Here’s one for all of you folks getting exercised about US politics. Some researchers at Rice University have discovered a strong correlation between how disturbed people are by frightening images and sudden sounds, and how likely they are to have political views that are non-liberal.

I am generally rather dubious of this sort of science, but I have to admit that there’s a strong temptation, next time I encounter one of those in-your-face talk radio types, to yell back, “Yeah, but you only vote Republican because you are a big wussy coward who’s afraid of foreigners, feminists and queers.”

I should add that there are other reasons for voting Republican that were not covered by the research, and I’d be interested to see a similar experiment that looked at beliefs such as strong government control of industry.

Update: Here’s a parallel report from the paper’s co-authors at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.