Disgusting images can predict your political ideology

Maggot infestations, rotting carcasses, unidentifiable gunk in the kitchen sink - how much your brain responds to disgusting images could predict your political leanings, a new study has found.
An international team of scientists has found that an individual's reaction to repulsive images can forecast their political ideology.
"Disgusting images generate neural responses that are highly predictive of political orientation even when those neural responses don't correspond with an individual's conscious reaction to the images," said Read Montague, a Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute professor who led the study.
"Remarkably, we found that the brain's response to a single disgusting image was enough to predict an individual's political ideology," Montague said.

In a brain scanner, participants were shown disgusting images, such as dirty toilets or mutilated carcasses, mixed with neutral and pleasant images, such as landscapes and babies.
Afterward, the subjects took a standard political ideology inventory, answering questions about how often they discuss politics and whether they agreed or disagreed with topics such as school prayer and gay marriage.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, scientists from the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute - in collaboration with researchers from University College London, Rice University, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and Yale University - recorded brain activity of the subjects responding to the images.

Responses to disgusting images could predict, with 95 per cent to 98 per cent accuracy, how a person would answer questions on the political survey.
The results suggest political ideologies are mapped onto established neural responses that may have served to protect our ancestors against environmental threats, Montague said.
Those neural responses could be passed down family lines - it's likely that disgust reactions are inherited, researchers said.
Conservatives tend to have more magnified responses to disgusting images, but scientists don't know exactly why, Montague said.
The study will be published in the journal Current Biology.