A new study has used brainscans (specifically, fMRIs) to demonstrate that partisan Democrats and Republicans don’t use the areas of their brains associated with reasoning when faced with criticism of their candidate.
Next, partisans were asked to consider the discrepancy, and then to rate the extent to which the person’s words and deeds were contradictory. Finally, they were presented with an exculpatory statement that might explain away the apparent contradiction, and asked to reconsider and again rate the extent to which the target’s words and deeds were contradictory.
Behavioral data showed a pattern of emotionally biased reasoning: partisans denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate that they had no difficulty detecting in the opposing candidate. Importantly, in both their behavioral and neural responses, Republicans and Democrats did not differ in the way they responded to contradictions for the neutral control targets, such as Hanks, but Democrats responded to Kerry as Republicans responded to Bush.
While reasoning about apparent contradictions for their own candidate, partisans showed activations throughout the orbital frontal cortex, indicating emotional processing and presumably emotion regulation strategies. There also were activations in areas of the brain associated with the experience of unpleasant emotions, the processing of emotion and conflict, and judgments of forgiveness and moral accountability.
Notably absent were any increases in activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most associated with reasoning (as well as conscious efforts to suppress emotion).
Is anyone surprised?
I think there could be interesting follow-up studies done. In particular, fMRIs could be used to see if there are any educational backgrounds which make it more likely that students will using their dorsolateral prefrontal cortexes when they think about politics. For instance, does legal training help? Philosophical training? Debate?
Does listening to overtly partisan news sources (AirAmerica or Rush, say) make it more or less likely that subjects will use reasoning? How about mainstream news? Etc.
Incidently, the lead author of this study also writes novelty Christmas songs. Just goes to show, even someone who studies thinking for a living can slip up…
Hat tip: Cathy Young.
UPDATE: It’s worth noting, I think, that this study was only of male partisans. A follow-up study including women would need to be done to know if these results are applicable to female partisans. I suspect they are, however; I think partisanship makes everyone stupid.
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You do realize, Amp, that half your readers are now saying “I do so use reasoning!” and the other half are over at that website listening to “Oy, To Be A Goy On Christmas”.
I wonder if the very male-donimated nature of the “candidates” effects the results. It would be interesting to do one with a mix of genders.
The major flaw with the study is that people who think are neither Republicans or Democrats. They’ve all given up entirely or are registered third party. Cuz, yeah, Kerry sucked almost as bad as Bush.
this result isn’t that surprising — that is, while most of us like to think that we rationally weigh news and information, in fact there is plenty of psychology research indicating that people in general have a tendency to believe new information that fits with their pre-existing world view and to discount information that challenges their beliefs or outlooks. of course that would apply in the political realm as well.
I suppose that this could mean that those who are really sufficiently disinterested that they have no leanings are in the best position to evaluate candidate platforms and all the rest. but it takes a lot to maintain that level of detachment, so I suspect that those people aren’t in a position to reason out the consequences as well as those who’ve been paying closer attention…
a friend of mine pointed me to this article and said that a political science class that he was in in the 60s did an exercise to demonstrate to the students exactly this sort of bias in themselves, which was nontrivially disconcerting especially for those (like Marxists) who flatter themselves that their world views are based on constant challenging of their own thesis…
Are there any good resources for people looking for the various ways in which people’s thinking is biased? Something you can show your friends that don’t believe that they do things like selection bias or confirmation bias or a almost-subconscious ignoring of facts that don’t fit their mental framework? (Is that selection bias? I don’t know.) A place that listed the main types of human failings and examples of them, in a way that might convince you you have them if you’re not convinced? That would be like way awesome.
Most of the reason it would be so awesome, I think, is that it could go a long way to convince people that are equally skeptical of science and pseudo-science (whether they believe both or neither) or more skeptical of science than pseudo-science, that science really is more trustworthy, because it addresses those particular biases in a systematic way. It would be a good starting point for a lot of people who you don’t really have those critical skills already.
Les wrote:
:D
I would argue that the constant obsession with keeping us all safely confined in Blue/Red purgatory –with the attendent tarring-and-feathering of anyone who won’t play Red/Blue games– is in and of itself a form of extreme partisanship.
So… can I get aversion conditioning against partisan thought? The taste of Brussels sprouts when I don’t use my dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the taste of good lemonade when I do?
I’m pretty astounded by Amp’s update. A study of female partisans would have been reported by the media as about women, not about partisans. Even if there was some legitimate methodological reason for using only male subjects (which there probably wasn’t), the reporting would be atrocious.
I’m pretty sure the reason is that all brain imaging studies are done only with one sex, because it makes it much easier to compare the different scans. There are substantial differences between male and female activation patterns, I understand.
