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Both Parties Ignore Inconvenient Facts

http://www.livescience.com/othernews...decisions.html

Democrats and Republicans Both Adept at Ignoring Facts, Study Finds
By LiveScience Staff

Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows.

And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to their point of view.

Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election. The subjects' brains were monitored while they pondered.

The results were announced today.

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "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."

Bias on both sides

The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.

Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained.

The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making.

"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," Westen said. "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."

Notably absent were any increases in activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most associated with reasoning.

The tests involved pairs of statements by the candidates, President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry, that clearly contradicted each other. The test subjects were asked to consider and rate the discrepancy. Then they were presented with another statement that might explain away the contradiction. The scenario was repeated several times for each candidate.

The brain imaging revealed a consistent pattern. Both Republicans and Democrats consistently denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate but detected contradictions in the opposing candidate.

"The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data," Westen said.

Vote for Tom Hanks

Other relatively neutral candidates were introduced into the mix, such as the actor Tom Hanks. Importantly, both the Democrats and Republicans reacted to the contradictions of these characters in the same manner.

The findings could prove useful beyond the campaign trail.

"Everyone from executives and judges to scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret 'the facts,'" Westen said.

The researchers will present the findings Saturday at the Annual Conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

This is why I am so fed up with the whole political circus. Emotional decisions, gang mentality, ignoring facts etc. all contribute to my perception that politicians are idiots. I must say that I have seen the exact same responses on this forum, at least now there is a good explanantion for it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by frogza

Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows.

I could've saved them the time and money spent on a study. All they'd have to do is moderate the politics board for a week. That'd have told them everything they needed to know. ;)

or take a short hiatus from the politics board, only to return and find that not only has nothing changed, but appears to be even worse.

Quote:

Originally Posted by frogza

http://www.livescience.com/othernews...decisions.html

Democrats and Republicans Both Adept at Ignoring Facts, Study Finds

In a related related study, scientists found that beer makes people drunk!

At first I thought it was one of those fake articles which wanders around the internet, gets reported by a stupid media, gets talked about on radio shows, and then goes 'poof'. (Recall the 'study' where they stated that blonde hair would be genetically extinct in 200 years that made it around the world a couple of years ago).

I'm still not convinced its not that kind of article since the article did not use scientific language in the manner you normally see it in journals, and used mostly blanket statements, something that doesn't happen in legitimate scientific literature, but it wouldn't be overly surprising if it was a legitimate study.

Still I can think of many different angles you would want to look at. Using Bush and Kerry would have issues since opinions were already formed, where as using two random people making the same statements, or having the same person read both statements would change the dynamic. It may well be more about changing any opinions, not just political. Of course saying 'people are stubborn' doesn't get a head line.

On the plus side, thats a pretty nice website, I'll be adding it to my favorites.

Thanks for the great article, Frogza. The neurological response to cognitive dissonance does help explain the persistance of an ideology in the face of contradictory evidence.

This research would likely find the same results for any firmly held belief systems. When I see a "hard wired" neurological response such as this study implies, I look for the evoluntionary advantage that underpins it. One guess would be that small social unit cohesion in basic beliefs would make the social unit a more stable one, increasing it's chances of survival. I wonder how well that innate behavior is serving us now?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

On the plus side, thats a pretty nice website, I'll be adding it to my favorites.

Yeah. I've been playing around in the History section for a couple of hours now. ;)

The appropriate question to ask now:

What do we do about it?

Quote:

Originally Posted by archpaladin

The appropriate question to ask now:

What do we do about it?

If it is a "hard wired" response (which is only a belief of mine), then nothing short of some 1984 thought control would change how we respond to messages concerning our basic beliefs. We, the human species, have some need to differentiate between us vs. them, whether it be innate or learned behavior.

