This is an almost perfect description of what’s going on. I was unlucky enough to be raised in one of their conservative homeschool cults… 8 kids. 2 girls, were uneasy about the doctrine for a bit but were taught by parents to be submissive so they just accepted it. 4 other boys, no empathy or feelings whatsoever, became three hateful people and one neo-nazis. The third girl, fought against it with moderate ideas, advocating for women’s rights, etc. Was verbally abused and taunted by them and her parents to the point of extreme depression, self harm, possibly suicidal thoughts idk. Hasn’t left Christianity, but graduated early to get away from them. Then me, enby (assigned male). Not even open about it, but different from the other guys bc I actually have empathy and feelings. Depression, self-harm, suicidal thoughts (the usual), survived bc of outside friends I had in secret, became a pagan liberal but still really mentally screwed up…

I do wonder if the enlargement of the parts of the brain dealing with fear conditioning, self-deception and emotional learning but lack of emotional regulation are because most if not all extreme conservatives (at least in my campus “dataset” of about 50) have survived extreme cases of abuse and either a) became numb to it and started convincing themselves to do it to others because it’s “right” or b) became extremely depressed, suicidal, learned heightened empathy and critical thinking by surviving that and ended up in the “liberal” dataset.