A recent Op-Ed in the New York Times examined brain scans of individuals who were considering various political questions and candidates.
The piece was written by Marco Iacoboni, Joshua Freedman and Jonas Kaplan of the University of California, Los Angeles, Semel Institute for Neuroscience; Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania; and Tom Freedman, Bill Knapp and Kathryn Fitzgerald of FKF Applied Research.
From the article:
"IN anticipation of the 2008 presidential election, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to watch the brains of a group of swing voters as they responded to the leading presidential candidates. Our results reveal some voter impressions on which this election may well turn.
Our 20 subjects — registered voters who stated that they were open to choosing a candidate from either party next November — included 10 men and 10 women. In late summer, we asked them to answer a list of questions about their political preferences, then observed their brain activity for nearly an hour in the scanner at the Ahmanson Lovelace Brain Mapping Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. Afterward, each subject filled out a second questionnaire.
While in the scanner, the subjects viewed political pictures through a pair of special goggles; first a series of still photos of each candidate was presented in random order, then video excerpts from speeches. Then we showed them the set of still photos again. On the before and after questionnaires, subjects were asked to rate the candidates on the kind of 0-10 thermometer scale frequently used in polling, ranging from “very unfavorable” to “very favorable.”"
Some interesting conclusions:
"Voters sense both peril and promise in party brands. When we showed subjects the words “Democrat,” “Republican” and “independent,” they exhibited high levels of activity in the part of the brain called the amygdala, indicating anxiety. The two areas in the brain associated with anxiety and disgust — the amygdala and the insula — were especially active when men viewed “Republican.” But all three labels also elicited some activity in the brain area associated with reward, the ventral striatum, as well as other regions related to desire and feeling connected. There was only one exception: men showed little response, positive or negative, when viewing “independent.”..."
"The gender gap may be closing. In recent presidential elections, Democrats have done better with female voters, while Republicans have appealed more to men. So far this time, male swing voters seem to be looking more closely at the Democrats. After viewing all the candidate videos, our male subjects, when viewing still photos of the Democrats, showed significantly higher activity in the medial orbital prefrontal cortex, an area that is activated by rewarding stimuli, than they did while looking at pictures of the Republicans..."
"Barack Obama and John McCain have work to do. The scans taken while subjects viewed the first set of photos and the videos of Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama indicated a notable lack of any powerful reactions, positive or negative. The male subjects showed some interest in Mr. McCain while looking at still photos, but their engagement fell off after they watched him on videotape. Women remained unengaged throughout the session.
Mr. Obama was rated relatively high on the pre-scan questionnaire, yet both men and women exhibited less brain activity while viewing the pre-video set of still pictures of Mr. Obama than they did while looking at any of the other candidates. Among the male subjects, the video of Mr. Obama provoked increased activity in some regions of the brain associated with positive feeling, but in women it elicited little change.
Our findings suggest that Mr. Obama has yet to create an impression on some swing voters. While his speech resonated with the men in our study, it failed to engage the women. Since we did our scans, Mr. Obama has altered his tone somewhat, and it will be interesting to see if that makes a difference."
Wow, this blows my mind (pardon the pun.) When will we be able to see indications of activity inside the minds of our conversation partners or spouses during an argument? When will we understand the pleasure behind hearing a joke, or eating an apple, or getting a foot massage? This technology is unraveling the secrets behind the way we experience the world. I can't think of anything more revolutionary in learning why we act the way we act.