Most of the left brain/right brain stuff is more true of male brains than of female. Women use their brains in a much more diffuse fashion – women can recover from brain injuries men can’t, because with a man, if the speech section gets clobbered, it’s all over. Women use more than one part of the brain for speech, so often the other parts involved can learn to take over the aspect that was lost.
So my guess is that it’d be a challenge to do this study with women’s brains, because they aren’t so clearly or easily mapped.
Amp asked:
I would hope that a good grounding in logic, statistics, and the scientific method would help. But probably those who had that background would just apply it against those they disproved of.
My guess is that the only way to defeat the bias is to not allow yourself to become emotionally invested in either side of the position in any argument. If you really don’t care one way or another which side, if either, is true, then you probably won’t have to worry about being biased when arguing about it.
So then you have the problem of figuring how to perceive eliminate your emotional attachments to the different positions.
I also briefly mentioned this report on my own blog, Posthegemony. I remain bewildered that “non-partisanship” is fetishized so. Also that the cult of the rational actor is so embedded (irrationally so, one might say) in public consciousness.
I don’t think emotions or affect are equivalent to stupidity. Moreover, on a feminist site, I’d be a little more cautious about repeating that old canard long invoked to silence women’s voices above all.
Anyhow, apart from that, I nice blog… And nice pictures in the sidebar!
I found sort of what I was looking for–not quite, but better than I was expecting in other ways–on Wikipedia, on a paging listing many different cognitive biases. A few days good reading, plus a reference to the book “Judgement under Uncertainty”, which is pretty nice.
Jon, the point of the study isn’t that partisians are acting emotionally, it’s that they’re acting irrationally. When people are blind to their own politicians’ weaknesses, democracy suffers. The electorate doesn’t accurately assess the performance of its representatives, and thus they can get away with bad stuff by manipulating the groupthink of their constituency. Thus, bad. I don’t think it has anything to do with stereotypes about females.
Cult of the rational actor? Fetishization? How does this relate to anything? What is so bad about idealizing rationality in the political sphere?
Emotions and rationality are certainly not incompatible in an absolute sense. But emotions certainly do tend to exacerbate our inbuilt cognitive biases.
pdf23ds, the point of the study is clearly that so-called partisans are acting irrationally because they’re acting emotionally: they are “emotionally biased” and they are not “suppress[ing] emotion.” And you seem to agree, by saying that “emotions certainly do tend to exacerbate our inbuilt cognitive biases.”
I have no idea, incidentally, as to what’s meant by “inbuilt cognitive biases.” I find that, too, to be a strange conception.
Meanwhile, what weakness has to do with irrationality, I don’t know. (Some of the most rational regimes have been among the scariest.) But yes, that’s the same logic, as I pointed out, that has traditionally been invoked for the purposes of patriarchy (also colonial domination, of course). I’m not sure why you don’t see the connection. That’s your “bias,” I suppose.
And what I’m calling “cult of the rational actor” is what you’re calling “idealizing rationality.” That’s how it relates. But we can go with your terminology if you want: why idealize?
Jon, I suspect (especially after reading some of your blog) that our terminology is very different in many respects, and it may not be possible for us to communicate effectively. But I’m gonna try.
“so-called partisans are acting irrationally because they’re acting emotionally”
As the participants are called partisians in the study itself, I see no reason to modify the use of the word with “so-called”.
I don’t think the bias they’re exhibiting is related to any conscious feeling of emotion on their part, and I doubt that the unconscious activation of emotional centers is what you really have in mind when you speak of the value of emotion. Is it?
“I have no idea, incidentally, as to what’s meant by “inbuilt cognitive biases.” I find that, too, to be a strange conception.”
Inbuilt cognitive biases. A better word would be innate, or natural. Biases shared by virtually all humans. Here’s an article if you don’t want to click around. What I mean is that humans, when making judgements, are particularly prone to certain types of error, such that we can predict in what situations they’ll make these errors and what the errors will be.
Irrationality causes weakness inasmuch as (but no further than) being wrong about something causes weakness. In my particular example, the irrationality of the electorate causes a weakness in the functioning of democracy. However, there are a lot of situations where the truth or falsity of some person’s belief isn’t particularly relevant to their life, but rather, the psychological effects of that belief. Those effects can actually be beneficial to the individual, because of the power of positive thinking and such. For instance, one human bias is self-overestimation. People tend to think that they’re much better at things than they really are. From Wikipedia:
This effect has been found to be much ameliorated in depressive people. Their self-evaluations tend to be much more accurate. On the other hand, confidence is strongly related to performance in many areas. Having an inflated sense of skill can actually make you better and happier.
So, for individual people, often very particular forms of irrationality can be adaptive. But even individually adaptive forms of irrationality are often a root cause of such social ills as fundamentalism (I would say, religion in general) and partisianship.
