On Tue, 31 Jan 2006 22:58:46 +0000, Ashley Moran <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>The thread has now turned into an huge battle of Caveman vs Farmer,  
>Baker and Toffee Stick maker and is taking up more than an hour a day  
>of my time to reply to.

This phenomenon is explained fully in the following [you can substitute Vegan
and Paleo for the two parties, or any other substitute tribes]:

Emotions, not facts, form basis of political opinion

Emory study lights up the political brain

When it comes to forming opinions and making judgments on hot political issues,
partisans of both parties don't let facts get in the way of their
decision-making, according to a new Emory University study. The research sheds
light on why staunch Democrats and Republicans can hear the same information,
but walk away with opposite conclusions. 
The investigators used functional neuroimaging (fMRI) to study a sample of
committed Democrats and Republicans during the three months prior to the U.S.
Presidential election of 2004. The Democrats and Republicans were given a
reasoning task in which they had to evaluate threatening information about their
own candidate. During the task, the subjects underwent fMRI to see what parts of
their brain were active. What the researchers found was striking. 

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally
engaged during reasoning," says Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at
Emory who led the study. "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." Westen and
his colleagues will present their findings at the Annual Conference of the
Society for Personality and Social Psychology Jan. 28. 

Once partisans had come to completely biased conclusions -- essentially finding
ways to ignore information that could not be rationally discounted -- not only
did circuits that mediate negative emotions like sadness and disgust turn off,
but subjects got a blast of activation in circuits involved in reward -- similar
to what addicts receive when they get their fix, Westen explains. 

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

During the study, the partisans were given 18 sets of stimuli, six each
regarding President George W. Bush, his challenger, Senator John Kerry, and
politically neutral male control figures such as actor Tom Hanks. For each set
of stimuli, partisans first read a statement from the target (Bush or Kerry).
The first statement was followed by a second statement that documented a clear
contradiction between the target's words and deeds, generally suggesting that
the candidate was dishonest or pandering. 

Next, partisans were asked to consider the discrepancy, and then to rate the
extent to which the person's words and deeds were contradictory. Finally, they
were presented with an exculpatory statement that might explain away the
apparent contradiction, and asked to reconsider and again rate the extent to
which the target's words and deeds were contradictory. 

Behavioral data showed a pattern of emotionally biased reasoning: partisans
denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate that they had no
difficulty detecting in the opposing candidate. Importantly, in both their
behavioral and neural responses, Republicans and Democrats did not differ in the
way they responded to contradictions for the neutral control targets, such as
Hanks, but Democrats responded to Kerry as Republicans responded to Bush. 

While reasoning about apparent contradictions for their own candidate, partisans
showed activations throughout the orbital frontal cortex, indicating emotional
processing and presumably emotion regulation strategies. There also were
activations in areas of the brain associated with the experience of unpleasant
emotions, the processing of emotion and conflict, and judgments of forgiveness
and moral accountability. 

Notably absent were any increases in activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal
cortex, the part of the brain most associated with reasoning (as well as
conscious efforts to suppress emotion). The finding suggests that the
emotion-driven processes that lead to biased judgments likely occur outside of
awareness, and are distinct from normal reasoning processes when emotion is not
so heavily engaged, says Westen. 

The investigators hypothesize that emotionally biased reasoning leads to the
"stamping in" or reinforcement of a defensive belief, associating the
participant's "revisionist" account of the data with positive emotion or relief
and elimination of distress. "The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified,
and the person can learn very little from new data," Westen says. 

The study has potentially wide implications, from politics to business, and
demonstrates that emotional bias can play a strong role in decision-making,
Westen says. "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 says. 

Coauthors of the study include Pavel Blagov and Stephan Hamann of the Emory
Department of Psychology, and Keith Harenski and Clint Kilts of the Emory
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. 

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-01/euhs-esl012406.php