This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
We start today with an account of two communities.
One is liberal, the other conservative.
I want you to guess which is which.
The schools would stress patriotism and respect, and it would be a very rules based educational system.
The houses would be fairly similar.
The lawns would be very nicely kept, beautifully green and mowed.
The town would be quiet with lots of churches.
That's town one.
Here's town two.
The schools would be based more on experiential kinds of things rather than rote memory.
People would prefer older houses with wooden floors rather than wall to wall carpeting.
They would keep the yards natural.
Lots of bars and community theaters and foreign films.
More of those than churches.
That was easy, right?
Conservatives like order.
Liberals embrace ambiguity.
Now, you may be rolling your eyes or even getting angry at these stereotypes, but we all know there's more than a grain of truth to them.