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A few months before retiring from public office in 2002, the House majority leader Dick Armey caused a mini-scandal when he announced, ''Liberals are, in my estimation, just not bright people.'' The former economics professor went on to clarify that liberals were drawn to ''occupations of the heart,'' while conservatives favored ''occupations of the brain,'' like economics or engineering. The odd thing about Dick's statement was that it displayed a fuzzy, unscientific understanding of the brain itself: our most compassionate (or cowardly) feelings are as much a product of the brain as ''rational choice'' economic theory is. They just emanate from a different part of the brain -- most notably, the amygdala, the almond-shaped body that lies below the neocortex, in an older brain region sometimes called the limbic system. Studies of stroke victims, as well as scans of normal brains, have persuasively shown that the amygdala plays a key role in the creation of emotions like fear or empathy. If amygdala activity is a reliable indication of emotional response, a fascinating possibility opens up: do liberals ''think'' with their limbic system more than conservatives do? As it happens, research suggests that Dick might have been on to something after all.