Conservative and liberal attitudes drive polarized neural responses to political content
Abstract
Partisan biases in processing political information contribute to rising divisions in society. How do such biases arise in the brain? We measured the neural activity of participants watching videos related to immigration policy. Despite watching the same videos, conservative and liberal participants exhibited divergent neural responses. This “neural polarization” between groups occurred in a brain area associated with the interpretation of narrative content and intensified in response to language associated with risk, emotion, and morality. Furthermore, polarized neural responses predicted attitude change in response to the videos. These findings suggest that biased processing in the brain drives divergent interpretations of political information and subsequent attitude polarization.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Oct 20, 2020
- Source ID
- 10.1073/pnas.2008530117
Entities
People
- Jamil Zaki
- Janice Chen
- Robb Willer
- Yuan Chang Leong
Organizations
- Army Research Office
- Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute
- Johns Hopkins University
- Stanford University