CNN Article: https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/03/health/political-beliefs-brain/index.html
A new study holds clues as to why we get so passionate about politics. When your political views are challenged, the brain becomes active in regions associated with personal identity, threat response and emotions, according to the study.
The recent referenced paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/sre...JNMWfKVX8GkEQ5P&tracking_referrer=www.cnn.com
An older Emory University Study: https://www.emory.edu/news/Releases/PoliticalBrain1138113163.html
Democrats and Republicans were given a reasoning task in which they had to evaluate threatening information about their own candidate. During the task, the subjects underwent fMRI to see what parts of their brain were active. What the researchers found was striking.
"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," says Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory who led the study. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."
Once partisans had come to completely biased conclusions — essentially finding ways to ignore information that could not be rationally discounted — not only did circuits that mediate negative emotions like sadness and disgust turn off, but subjects got a blast of activation in circuits involved in reward — similar to what addicts receive when they get their fix, Westen explains.
"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," says Westen. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones."
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A new study holds clues as to why we get so passionate about politics. When your political views are challenged, the brain becomes active in regions associated with personal identity, threat response and emotions, according to the study.
The recent referenced paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/sre...JNMWfKVX8GkEQ5P&tracking_referrer=www.cnn.com
An older Emory University Study: https://www.emory.edu/news/Releases/PoliticalBrain1138113163.html
Democrats and Republicans were given a reasoning task in which they had to evaluate threatening information about their own candidate. During the task, the subjects underwent fMRI to see what parts of their brain were active. What the researchers found was striking.
"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," says Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory who led the study. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."
Once partisans had come to completely biased conclusions — essentially finding ways to ignore information that could not be rationally discounted — not only did circuits that mediate negative emotions like sadness and disgust turn off, but subjects got a blast of activation in circuits involved in reward — similar to what addicts receive when they get their fix, Westen explains.
"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," says Westen. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones."
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