Were you born to be a Democrat, or do you always cast a ballot for the Republican Party? There might soon be an odd new way to find out--and one that has nothing to do with your perspective on the economy. A quick brain scan seems to reveal a person's political affiliation with impressive accuracy, finds new research.

The study, from the University of Exeter and the University of California, San Diego, evaluated the brain activity of 82 subjects engaged in gambling games. Then, researchers compared participants' cerebral activity to their declared political parties. While Republicans and Democrats took similar risks during the games, the brain activity that prompted those risks was extremely different.

Among participants who voted Democrat, gray matter showed more activation in the left posterior insula, the region linked with empathy and emotion. The other side of the brain was Republican territory: conservatives flexed their right amygdala more often when making decisions. That brain region is associated with fear, reward, and a fight-or-flight response.

Incredibly, these differences were so pronounced that brain activity alone allowed researchers to anticipate, with 83% accuracy, which party a study participant belonged to. By comparison, knowing the party affiliation of an individual's parents allows for 69% accuracy when making the same prediction, researchers noted in their study.

And political affiliation isn't the only weird factoid that a brain scan might reveal. Here, three recent neuro-findings that may explain various personality traits (and how to trump your own gray matter if it doesn't predispose you to them):

You're creative. Last year, research published in Scientific Reports found that when rap singers improvise rhymes, certain regions of their brains exhibit an activity pattern that best supports creativity. Fortunately, you don't need to be Jay-Z to score creativity credibility. Unlock your creative power by engaging in spontaneous behavior, such as writing a story without deciding on its plot beforehand, or doodling without a clear sense of what you want to draw.

You're getting gullible. A recent experiment from the University of California, Los Angeles studied how people in two age groups--20-somethings and the over-55 set--reacted to a series of faces. While undergoing a brain scan, participants rated each face as trustworthy, neutral, or untrustworthy. Members of the older population were consistently less able to identify untrustworthy faces. Turns out, they also experienced limited activation in their anterior insula--the part of the brain associated with recognizing negative emotions.

You have a way with words. If you're lucky enough to know two languages, then you've also got a more flexible brain than those of us stuck with just one tongue. Using fMRI scans, researchers reporting in The Journal of Neuroscience revealed that bilingual participants required less energy in their brain's frontal cortex--the area associated with short-term memory and mental dexterity--when completing various tasks. Short of learning German, what's a gal to do? "A huge amount of research shows that activities to stimulate cognition are very valuable," says John L. Woodard, PhD, a professor of psychology and an aging expert at Wayne State University. "It doesn't need to be a second language. Play an instrument, join a choir, try creative writing, travel more often, or visit more museums. All of these will help."

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And even though voters overwhelmingly say they hate negative political advertising, attack ads are becoming more common -- presumably because they sway voters.

Why do negative political ads work?

Reasons, experts say, are emotional and psychological -- and partly up for debate. Studies show that negativity doesn’t affect voter turnout. Nor does it sway those who are already convinced one way or the other.

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Instead, the power of negativity may lie in its ability to compel people to seek out more information about candidates, in turn influencing the undecided.

"Advertising matters at the margins," said political scientist Erika Franklin Fowler, director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political advertising at Wesleyan University in Conn. "We never see ads that take a candidate from 20 percent to 70 percent of the vote. But when you have a country that is divided 50/50, every percentage point counts. That's where advertising makes a difference."

Negativity has been around as long as elections have, Fowler said, but the practice has recently become more prevalent than ever. In a 2008 study, Fowler's research group looked at hundreds of thousands of presidential ads from the year before and found negativity in nine percent of those ads.

A more recent study found that 70 percent of presidential ads were negative through April 22 of this year. The huge jump is partly because of a rise in activity by interest groups, but more than half of this year's candidate-sponsored ads have focused on negative details about opponents.

One reason that negative messages are so compelling is that we are emotional creatures, wired to pay attention to harmful information, said Joel Weinberger, a psychologist at Adelphi University in New York and owner of Implicit Strategies, a consulting firm that investigates unconscious influences on behavior.

"Think of our ancestors on the African savannah," he said. "If you miss a leopard, it's over for you. If you miss a deer, oh well, you're hungry. People are more focused on negative information. People stop for a car wreck, but there are no traffic jams for beautiful flowers. "

"In negative ads, they make a narrative for you that is supposed to brand the person," he added. "People say, 'I hate negative ads, they do nothing for me,' while unconsciously processing them. Emotion trumps cognition."

In a study for a 2008 appearance on Good Morning America, Weinberger and colleague Drew Westen found that undecided voters became subliminally hung up on words used in negative political ads, even though they insisted that the ads had no effect on them.

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The test that the researchers used asked people to name the colors of various words. And even though participants are not supposed to pay attention to the actual words, it takes them longer to respond if the words hold emotional resonance for them.

Six months later, the researchers found, adjectives used to describe candidates in ads still held power over viewers.

The best way for a candidate to combat negative ads, Weinberger said, is to immediately fire back. Doing nothing allows his opponent’s message to sink in, whether true or not.

As grating as they can be, negative ads aren't all bad, Fowler said. Studies show that negative ads contain more information, and they inspire people to seek out even more knowledge about the issues.

"Negativity has informational benefits, especially for citizens that don't necessarily tune into politics," she said. "It's more beneficial for democracy if citizens show up for polls better informed as a consequence."