Excerpts from The
Political
Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding
the Fate of the Nation
by Drew Westen.
The central thesis of the book is that the vision of mind that has captured the imagination of philosophers, cognitive scientists, economists, and political scientists since the eighteenth 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. When campaign strategists start from this vision of mind, their candidates typically lose.
The questions we ask invariably reflect our own background. I am a scientist who studies emotion and personality; the lead investigator in a team of neuroscientists who have been studying how the brain processes political and legal information; and a periodic contributor to public discourse on psychology and politics in print, television, and radio. For the last two decades, I have been advancing a view of the mind that differs substantially from the more dispassionate visions of the mind held by most cognitive psychologists, political scientists, and economists (which suggest that although we may cut a few cognitive corners here and there, we are largely rational actors, who make important decisions by weighing the evidence and calculating costs and benefits).
I am also a practicing clinician, who has trained psychologists and psychiatrists for more than twenty years in how to understand the nuances of meaning in what people say, do, and feel. In working with patients, if you miss those nuances—if you misread what they may be trying to communicate, if you misjudge their character, if you don’t notice when their emotions, gestures or tone of voice don’t fit what they’re saying, if you don’t catch the fleeting sadness or anger that lingers on their face for only a few milliseconds as they mention some one or something you might otherwise not know was important—you lose your patients. Or worse still, you don’t.
In politics, if you misread these things, you lose elections.
The Partisan Brain
In the final, heated months of the 2004 presidential election, my colleagues Stephan Harnann, Clint Kilts, and I put together a research team to study what happens in the brain as political partisans—who constitute about 80 percent of the electorate—wrestle with new political information. We studied the brains of fifteen committed Democrats and fifteen confirmed Republicans. (We would have studied voters without commitments to one party or candidate as well, but by the fall of 2004, finding people with intact brains who were not already leaning one way or the other would have been a daunting task.) (Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 2006: 18: 1947-1958).
We scanned their brains for activity as they read a series of slides. Our goal was to present them with reasoning tasks that would lead a dispassionate observer to an obvious logical conclusion, but would he in direct conflict with the conclusion a partisan Democrat or Republican would want to reach about his party’s candidate. In other words, our goal was to create a head-to-head conflict between the constraints on belief imposed by reason and evidence (data showing that the candidate had done something inconsistent, pandering, dishonest, slimy, or simply bad) and the constraints imposed by emotion (strong feelings to ward the parties and the candidates). What we hoped to learn was how, in real time, the brain negotiates conflicts between data and desire.
Although we were in relatively uncharted territory, we cane in with some strong hunches, which scientists like to dignify with the label hypotheses. Guiding all these hypotheses was our expectation that when data clashed with desire, the political brain would somehow reason” its way to the desired conclusions.
We had four hypotheses.
First, we expected that threatening information—even if partisans (didn’t acknowledge it as threatening—would activate neural circuits shown in prior studies to he associated with negative emotional states.
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.
Third, we expected to see a brain in conflict-—--conflict between what a reasonable person could believe and what a partisan would want to believe. Thus, we predicted activations in a region known to be involved in monitoring and resolving conflicts.
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).
We presented with six sets of statements involving clear inconsistencies by Kerry, six by Rush, and six by politically neutral male figures (e.g., Torn 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.
As partisans lay in
the scanner,
they viewed a series of slides. The first slide in each set presented
an
initial statement, typically a quote from the candidate. The second
slide
provided a contradictory statement, also frequently taken from the
candidate,
which suggested a clear inconsistency that would he threatening to a
partisan.
Here is one of the contradictions we used to put the squeeze on the
brains of parti san supporters of John
Kerry:
Initial statement (Slide I)
During the
first Gulf War, John Kerry wrote to a constituent: “Thank
you for contacting me to express your opposition ... I share your
concerns. I
voted in favor of a resolution that would have insisted that economic
sanctions
be given more time to work.”
Contradiction (Slide 2)
Seven days
later, Kerrv wrote to a different
constituent, “Thank you for expressing your support for the Iraqi
invasion of
Without some kind of mitigating information, it would be difficult to argue that these two statements are not mutually contradictory (although, as we’ll see, the human brain is a remarkable organ).
After partisans read the first two slides, which presented them with a clear contradiction, the third slide simply gave them some time to stew on it, asking them to consider whether the two statements were inconsistent. The fourth slide then asked them to rate the extent to which they agreed that the candidate’s words and deeds were contradictory. from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree).
Bush supporters faced similar dilemmas, such as the following:
Initial statement (Slide 1):
Having
been here and seeing the care that these troops get is
comforting for me and Laura. We are, should, and must provide the best
care for
anybody who is willing to put their life in harm’s way for our
country—President Bush, 2003, visiting a Veterans Administration
Hospital.
Contradiction (Slide 2):
Mr. Bush’s
visit came on the same day that the Administration announced
its immediate cutoff of VA hospital access to approximately 164,000
veterans.
For the politically neutral figures, the inconsistency was also real, but it was not threatening to partisans of one candidate or the other. Thus, it provided a useful comparison.
Our committed Democrats and Republicans were scanned in the run-up to one of the most polarized presidential races in recent history. So how did they respond?
They didn’t disappoint us. They had no trouble seeing the contradictions for the opposition candidate, rating his inconsistencies close to a 4 on the four-point rating scale. For their own candidate, however, ratings averaged closer to 2, indicating minimal contradiction. Democrats responded to Kerry as Republicans responded to Bush. And as predicted, Democrats and Republicans showed no differences in their response to contradictions for the politically neutral figures.
