Brain scans of authoritarians show reduced grey matter in regions for empathy and social reasoning

A study published in Neuroscience by researchers at Spain’s University of Zaragoza scanned the brains of 100 young adults and found structural differences in those who hold authoritarian beliefs — on both the left and the right. Right-wing authoritarians had lower grey matter volume in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, a region involved in understandin…