“But yes, that’s the same logic, as I pointed out, that has traditionally been invoked for the purposes of patriarchy (also colonial domination, of course).”
You’ve mentioned this, but haven’t demonstrated it. I’d be interested.
“But we can go with your terminology if you want: why idealize?”
Because you value truth above non-truth. The more rational you are, the more reliably your judgement leads to truth, and the more valuable it is. Because you value believing in true propositions above believing in false ones. The more rational you are, the higher preportion of your beliefs will be true beliefs, and the more valuable you’ll be as an individual.
As such, it’s an ethical ideal, just as kindness is an ethical ideal. It’s not all-encompassing or anything. Other ideals are necessary for a complete ethical system.
And further, it’s far from universally shared. It’s very strong in the scientific community, and much weaker pretty much everywhere else (as far as I know). But, as one who holds the value, I assert that a world with more rational people is a happier, stabler, more peaceful world.
pdf23ds, thanks for your long comment. Much of our terminology and many of our assumptions certainly are different. And communication is a rare beast at the best of times. But it’s worth giving it a go. And I doubt I’ll convince you; but I hope to persuade you that mine is a respectable position to hold.
I say “so-called partisans” because one of the issues I take about a) the linked report and b) the US public sphere more generally is the way in which it constructs and then demonizes the concept of “partisanship.” Indeed, my most general point is that the report aims to legitimize, though science but also through invoking a whole raft of other prejudices, precisely this stigmatizing of partisanship, and (by implication) fetishization of the non-partisan.
So, yes, the report uses the term “partisan.” But that’s precisely a term I want to contest. So a first step is to note the construction. A second step might be to note other possible terms, with very different resonances: committed, aligned, decided, resolute, affiliated… Of course, there are indeed many arenas in which these terms are used, and the term “partisan” is eschewed. But when “partisan” is invoked, it’s effectively (in context) a slur. So the reports suggestion that the Emory team’s subjects were chosen because they were “partisan” is already suspicious. Do you think they were chosen because they self-identify as partisan? Somehow I doubt it. In US political culture, this is an irregular verg: I hold to my beliefs; you are partisan; (he/she/it is a “wingnut” or whatever).
(NB however that I don’t really want to comment on the Emory team’s science. For all I know, it’s flawed; for all I know, it’s fine. It’s just too obvious how MSNBC have jumped on this study as providing a legitimation of their prior “common sense” positions, and spun it precisely that way.)
Anyhow, with this start, the report then goes on to prove what it “knew” already: that there is something wrong with the partisan; they are irrational; illogical; they let their emotions get the better of them…
This is where my second point comes in: a defense of emotion or, more precisely, of what I call affect. NB I use the term in part because I do want to emphasize the involuntary and the unconscious: affect is an emotion that is overwhelming, or that threatens to overwhelm. Affect is precisely an emotion that you cannot control. And I want to defend it.
NB, however, I would first note that behind or beneath all emotion is some affect: there is always some surrender to affect, always some sense in which we lose ourselves or give ourselves over, when we become happy, sad, angry, or whatever. In this sense, yes, when we are emotional, when we start to succumb to affect, yes we are less rational.
So indeed, my defence of emotion/affect involves a critique of (what I termed) the “cult” of the rational agent.
OK, I’m actually going to stop here. I can continue if you or anyone else find this of interest. But I have to run just now… So some parting thoughts, put in telegraphic style:
1) I don’t think politics has much to do with “truth” or “non-truth.” (Though I recognize that in certain cases those are political virtues.) I’m more interested in a politics of, say, pity or joy.
2) C’mon, of course women’s voices and those of the colonized “other” have been delegitimized for beyond irrational, over-emotional, etc. Think, in the case of women, of the whole gendered conception of “hysteria.” And, for colonialism, of the role of education in the civilizing project.
3) No, I wouldn’t say that all emotion is equally good. There are good and bad emotions, or rather progressive and reactionary mobilizations of affect.
4) But precisely such distinctions are missed by the attempt to pit reason against emotion. Moreover, that’s a losing battle: politics is not a game of reason–hey, just look at Bush to see that!
5) Finally, yes, I also agree with your stress on the ethical. Though in my conception, ethics has all to do with affect, and little to do with reason. To say otherwise, I’d suggest, is to start down a path that is really frightening: would you really say that those who have most capacity to reason also have most ethical capacity?
Anyhow, I’m sorry for cutting and running just now… Gotta go the library, return and pick up some books etc. But hopefully the above continues the dialogue for as long as is useful, without outstaying my welcome.
Just one quick follow up: I do wonder when the term “partisan” became so stigmatized. That change in meaning–from anti-fascist resistance fighter in WWII, to committed intellectual à la the Partisan Review, to now, irrational and dangerous fanatic–is no doubt an index of the shift to a cynical and post-political age.