The Political Brain The Role Of Emotion In Deciding The Fate Of The Nation

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Teresa Heinz-Kerry [Kerry's wife]: "John is the face of someone who's hopeful [photo of the two, possibly as newlyweds, with Kerry smiling broadly], who's generous of spirit and of heart." The Kerry question..."Thank you for expressing your support for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. " what's that mean? Presumably there is a mistake and they meant the US invasion of Kuwait.

One of the most exciting insights that this collection features is about how the brain processes political uncertainty. Different research teams – led by Amy Krosch, Ingrid Haas, and Laura Cram– repeatedly found that similar brain regions (such as the anterior cingulate cortex) were implicated in how the brain responds to socio-political ambiguity in the context of race, political policy evaluation, and misinformation. This is quite remarkable because it starts to point to common neural mechanisms that may shape ideological cognition in diverse contexts. Indeed, it is fascinating to see how the concept of uncertainty was one that shaped how the researchers conceptualized group membership, polarization, and political emotions. These converging patterns and parallels would not have been as potent and visible if they were not brought into the collection, and so this is a wonderful example of converging science at work. Hibbing, J. R. (2013). Ten misconceptions concerning neurobiology and politics. Perspectives on Politics, 11(02), 475–489. van Oenen, G. (2006). A machine that would go of itself: Interpassivity and its impact on political life. Theory & Event, 9(2). Yet what prompts an individual to behave ideologically? What neurocognitive processes are underway when a person evaluates socio-political information and comes to dogmatic conclusions? Why do some people fall into the traps of polarization more easily than others? These are some of the pertinent questions that a science of the political brain aims to elucidate and critically evaluate.Libet, B. (1996). Commentary on ‘free will in the light of neuropsychiatry’. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, 3(2), 95–96. Bush: "I cannot let this go by, the old-style Washington politics, if we're going to scare you in the voting booth. Under my plan, the man gets immediate help with prescription drugs. It's called Immediate Helping Hand. Instead of squabbling and finger-pointing, he gets immediate help. Let me say something." I do not know how much of this was consciously intended by Clinton and his consultants. I suspect that much of it was, although some of the emotional overtones and sequencing of images might well have simply reflected Clinton's extraordinary emotional intelligence and gut-level, implicit political horse sense. We presented partisans with six sets of statements involving clear inconsistencies by Kerry, six by Bush, and six by politically neutral male figures (e.g., Tom Hanks, William Styron). Although many of the statements and quotations were edited or fictionalized, we maximized their believability by embedding them in actual quotes or descriptions of actual events. Zmigrod L. Zmigrod L. Politics Life Sci. 2021 Nov;40(2):224-238. doi: 10.1017/pls.2021.10. Politics Life Sci. 2021. PMID: 34825811

The vision of the mind that has captured the imagination of philosophers, cognitive scientists, economists and political scientists since the 18th century - a dispassionate mind that makes decisions by weighing the evidence and reasoning to the most valid conclusions - bears no relation to how the mind and brain actually work.

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Definitely! It is a privilege to work in a field that is still in its infancy and so rapidly changing and expanding – it meant that we were continuously learning about novel approaches and cutting-edge findings throughout the editorial process. For example, we were excited to learn about the power of computational simulations in shedding light on different sub-profiles of ideological actorsand the double-edged sword of confirmation bias. We were also impressed by ideas of how cyclical self-reinforcing loops can sculpt gender ideologiesand ideological obsession and radicalizationmore generally. The papers even featured rare brain lesion studiesin the context of political ideology, and so the theme issue really is a fresh, novel, and rigorous contribution to the literature that we feel will take the discipline forward. How was your experience of being a Guest Editor on Phil Trans B?

