Psyched - washingtonpost.com

Psyched - washingtonpost.com:

"Drew Westen, the psychologist and author of The Political Brain, supplied an important study in partisanship when he (with colleagues Stephan Hamann and Clint Kilts) examined the neural patterns of hardcore supporters of George W. Bush and John F. Kerry in the waning months of the 2004 presidential contest. The idea was to give 15 test subjects in each camp a series of openly contradictory statements from each candidate. Sure enough, each partisan overlooked the contradictions of his or her candidate while protesting indignantly the follies and howlers of the other guy. That by itself was not surprising, but Westen and his associates dug further to find that committed supporters were essentially doping their own neural circuits: '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.'"

Comment: Its hard enough to think well, but this study suggests that the brain betrays us, rewarding our pleasure centers for making certain errors!

Of course, the political parties are using all the skills gained by decades of advertising research and experimentation to tap our emotions, and make us vote for their candidates whether or not they represent the logical choices. JAD