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Nonpolitical images evoke neural predictors of political ideology.

ABSTRACT: Political ideologies summarize dimensions of life that define how a person organizes their public and private behavior, including their attitudes associated with sex, family, education, and personal autonomy. Despite the abstract nature of such sensibilities, fundamental features of political ideology have been found to be deeply connected to basic biological mechanisms that may serve to defend against environmental challenges like contamination and physical threat. These results invite the provocative claim that neural responses to nonpolitical stimuli (like contaminated food or physical threats) should be highly predictive of abstract political opinions (like attitudes toward gun control and abortion). We applied a machine-learning method to fMRI data to test the hypotheses that brain responses to emotionally evocative images predict individual scores on a standard political ideology assay. Disgusting images, especially those related to animal-reminder disgust (e.g., mutilated body), generate neural responses that are highly predictive of political orientation even though these neural predictors do not agree with participants' conscious rating of the stimuli. Images from other affective categories do not support such predictions. Remarkably, brain responses to a single disgusting stimulus were sufficient to make accurate predictions about an individual subject's political ideology. These results provide strong support for the idea that fundamental neural processing differences that emerge under the challenge of emotionally evocative stimuli may serve to structure political beliefs in ways formerly unappreciated.

SUBMITTER: Ahn WY

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4245707 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:ObjectiveThe impact of cognitive function and decline on political ideology is unknown. We studied the relationship between cognition and both political orientation and political policy choices in a population of older persons.DesignLongitudinal investigation.SettingA retirement community and its surroundings in Southern California.Participants151 members of a longitudinal investigation of aging and dementia in the oldest-old (the 90+ Study), mean age 95 years.MeasurementsParticipants self-reported their political ideology (7-point scale from extremely liberal to extremely conservative) and policy preferences for federal spending on public schooling, aid to the poor, and protecting the environment, as well as on preferences on immigration rates, death penalty, and university admission. The same political survey was mailed to participants twice: at time one and 6-months later. Cognitive function based on neurological examination and cognitive testing was classified as normal (55%), cognitive impairment/not dementia (CIND) (33%), or dementia (12%). We calculated rank correlations between ideology and policy choices, stratified by cognitive status, and agreement between Surveys 1 and 2.ResultsPolitical ideology/orientation was highly consistent over a six-month period (84% agreement) among the 122 who returned the second survey, with no significant relationship to cognitive status. Among cognitively impaired (CIND and dementia), however, there was significant loss of consistency between an individual's political orientation and their policy choices. Level of political engagement was high for participants, with more than 90% voting in the 2016 presidential election.ConclusionIn this population of older persons, political identification on the liberal-conservative spectrum was resilient despite cognitive decline, but its meaning and function were changed. For the cognitively impaired it remained a self-defining label, but no longer operated as a higher order framework for orienting specific policy preferences. There appeared to be loss of coherence between the political orientation and political policy choices of cognitively impaired individuals. Given the high level of political engagement of these individuals, these results have substantial public policy implications.

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Nonpolitical images evoke neural predictors of political ideology.

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