’s just as rooted in biology as morality), it may simply make recognizing the different reactive impulses of one group over another a factor in the way we communicate.