You, Your Brain, Politics, and Decision-Making
Last September I wrote a blog about your brain and politics. Little did I ever expect the political process of selecting presidential nominees to play out like it has. First, let’s review the difference between Republican/conservative and Democrats/liberals brains.
Various studies have shown that liberals tend to have a larger and more active Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC). This part of the brain is useful in detecting and judging conflict and error. It is involved in emotional regulation and cognitive control (executive function) by controlling the level of emotional arousal, or response to an emotional event, allowing cognitive processes to work most effectively. According to research (Kanai study), liberals would be more likely to engage in more flexible thinking, working through alternate possibilities before committing to a choice.
Conservatives have been found to have larger amygdalae. The amygdala is part of the limbic system. This area of the brain is associated with emotions – emotional learning and memory and memory consolidation. People with a larger or more active amygdala have stronger emotional reaction to objects and events and process information through the emotional pathway of the amygdala. The Kanai study revealed that conservatives, when faced with an ambiguous situation, would process the information with a stronger emotional response. This would make them less likely to lean towards change and more apt to prefer stability. Stability means more predictability, which means more expected outcomes, and less of a trigger for anxiety.
Now what does all of this have to do with political affiliations? Republicans typically find the emotional aspects of a position more notable, while a Democrat relies more heavily on logical analysis. The core value of this argument: conservatives champion stability and liberals are more comfortable with change.
Now that we know how the brain works for liberals and for conservatives, how do we actually choose between political candidates? There seems to be another part of the brain that is involved in decision-making. The Lateral Orbitofrontal Cortex region of the brain must be fully engaged and properly functioning to enable us to make decisions based on all the pieces of information we have available to us. Functional MRI imaging studies reveal how the LOFC is involved in the decision-making process. The LOFC helps us evaluate the incoming stimuli as they hit our senses and figures out possible reward outcomes by acting upon the stimuli. The encoding processes taking place in the brain in response to these stimuli, guides us to eventually make a decision by helping us assess the value of different courses of action. We evaluate the potential risks and rewards of an action plan, which helps choose a specific course of action.
Making a knowledgeable decision depends on our ability to weigh the pros and the cons of all incoming information and put the pieces together to get the big picture. Healthy voters make their decisions based on perceived competence and attractiveness. Research has shown that in the absence of details people choose a political leader based on a complex set of factors that go beyond the attractiveness factor of the electoral candidates. The perceived characteristics of candidates that people acknowledge the most are openness, transparency, emotional stability, and likeability. First impressions mean a lot. Remember also that we take information in through our own perceptions. Meaning – if you identify with being conservative or liberal – the information you take in will meet the criteria of each group. That is what you understand and feel comfortable with.
If we are making our decisions about candidates based openness, transparency, emotional stability and likeability, how are we getting that information? In most cases we do not have direct interaction with a candidate to start forming our opinion. We see candidates in many different scenarios – town-halls, debates, rallies, or fundraising events. For most of us, we see these events through the eyes of the media. So are we listening to the candidates themselves, or listening to the media’s slant on the candidates’ ideas? How do we make a decision if we have to take a look at Politico’s fact checks to see if they were lying or at the very least – extremely stretching the truth. This political wrangling makes it very difficult to make an informed decision.
Harmony Institute is a non-profit organization looking at the impact of social media on social issues. Their research results paint a picture of what voters comprehend on a neural level. They have found that there are stretches of time when most of the voting population listen carefully to what the candidates are saying. “Other times, it’s as if the candidates were speaking another language: most of the voting viewership is either not listening or not comprehending their speeches.” (Huffington Post, 2016) These findings are a result of measuring the neural signal obtained by EEG in these experiments.
One other matter to consider: no one hears a candidate in a vacuum. There is a huge amount of commentary coming from lots of different sources – official and trivial – that shape the entire evidence-decision cycle. Harmony Institute is in the process of studying if commentary actually has an effect on voter decisions. Their goal is to determine if voters make their choice based on what the candidates say or whether choices are steered by commentary. They are trying to measure when the voting population responded on a neural level to what a candidate said. The choices we make will be a function of the media evidence that has been accumulated. When the decision occurs in the voting booth, it will happen as a neural function first and then a behavioral event when you actually vote for your candidate. Harmony is just starting to measure how that happens. There is probably no better year than this presidential election year to learn how our brains come to the decision for whom to vote.
Admin. (April 28, 2015). The neuroscience of politics. Retrieved April 19, 2016 from http://brainworldmagazine.com/the-neuroscience-of-politics/
Mooney, C. (September 7, 2011). Your brain on politics: the cognitive neuroscience of liberals and conservatives. Retrieved April 19, 2016 from http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/09/07/your-brain-on-politics-the-cognitve-neuroscience-of-liberals-and-conservatives/#.VxYxmMdOhFl
Sherwin,J. (March 21, 2016). The neuroscience of decision-making in 2016. Retrieved April 5, 2016 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-sherwin/theneuroscience-of-decis_b_9515302.html