The study referenced is a slightly different approach in a relatively new research arena of liberal/conservative neuropsychology, which often uses religious conviction as a dependent variable in the experimental design. Some of the research is clearly agenda-driven, unfortunately.
I can’t find the source right now but I remember a student coming into my office incensed with an empirical [and peer reviewed!] report she’d read that stated “conservatives don’t use all of their brains”. False, of course – self-identified ‘conservatives’ have been shown to use different areas to different degrees than self-identified ‘liberals’.
Whether the neurophysiological activity begets conservative attitudes or simply echoes and thus perpetuates learned behaviors is unknown, and the answer may be “both” (The Jost article below provides a good summary).
These are tough reads even if you have the stats and neurophys to follow them, but a look at the abstracts, introductions, and discussion sections will give you an idea of what’s going on in (reliable / professional) research in this area. They should be available via Academic Search Complete at any state’s or college library’s portal.
Amodio, D. M., Jost, J. T., Master, S. L., & Yee, C. M. (2007). Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism. Nature Neuroscience, 10(10), 1246–1247. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1979
Inzlicht, M., McGregor, I., Hirsh, J. B., & Nash, K. (2009). Neural markers of religious conviction. Psychological Science (0956-7976), 20(3), 385–392. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02305.x
Jost, J., & Amodio, D. (2012). Political ideology as motivated social cognition: Behavioral and neuroscientific evidence. Motivation & Emotion, 36(1), 55–64. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-011-9260-7
Tritt, S. M., Peterson, J. B., Page-Gould, E., & Inzlicht, M. (2016). Ideological reactivity: Political conservatism and brain responsivity to emotional and neutral stimuli. Emotion, 16(8), 1172–1185. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000150.supp