Hill: Evidence suggests that conservatives are generally more risk-averse than liberals are. But that’s not a universal pattern. Research in political psychology has shown that the propensity for risk-taking is domain-specific. In some situations conservative-leaning people are less risk-averse than their liberal counterparts; sometimes they’re actually risk-seeking. That usually happens in contexts where risk-taking leads to greater control over future decisions—something conservatives prize. For example, a number of studies have found that when it comes to investing in business ownership, conservatives take bigger risks than liberals do. Ownership offers them greater control over their livelihood, and that outweighs their characteristic fear of loss.