ArticleSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2018
Conservatism and the neural circuitry of threat: economic conservatism predicts greater amygdala-BNST connectivity during periods of threat vs safety.
Article in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Amygdala Modulation During Emotion Regulation Training With fMRI-Based Neurofeedback.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2019Pooled it
- Political Orientation as Psychological Defense or Basic Disposition? A Social Neuroscience Examination.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2022Trial
- Fight, Flight, or Vote Right? A Systematic Review of Threat Sensitivity in Political Conservatism.Brain sciences · 2025Review
- Functional connectivity signatures of political ideology.PNAS nexus · 2022Article
- The politics of mask-wearing: Political preferences, reactance, and conflict aversion during COVID.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Article
- Is negativity bias intuitive for liberals and conservatives?Current psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.) · 2022Article
- State anxiety by itself does not change political attitudes: A threat of shock experiment.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- The Emotional Foundations of Political Support: How Fear and Anger Affect Trust in the Government in Times of the Covid-19 Pandemic.Schweizerische Zeitschrift fur Politikwissenschaft = Revue suisse de science politique = Swiss political science review · 2021Article
- Politicization of COVID-19 health-protective behaviors in the United States: Longitudinal and cross-national evidence.PloS one · 2021Article
- Conservatives and liberals have similar physiological responses to threats.Nature human behaviour · 2020Article
- Changes of Dynamic Functional Connectivity Associated With Maturity in Late Preterm Infants.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2020Article
- A Grand Challenge for Personality and Social Psychology: Competition, Cooperation, or Co-existence?Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- Increased BNST reactivity to affective images is associated with greater α-amylase response to social stress.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
Political conservatism is associated with an increased negativity bias, including increased attention and reactivity toward negative and threatening stimuli. Although the human amygdala has been implicated in the response to threatening stimuli, no studies to date have investigated whether conservatism is associated with altered amygdala function toward threat. Furthermore, although an influential theory posits that connectivity between the amygdala and bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) is important in initiating the response to sustained or uncertain threat, whether individual differences in conservatism modulate this connectivity is unknown. To test whether conservatism is associated with increased reactivity in neural threat circuitry, we measured participants' self-reported social and economic conservatism and asked them to complete high-resolution fMRI scans while under threat of an unpredictable shock and while safe. We found that economic conservatism predicted greater connectivity between the BNST and a cluster of voxels in the left amygdala during threat vs safety. These results suggest that increased amygdala-BNST connectivity during threat may be a key neural correlate of the enhanced negativity bias found in conservatism.
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