Brain study: Emotion drives thinking of political partisans
A new study from Emory University, which for the first time examined the brains of political partisans, found that it’s emotion — not reason — that drives the political thought process.
Committed partisans will reach emotionally biased decisions, hearing those things that reinforce their beliefs and rejecting information that contradicts them, the study found.
Emory researchers studied Democratic and Republican men in the three months leading up to the presidential elections of 2004. The party loyalists — 15 supporters of John Kerry and 15 for George Bush — were confronted with “threatening” information about their preferred candidate.
Kerry supporters might be told, for instance, that the Massachusetts Democrat has flip-flopped on Social Security. A Bush voter would be shown statements in which the Republican embraced former Enron chief Kenneth Lay.
Using sophisticated imaging equipment, researchers mapped the brains of the study participants as they processed the information.
The study’s lead author, Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory, said the results proved what he had always suspected: “It’s the emotions, stupid.”
As the Democrat and Republican study subjects puzzled over the information presented to them, the network of emotion circuits in the brain’s orbital frontal cortex lit up. The area associated with logical reasoning saw no increase in activity.
Circuits involved in regulating emotion and resolving conflicts were especially busy as study participants presumably sought ways to rationalize or ignore information that could cast their candidate in a negative light.
Once study participants reached a conclusion supporting their candidate they would get a blast of activation in brain circuits typically involved in reward, similar to what addicts receive when they get a fix.
Westen said participants appear to “twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope” until they get the result they want.
Participants were asked to evaluate 18 statement sets, some of them involving Bush and Kerry. The subjects were asked to read a statement by the candidate and then a second statement, which clearly contradicted the first and suggested that the candidate was being dishonest. The subjects were then asked to rate the contradiction on a scale of one to four.
Finally, they were given a statement that might explain the discrepancy and asked to again provide a grade.
Partisans denied obvious contradictions for their candidates yet they had no trouble detecting them in the opposing candidates, the study found.
Emory researchers also asked the study subjects to evaluate nonpolitical men, such as actor Tom Hanks and baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron. Democrats and Republicans responded alike to the non-politicians, which Westen said helped prove his point.
“It seems that once a person’s political attitudes have calcified, an emotional bias takes over and a person is looking for information to ‘stamp in’ or reinforce their view,” he said.
Westen said the study holds lessons for political strategists, who should be looking at emotional appeals to reach their base. It also has wider implications from business to law by demonstrating the strong role emotions can play in decision-making, he said.
A Democrat and self-described political junkie, Westen said Republicans have been far better at understanding and capitalizing on emotions. In contrast, he said, the Kerry campaign was far too cerebral.
“The Kerry campaign will one day go down as a case study in how to misunderstand emotion,” Westen said.
Westen said he hit upon the idea for the study several years ago while watching CNN’s former political talk show “Crossfire.” He found himself screaming at the people on the television who were screaming at each other.
The 30 participants in the Emory study were men between the ages of 22 and 55 who described themselves as either committed Democrats or Republicans. Westen would next like to expand the study to include women, who are known to process emotions differently from men.
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