I love this kind of research: if you ask a group of people to imagine being physically invulnerable before an opinion survey, the Republicans' opinions on social change shift leftwards to where they're indistinguishable from the Democrats' washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-…
The over-simplistic take on this research is "conservatives are cowards" but c'mon it's much more interesting to note that their opinions are more responsive to threats against physical safety & well-being. May explain both fear-mongering & political leanings of high-threat jobs?
Other studies have noted that liberals experience the opposite--when exposed to physical threat, their opinions temporarily become more conservative. This has interesting ramifications for how we deploy & consider nightmarish-dystopian vs optimistic utopian scenarios in politics.
