Too bad there wasn't a differentiation between populist conservatives and cuckservatives in the amygdala(anxiety) studies.
To address the latter part here first, I'm generally sympathetic to differentiating between actual principled conservatives and the Fox/Limbaugh "conservatives" that far too frequently are not even remotely principled conservatives. Further, though I'm generally on the liberal side of most issues, I am firmly in favor of having a decently strong conservative presence that balances out a more liberal presence. With that said, the Republican Party is not such a presence, unfortunately, especially now, and that can likely be largely traced back to how it's been very affected by some very rich Libertarians and corporatists who are well aware of how public opinion would be firmly against what they're actually pushing if people actually knew (without the partisan glasses), long term strategy of attracting authoritarians, and a propaganda network that's been working hard to create a fantasy world that the Republican politicians feel like they're forced to pander to and reinforce.
I thought I had a strong counter-argument lined up but I didn't. Conservatives are however shown by statistics to be much happier overall and more likely to be successful/wealthy.
Could you point to the statistics that you're referring to, out of mild curiousity? To be clear, I'm not disputing that link, especially given that there's a fairly direct link between wealth and happiness (at least to around, say 70K-80K a year in income), though I am curious about whether that link is properly accounted for in the statistics that you're thinking of.
I don't think the anxiety levels are higher by that much anyway, and there's are going to be several conservatives still with little concern for the future.
Of note, it's likely worth differentiating between general anxiety and triggered anxiety, as well as belief alteration/reinforcement that can be attached to such.
Also, to add my anecdotal experience to the mix to help delve into that a little more, I have a number of conservative friends and family. Most of them are smart, well-adjusted, and generally good people. When politics comes up, though, for most of them, they seem to fall prey to outright, easily demonstrable lies and nonsense to a rather remarkable extent. When my father, for example, was arguing that the Civil War is great evidence that the
current Democratic Party is utterly racist (as just one example of the jaw-dropping level of ignorance and turning off his brain required to make the arguments that he did), it boggled the mind. When he utterly broke his word in an incredibly dishonest way to try to prop up his belief that immigrants are criminals with no respect for law when presented with evidence to the contrary, that was depressing.
