The Ideological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking

“Your brain comes to mirror your politics and prejudices in... astonishing ways,” according to this bracing debut report. Neuroscientist Zmigrod argues that “mental rigidity” is a key marker of susceptibility to extreme worldviews. She recounts conducting an experiment that asked participants to match cards, but changed the rules for what counted as a match partway through the task, finding that subjects who struggled to adapt to the new rules were less willing to shift political views in light of contrary evidence. Contending that “there are parallels between how individuals form a perceptual judgment and how they make ideological judgments,” Zmigrod describes administering a study that compared survey responses with the results of a speed test that asked participants to hit designated computer keys in response to visual cues, discovering that subjects who sacrificed speed for accuracy tended to be more conservative politically. She also notes that conservatives tend to have larger amygdalae (the part of the brain “that governs the processing of emotions, especially negatively tinged emotions such as fear”) than liberals. Because it remains unclear whether cognitive quirks drive people to dogmatism or whether dogmatism shapes how people process the world, the full implications of Zmigrod’s provocative findings are up in the air. Nonetheless, they raise surprising questions about the nature of radicalism. This is sure to spark discussion. (Mar.)