A recent study in Israel used brain scans to explore the differences in empathy between political liberals and conservatives. The researchers found that when imagining other people suffering, liberals showed stronger brain reactions associated with empathy compared to conservatives. This pattern of brain activity was linked to participants' self-reported political beliefs and their acceptance of right-wing values. The study was published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. ...

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[–] h34d@feddit.de 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Both the popular article linked in the op as well as the actual paper seem to use the terms "liberal/conservative" and "leftist/rightist" interchangeably. Quote from the paper:

It is necessary to note that, first, similar to previous studies on this topic that consider the left–right dimension equivalent to the liberal–conservative dimension (Fuchs and Klingemann, 1990; Hasson et al., 2018), throughout this paper, the terms leftist and liberal (and similarly, rightist and conservative) were used interchangeably. The liberal–conservative dimension is often used in the United States, whereas the left–right dimension is commonly used in Europe and Israel (Hasson et al., 2018).

There were "only" 55 participants, but I assume that if some of them identified as socialist, they would already be included under "leftist/liberal" for the purpose of the study.

[–] Serdan@lemm.ee 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I'd be interested in seeing if there's any difference between liberals and actual leftists. I'd assume so because liberals aren't egalitarian, but there may not be a measurable difference.

[–] SCB@lemmy.world -2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Leftists are just liberals who are bad at math, so it probably would scale them about the same

[–] Serdan@lemm.ee 0 points 2 years ago

It's liberals who keep insisting that trickle down economics is good for the economy actually.