Reality Bites Republicans (by: Chris Mooney)

http://www.thenation.com/article/167930/reality-bites-republicans

The reason I undertook this analysis was to examine, in the real world, my book’s thesis—closely related to Mann’s and Ornstein’s—that Republicans, overall, process information differently from Democrats. Mounting evidence from psychology, for instance, suggests that one’s politics are driven partly by one’s personality, and Democrats and liberals are simply more open to new information and experiences as well as more tolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty. Moreover, this difference has been exacerbated by a well-documented turn toward psychological authoritarianism in the Republican Party over the past four decades. Increasingly, the GOP has become the party of those who are more rigid, less given to compromise, and more inclined to see the world in black and white.