I guess the short answer to your question is that we do nothing about it.

maybe it makes sense to wait until the actual paper gets released before folk decide that the bites that appear in this plot-summary article from "live science" are true or not---there is no real argument presented in what's so far available....

here is a report on the conference that weston (mentioned in the op) was part of..a social psychology conference on political attitudes. while this does not preclude at all the need to wait a bit to see what the studies actually say, it does provide context....

Quote:

Study Ties Political Leanings to Hidden Biases

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 30, 2006; A05

Put a group of people together at a party and observe how they behave. Differently than when they are alone? Differently than when they are with family? What if they're in a stadium instead of at a party? What if they're all men?

The field of social psychology has long been focused on how social environments affect the way people behave. But social psychologists are people, too, and as America has become increasingly politically polarized, they have grown increasingly interested in examining what drives these sharp divides: red states vs. blue states; pro-Iraq war vs. anti-Iraq war; pro-same-sex marriage vs. anti-same-sex marriage. And they have begun to study political behavior using such specialized tools as sophisticated psychological tests and brain scans.

"In my own family, for example, there are stark differences, not just of opinion but very profound differences in how we view the world," said Brenda Major, a psychologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the president of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, which had a conference last week that showcased several provocative psychological studies about the nature of political belief.

The new interest has yielded some results that will themselves provoke partisan reactions: Studies presented at the conference, for example, produced evidence that emotions and implicit assumptions often influence why people choose their political affiliations, and that partisans stubbornly discount any information that challenges their preexisting beliefs.

Emory University psychologist Drew Westen put self-identified Democratic and Republican partisans in brain scanners and asked them to evaluate negative information about various candidates. Both groups were quick to spot inconsistency and hypocrisy -- but only in candidates they opposed.

When presented with negative information about the candidates they liked, partisans of all stripes found ways to discount it, Westen said. When the unpalatable information was rejected, furthermore, the brain scans showed that volunteers gave themselves a feel-good pats -- the scans showed that "reward centers" in volunteers' brains were activated. The psychologist observed that the way these subjects dealt with unwelcome information had curious parallels with drug addiction as addicts also reward themselves for wrong-headed behavior.

Another study presented at the conference, which was in Palm Springs, Calif., explored relationships between racial bias and political affiliation by analyzing self-reported beliefs, voting patterns and the results of psychological tests that measure implicit attitudes -- subtle stereotypes people hold about various groups.

That study found that supporters of President Bush and other conservatives had stronger self-admitted and implicit biases against blacks than liberals do.

"What automatic biases reveal is that while we have the feeling we are living up to our values, that feeling may not be right," said University of Virginia psychologist Brian Nosek, who helped conduct the race analysis. "We are not aware of everything that causes our behavior, even things in our own lives."

Brian Jones, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said he disagreed with the study's conclusions but that it was difficult to offer a detailed critique, as the research had not yet been published and he could not review the methodology. He also questioned whether the researchers themselves had implicit biases -- against Republicans -- noting that Nosek and Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji had given campaign contributions to Democrats.

"There are a lot of factors that go into political affiliation, and snap determinations may be interesting for an academic study, but the real-world application seems somewhat murky," Jones said.

Nosek said that though the risk of bias among researchers was "a reasonable question," the study provided empirical results that could -- and would -- be tested by other groups: "All we did was compare questions that people could answer any way they wanted," Nosek said, as he explained why he felt personal views could not have influenced the outcome. "We had no direct contact with participants."

Nosek, Banaji and social psychologist Erik Thompson also culled self-acknowledged views about blacks from nearly 130,000 whites, who volunteered online to participate in a widely used test of racial bias that measures the speed of people's associations between black or white faces and positive or negative words. The researchers examined correlations between explicit and implicit attitudes and voting behavior in all 435 congressional districts.

The analysis found that substantial majorities of Americans, liberals and conservatives, found it more difficult to associate black faces with positive concepts than white faces -- evidence of implicit bias. But districts that registered higher levels of bias systematically produced more votes for Bush.

