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    Nonpolitical Images Evoke Neural Predictors of Political Ideology

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    Author
    Ahn, Woo-Young; Kishida, Kenneth T.; Gu, Xiaosi; Lohrenz, Terry; Harvey, Ann; More... Alford, John R.; Smith, Kevin B.; Yaffe, Gideon; Hibbing, John R.; Dayan, Peter; Montague, P. Read Less...
    Date
    2014
    Abstract
    Political ideologies summarize dimensions of life that define how a person organizes their public and privateᅠbehavior, including their attitudes associated with sex, family, education, and personal autonomy [1ᅠandᅠ2]. Despite the abstract nature of such sensibilities, fundamental features of political ideology have been found toᅠbe deeply connected to basic biological mechanisms [3, 4, 5, 6ᅠandᅠ7] that may serve to defend against environmental challenges like contamination and physical threat [8, 9, 10, 11ᅠandᅠ12]. These results invite the provocative claim that neural responses to nonpolitical stimuli (like contaminated foodᅠor physical threats) should be highly predictive ofᅠabstract political opinions (like attitudes toward gun control and abortion) [13]. We applied a machine-learningᅠmethod 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メ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.
    Citation
    Ahn, Woo-Young, Kishida, Kenneth T., Gu, Xiaosi, et al.. "Nonpolitical Images Evoke Neural Predictors of Political Ideology." Current Biology, 24, no. 22 (2014) Elsevier: 2693-2699. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.09.050.
    Published Version
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.09.050
    Type
    Journal article
    Publisher
    Elsevier
    Citable link to this page
    https://hdl.handle.net/1911/78913
    Rights
    This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
    Link to License
    https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
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    • Faculty Publications [4990]
    • Political Science Publications [51]

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    Home | FAQ | Contact Us | Privacy Notice | Accessibility Statement
    Managed by the Digital Scholarship Services at Fondren Library, Rice University
    Physical Address: 6100 Main Street, Houston, Texas 77005
    Mailing Address: MS-44, P.O.BOX 1892, Houston, Texas 77251-1892
    Site Map