Science is an untidy business, and you don’t expect all your hypotheses to pan out. But in this case, we went four for four. The results showed that when partisans face threatening information, not only are they likely to “reason” to emotionally biased conclusions, but we can trace their neural footprints as they do it.
When confronted with potentially troubling political information, a network of neurons becomes active that produces distress. Whether this distress is conscious, unconscious, or some combination of the two we don’t know.
The brain registers the conflict between data and desire and begins to search for ways to turn off the spigot of unpleasant emotion. We know that the brain largely succeeded in this effort, as partisans mostly denied that they had perceived any conflict between their candidate’s words and deeds.
Not only did the brain manage to shut down distress through faulty reasoning. but it did so quickly—as best we could tell, usually before subjects even made it to the third slide. The neural circuits charged with regulation of emotional states seemed to recruit beliefs that eliminated the distress and conflict partisans had experienced when they confronted unpleasant realities. And this all seemed to hap pen with little involvement of the neural circuits normally involved in rcasoning.
But the political brain also did something we didn’t predict. Once partisans had found a way to reason to false conclusions, not only did neural circuits involved in negative emotions turn off, but circuits involved in positive emotions turned on. The partisan brain didn’t seem satisfied in just feeling better. It worked overtime to feel good. activating reward circuits that give partisans a jolt of positive reinforcement for their biased reasoning. These reward circuits overlap substantially with those activated when drug addicts get their “fix,” giving new meaning to the term political junkie:
So what are the implications of this study?
One is pragmatic. If you’re running a campaign, you shouldn’t worry about offending the 30 percent of the population whose brains can’t process information from your side of the aisle unless their lives depend on it (e.g ., after an attack on the U.S. mainland).
The Brain as a Network of Associations
Relevance to Two Political Advertisements
Although brain scanning studies sometimes create the impression that thoughts or feelings come and go when one part of the brain “turns on” or another “turns off, the reality is that our brains are vast networks of neurons (nerve cells) that work together to generate our experience of the world. Of particular importance are networks of associations, bundles of thoughts, feelings, images, and ideas that have be come connected over time.
If you start with networks, you think very differently about politics. Just how important networks are in understanding why candidates win and lose can be seen by contrasting two political advertisements, the first from Bill Clinton’s campaign for the presidency in 1992, and the second from John Kerry’s in 2004. Both men were running against an increasingly unpopular incumbent named Bush. Both ads were, for each man, his chance to introduce himself to the general electorate following the Democratic primary campaign and to tell the story he wanted to tell about himself to the American people. And both were a microcosm of the entire campaign.
The two ads seem very similar in their “surface structure.” But looks can he deceiving. A clinical “dissection” of these ads makes clear that they couldn’t have been more different in the networks they activated and the emotions they elicited.
If you dissect this ad, you can readily see why it was one of the most effective television commercials in the history of American politics. Bill Clinton never shied away from policy debates, hut this ad was not about policy. Its sole purpose was to begin creating a set of positive associations to him and narrative about the Man from Hope—framed. from start in terms of hope and the American dream.
In his first sentence,
The “story line” of
the
narrative might he summarized in three simple sentences: “Through hard
work, caring,
and determination, I know what it’s like to live the American dream. In
my home
state, I’ve done everything possible to help others realize that dream.
And as
your president, I’ll do everything I can to help people all over this
country realize
their dreams like I’ve done in
The association to
President
Kennedy was instrumental to the emotional appeal of the ad. Kennedy was
an
American icon, whose brief tenure in the White House is widely
remembered as a
time in which
………….
Like
JOHN KERRY [patriotic
music,
with prominent brass I: I was born in
JIM RASSMAN: When he pulled me out of the river, he risked his life to save mine.
ANNOUNCER: For more
than thirty
years, John Kerry has served
VANESSA KERRY: If you look at my father’s time in service to this country, whether it’s as a veteran [photo of war service], prosecutor [photo of Kerr pointing toward a window in setting that looks like a courtroom, which zooms quickly in to Kerry] , or senator, he has shown an ability to fight for things that matter.
TERESA HEINZ-KERRY: 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.
JOHN KERRY: We’re a country of optimists. We’re the can-do people. And we just need to believe in ourselves again [video of Kerrv speaking again, followed by video of profile of Kerry waving in some political event!.
ANNOUNCER: A lifetime of service and strength. John Kerry for President.
-----------
On the surface, the
differences
between this ad and
The ad began with moving, patriotic music that played throughout, with an emphasis on muted brass tones, congruent with the military theme, and conveying both strength and majesty—precisely the tone he needed to convey. The most moving moments of the ad came is Kerry’s fellow soldiers told, with genuine emotion in their voices, how he had saved their lives.
But that is where the similarity with the Clinton ad ends.
After Kerry’s opening paragraph, in which he told the American people in his own words who he was and what he wanted them to know about him, the rest of the ad didn’t matter. Kerry had already spent his first millions of campaign dollars telling the story George W Bush wanted to tell about him, beginning to weave precisely the web of emotional associations in which the Bush campaign hoped to ensnare him: that he was not only privileged (a word Kerry, who was married to an heiress, introduced himself) but a Northeastern liberal intellectual.
The fact that he was
from
Massachusetts was well-known – the Republicans were already emphasizing
that he
was “Ted Kennedy’ senator”—and the phrase “Massachusetts liberal” had
become so
successfully branded by the Republicans by 1988 in the Bush-Dukakis
campaign
that either word could readily evoke the other. When Kerry added the
reference
to Yale, he fully activated the primary network that the conservative
movement
has worked for so many years to stamp into the American psyche to
galvanize
disdain and resentment toward Democrats: the liberal elite.
Put together
That came later.