"Obviously, such research does not speak at all to the question of the prejudice level of the president," said Banaji, "but it does show that George W. Bush is appealing as a leader to those Americans who harbor greater anti-black prejudice."

Vincent Hutchings, a political scientist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said the results matched his own findings in a study he conducted ahead of the 2000 presidential election: Volunteers shown visual images of blacks in contexts that implied they were getting welfare benefits were far more receptive to Republican political ads decrying government waste than volunteers shown ads with the same message but without images of black people.

Jon Krosnick, a psychologist and political scientist at Stanford University, who independently assessed the studies, said it remains to be seen how significant the correlation is between racial bias and political affiliation.

For example, he said, the study could not tell whether racial bias was a better predictor of voting preference than, say, policy preferences on gun control or abortion. But while those issues would be addressed in subsequent studies -- Krosnick plans to get random groups of future voters to take the psychological tests and discuss their policy preferences -- he said the basic correlation was not in doubt.

"If anyone in Washington is skeptical about these findings, they are in denial," he said. "We have 50 years of evidence that racial prejudice predicts voting. Republicans are supported by whites with prejudice against blacks. If people say, 'This takes me aback,' they are ignoring a huge volume of research."

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...900642_pf.html

Elphaba is on to something. We experience things in terms of duality, or pairs of opposites...good and bad, right and wrong, us and them, etc. Similarly, it seems that we distinguish, and prefer, "our" group over those outside of it. In my own life, I have come to prefer or advocate my school over others, my town over others, my state over others, all without any strong justification...and the list goes on. Regardless of the origin of our beliefs, we tend to reconcile information with our beliefs, even in the face of strong contradictory evidence...witness the discourse on this forum, for example, as has been noted. Psychology has long recognized this principle. People are capable of getting past this, but not in sufficient numbers to effect a sea change. In short, we are pretty much SOL.

A few months ago the question was posed here (Tried searching but since I couldn't remember the title of the post it was hard to find) which is better? Emotions or logic at making decisions. I found it interesting that both reports here show that these tendancies people have to only pay heed to info that supports our current view is a result of emotional decision making. Once again, I see that making emotional decisions does very little to improve a situation.

The real problem is getting people to realize, myself included, when we are making a decision based on emotions or logic. Because of this hard wired tendancy, we may think/feel that we are making an assumption based on logic instead of emotion, even when that may not be the case.

So my question is, how can we as inidividuals override this tendancy and how do we get large numbers of the general public to do the same? Or do you think that things are good as they are?

Frogza, you pose a very interesting question. I would like to think that I am open minded about new events/ideas, but I wonder how I can be an honest judge of that? I do know that my core beliefs a pretty unshakeable, and it seems logical that I would view everything through a filter of those beliefs to at least some extent.

JustJess has started a new topic that I think goes to the heart of your question. He has asked us to explain the influences that have led to our political beliefs and to what degree we are able to evaluate new information. It's facinating reading.

"Both" parties? There are more than two political parties, you know.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elphaba

I'll be checking that out, thanks

Unsurprisingly, I have been following this thread with quite a bit of interest. While I may find it frustrating at times, I cannot really get angry with others for their beliefs - they can't help but believe what they do, and neither can I. But why?

Btw, Elphaba - I'm a woman. :D

It was some flawed belief system that tripped me up. Sorry, JJ. :icare:

Seretogis, suggesting that there are more than two influential parties, and therefore a multiparty system, is like arguing that a falling tree makes a sound when you aren't there to hear it. Here's a link on that subject:

http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pub...04/parties.htm

Among other things, the article points out that "Every president since 1852 has been either a Republican or a Democrat, and in the post-World War II era, the two major parties' share of the popular vote for president has averaged 94.8 percent." 5.2% of the vote spread out among multiple other parties doesn't make for a multiparty system of government.

Interestingly, there is a discussion of the inherent distrust of political parties as a reason for the two party system.