Psychoanalysing conservatives and liberals

The Washington Post has an interview with the author of a book:

“Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States,” is all about how conservatives and liberals not only are drawn to different kinds of media, but tend to have different kinds of psychological makeup.

Here's what she says:

Waldman: What are the key differences in psychological profiles that correlate with whether you’re a liberal or a conservative?

Young: The traits that we’re talking about relate to how individuals engage with threats in their world, meaning how much are you monitoring your environment for threats and how much are you cognizant of your own mortality?

So that's where this trait “need for cognition” comes into play: that you enjoy thinking. The other one at the center of this is a tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. If you don't perceive your world to be scary and dangerous, you are not going to be as motivated to process things efficiently because you're not always worried about your survival. And you would not be uncomfortable with situations or texts that are ambiguous.

Need for cognition is something that we find is significantly lower amongst social and cultural conservatives. They are more likely to seek order, predictability and routine in their lives. This also translates into how they think about ambiguous texts.

And it’s quite intuitive that people who are drawn to abstract art, wild jazz music and stories in literature that are absurd or that don’t resolve — like the plot doesn’t tie up in the end — the kinds of people who are drawn to those things and who enjoy those things are higher in tolerance for ambiguity and they’re higher in need for cognition. They also tend to be liberal.

Waldman: So Fox News or conservative talk radio isn’t just about being angry, it’s also about threats.

Young: It’s about identifying people, institutions, parties and policies that pose a threat. It’s also about the aesthetic package of that genre, which is didactic and clear. You are never confused about where Sean Hannity stands on an issue. You’re never like, “Oh, that was rather layered. What could he actually mean?”

Waldman: “Getting” the joke is also important to people who like satire. Explain what that’s about.

Young: The kind of satire that really exemplifies this processing is irony, because irony is saying the opposite of what you intend. This is what humor scholars call incongruity, because there are two competing elements, and it’s the audience who makes sense of them and brings them together.

This is something that is really taxing cognitively. Not only are some people not good at it, some people just don’t enjoy it. It’s like riddle solving, where you as the audience are adding something to be able to then understand it.

I have mixed feelings about this:   I think it seems to describe the psychological state of conservatives now - especially American conservatives; but it seems to me it was not always as pronounced as this. I tend to be more interested in the question - how did conservatives go so nuts?