I am not surprised to read that two teams of psychologists, one from the University of New Mexico and another from the University of California, have come up with contrary explanations of how conservatives and liberals are made (“Security Check,” May 19, 2007). Focusing on early childhood of their research subjects, both teams differentiate between those with and those without secure childhoods with strong attachments to one or both parents and little stress. However, the former team concludes that early security goes with later conservatism, while the latter concludes the opposite. Although you are certainly right when you playfully suggest that more research is needed, the missing variable is obvious enough: the political environment in which research subjects find themselves at the time the research is conducted. Judging from my own experience, those with secure childhoods are likely to become liberal in conservative environments and vice versa, while those without secure childhoods would tend to conform to their political environments.