The Politics of Your Eyes
Liberals and conservatives have different ways of looking at other people—literally. Scientists say that conservatives tend to ignore what other people look at.
In a recent study, psychologists from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln studied how liberals and conservatives respond to “gaze cues,” which refer to “a person’s tendency to shift attention in a direction consistent with another person’s eye movements.” In a release about the report, the University of Nebraska explains: Liberals responded strongly to the prompts, consistently moving their attention in the direction suggested to them by a face on a computer screen. Conservatives, on the other hand, did not. Why? Researchers suggested that conservatives’ value on personal autonomy might make them less likely to be influenced by others, and therefore less responsive to the visual prompts.