De Vos, J. (2009). On cerebral celebrity and reality TV. Subjectivity in times of brain-scans and psychotainment. Configurations, 17(3), 259–293. Second, we expected to see activations in a part of the brain heavily involved in regulating emotions. Our hunch was that what passes for reasoning in politics is more often rationalization, motivated by efforts to reason to emotionally satisfying conclusions. Like Clinton's "Hope" ad, the first television advertisement run by the John Kerry campaign in the general election, in early May 2004, attempted to begin painting a picture - to tell a story - about John Kerry, the man and the potential president: After eight years as vice-president and months campaigning against George Bush, Gore clearly knew everything he needed to know about every "issue" in the campaign. The last thing he needed was a debate coach to quiz him on facts and figures. Yet precisely this kind of debate preparation set him up for the most memorable (and, for Gore, the most destructive) moment of the debate: Bush's line about Gore claiming to invent the calculator. Bush delivered this barbed one-liner with an affable style that stood in stark juxtaposition to Gore's nonverbal dismissiveness of Bush's arguments (and, by extension, of his intellect). The line was unfair, but the Gore team handed it to him, by attending to the facts and figures rather than to the stories Bush had been telling the public about Gore. Instead of getting voters to feel the difference between his concern for the welfare of seniors struggling to pay their medical bills and Bush's, Gore went to a level of numerical precision - premised on a model of expected utility, giving them every number they needed to make the appropriate calculations - that played right into Bush's strategy of portraying Gore as an emotionless policy wonk, "not a regular guy, like us".The critical role of uncertainty in the neural mechanisms underpinning ideological behaviour was innovatively explored by Haas et al. [ 11]. In an fMRI paradigm that presented participants with leaders' policy positions that were either congruent or incongruent with the political candidate's stated party, and which were marked by variable levels of certainty, Haas et al. [ 11] analysed the ways in which political evaluation is modulated by uncertainty and ideological congruence. Similarly to Krosch et al.s' [ 10] findings, the study implicated heightened activation of the insular cortex, as well as the anterior cingulate cortex, in response to policy positions that were certain but incongruent with the political candidate's party affiliation. By contrast, diminished activation in the bilateral insula was evident when the policy statement was certain and ideologically congruent. Consequently, uncertainty and congruency interact to shape neural and behavioural responses to leaders' policy stances, underscoring that the brain's sensitivity to uncertainty modulates its experience of the political world. He tied the theme of hope to the well-established theme of the American dream, presenting himself not as a man of privilege descending (or condescending) to help those less fortunate, but as someone no different from anyone else, who grew up on Main Street in any town - indeed, as someone who had suffered more adversity than most, having been born after his own father's death. The theme of hope was reinforced by the final image of a young child, representing our collective hope for the future, and the hope of every parent. The sequence began with Kennedy by himself, looking young, vibrant, serious and presidential - precisely the features the Clinton campaign wanted to associate with Clinton. Then came the video of a young Bill Clinton shaking hands with Kennedy, dramatically bringing the theme of the American dream to viewers' eyes - a poor boy from Arkansas without a father finding himself in the presence of his hero - while creating a sense of something uncanny, of "fate", of the chance meeting of once and future presidents that seemed too accidental not to be preordained. Then came a still photo of their hands tightly clasped, emphasising the connection between the two men. This image lasted far longer than any other in the ad and gradually expanded until the two hands panned out into an image of the two recognisable figures. 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." Westen and his colleagues will present their findings at the Annual Conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Jan. 28.

Finally, we expected subjects to “reason with their gut” rather than to analyze the merits of the case. Thus, we didn’t expect to see strong activations in parts of the brain that had “turned on” in every prior study of reasoning, even though we were presenting partisans with a reasoning task (to decide whether two statements about their candidate were consistent or inconsistent). Thiele, L. P. (2006). The heart of judgment: Practical wisdom, neuroscience, and narrative. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Clinton was probably the real survivor of the Centre Left. Blair became too distracted by the War in Iraq when diplomatic alternatives existed for a Third Way Agenda in foreign policy. Bush: "Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers. I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math."Contradiction (Slide 2): Seven days later, Kerry wrote to a different constituent, “Thank you for expressing your support for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush’s response to the crisis.” We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning,” Westen is quoted as saying in an Emory University press release. “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.” Interestingly, neural circuits engaged in rewarding selective behaviors were activated. “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,” Westen said. What matters most in politics - facts and logic, or stories and feelings? Drew Westen says it's emotion that counts - and shows how Bill Clinton and George W Bush understood this, while John Kerry and Al Gore never got it. Here we print extracts from his new book, The Political Brain - which is essential summer reading from Washington to Westminster Announcer: "For more than 30 years, John Kerry has served America [photo of Kerry talking on the phone, with glasses hanging off his face]."