Why Are We Left Or Right?

Interesting question, why do people become leftwing or rightwing?
Personally, i'm not sure i was even aware of a left or right wing ideology when i become 'a lefty', i had my views and later found out that they chimed with the Left but then my parents were both Lefties so it could have been i was raised to have those views from a young age, i also grew up in the era of Margaret Thatcher and her cruel right wing ideology so that probably had an effect also.
Maybe it is nothing to do with nurture and is down to nature as perhaps some people are just drawn to a certain side of an ideology but i lean more towards it being a result of parenting, society and our own experiences or even out of antagonism towards ideological parents and their upbringing.    
I asked someone at the Political Psychology Section at the British Psychological Society and they seemed to think that it is a bit of Nature and Nurture, Nature designates our temperament and our emotional experiences and Nurture which shapes our sensitivities and emotional responses. The strongest emotion, they said, is empathy and how much we empathise with others and the more empathy we hold, the more a person will lean to the left and less empathy often result in leaning more to the right.
They did say that political ideology is not fixed though and as we live our life social tribes,  exposure to other ideas, friends, family, media, teaching, what we read and learn all go into our ideology all mixed with a healthy dash of a private inner sense of what is right and wrong.
Very interesting, i love a bit of Psychology and I am sure they know what they are talking about but i always refer back to a 2013 study published in Psychological Science that found  people with right-wing views are less intelligent than those of us with left wing views.
The British Cohort Study found that right-wingers tend to be less intelligent, have lower reasoning ability and more racist and homophobic views than left-wingers and people with low childhood intelligence tend to grow up to hold right-wing views.
Nice to have it clarified by science and remember if you are unfortunate enough to come across a Right Winger, remember talk slow to them...they are not too bright (or they had right wing parents and therefore little empathy).