A new study in the journal Neuroethics claims that socially conservative views are between 5 to 30 times more likely to be related to anti-social traits than socially liberal views.

Last year Marcus Arvan, of the University of Tampa, came under fire when he showcased his theory in another paper. Now he has returned with even more data which, he insists, shows that socially conservative views are statistically linked to three anti-social personality traits: Machiavellianism (deception), narcissism (overinflated sense of self-worth) and psychopathy (absence of guilt or remorse).

The earlier study linked views on the death penalty, gay marriage, free markets, the right to go to war against UN resolutions and detention of suspected terrorists without trial to “the Dark Triad”. His latest paper replicates his earlier findings and lists 22 more significant relationships, including:

preventing illegal immigration, deporting illegal immigrants, building a fence along the US-Mexican border, making English the official US language, not providing public schooling to the children of illegal immigrants, teaching “intelligent design” in public schools, “enhanced interrogation techniques” (including waterboarding), defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, obeying UN rules, climate change, environmentalism

Dr Arvan insists there is only a 1 in 100,000 chance that his findings are wrong.