Politics on the Brain

Do political parties stimulate you? According to a group of researchers led by neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni at UCLA in a New York Times Op-Ed last Sunday, the words “Democrat,” “Republican,” and “independent” increase activity in swing voters’ amygdalas—a region of the brain associated with anxiety. The words also excited the ventral striatum—a region associated with reward. However, men showed little response—positive or negative—when shown the word “independent.” The study also extrapolated sentiments that various groups of swing voters might be feeling when shown pictures of a particular candidate.

This may seem like a novel and revelatory application of cutting-edge scientific research to real-world issues, but just because the research took place in a lab and uses expensive brain-imaging equipment, doesn’t mean that it’s sound science.

Last Wednesday, a group of seventeen cognitive neuroscientists wrote a letter to the editor pointing out that the study was not peer reviewed and that many of the findings were not as clear cut as the Op-Ed made them out to be. They note that multiple mental states can activate any given brain region. Case-in-point: positive emotions also arouse the amygdala—not just anxiety.

In order to arrive at a sound conclusion about the brain regions activated for given mental states, researchers must design experiments with carefully controlled variables, large sample sizes, and lots of repetition. That’s why the most solid brain imaging data cover attention and memory, whereas sexier topics like politics, religion, and consumer choice do not lend themselves to the pithy and reliable conclusions that make for good headlines. That being said, brain imaging has shown legitimate promise with regard to these other topics, and is certainly worth exploring.

In addition to the lack of peer-review, the researchers also did not release enough details of the experiments to demonstrate why they arrived at their conclusions. Wired Science raises questions about whether the data could have been skewed by a few subjects—after all, the study was only made up of 10 men and 10 women. They also chide the Op-Ed for making “sweeping generalizations.” Mind Hacks and Brainethics also leveled some testy criticisms.

A fair-minded critique comes from Martha Farah, Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania (full disclosure: Farah is a member of the Science Progress Advisory Board). Farah is both skeptical and optimistic about the findings. She casts aside simple criticisms such as “brain imaging can be used to show anything,” and “it doesn’t apply to real world situations like politics.” She goes with a more penetrating criticism about how different emotions can be associated with the same brain region and how the data was split up along many different lines —gender, early in the scan vs. late in the scan, favorable rating of candidates vs. unfavorable, still photos of candidates vs. videos. According to Farah, this makes it a lot easier to find interpretable patterns and construct “just so” stories. Ultimately, Farah thinks that Iacoboni et al. may have found some “useful information about voter attitudes,” but the findings need a more rigorous verification analysis.

Finally, Farah notes that the real issue is how brain imaging gets manipulated by marketing and research companies to attract customers regardless of the information conveyed. A high tech measurement like a brain scan—as opposed to a survey—appears more “scientific” or “objective.” But that isn’t necessarily so.

Tags: Media, Neuroscience

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