Lateral Orbitofrontal Cortex Links Social Impressions to Political Choices

Abstract

Recent studies of political behavior suggest that voting decisions can be influenced substantially by "first-impression" social attributions based on physical appearance. Separate lines of research have implicated the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in the judgment of social traits on the one hand and economic decision-making on the other, making this region a plausible candidate for linking social attributions to voting decisions. Here, we asked whether OFC lesions in humans disrupted the ability to judge traits of political candidates or affected how these judgments influenced voting decisions. Seven patients with lateral OFC damage, 18 patients with frontal damage sparing the lateral OFC, and 53 matched healthy participants took part in a simulated election paradigm, in which they voted for real-life (but unknown) candidates based only on photographs of their faces. Consistent with previous work, attributions of "competence" and "attractiveness" based on candidate appearance predicted voting behavior in the healthy control group. Frontal damage did not affect substantially the ability to make competence or attractiveness judgments, but patients with damage to the lateral OFC differed from other groups in how they applied this information when voting. Only attractiveness ratings had any predictive power for voting choices after lateral OFC damage, whereas other frontal patients and healthy controls relied on information about both competence and attractiveness in making their choice. An intact lateral OFC may not be necessary for judgment of social traits based on physical appearance, but it seems to be crucial in applying this information in political decision-making.

A Critical Role for Human Ventromedial Frontal Lobe in Value Comparison of Complex Objects Based on Attribute Configuration

“…This is the first direct evidence that the VMF plays a critical role in decisions based on value information provided by the conjunction of individual attributes, each of which is uninformative on its own. The results complement previous work from our laboratory showing that VMF damage leads to the neglect of some value-predictive information in complex real-world objects (faces, art; Xia et al, 2015;Vaidya et al, 2018). The present observations raise the possibility that such information may be neglected because it relies more heavily on configural processing.…”

“…However, direct evidence that this region is necessary for value integration is lacking. Damage to the vmPFC and adjacent OFC [together termed "ventromedial frontal lobe" (VMF)] has been shown to change how multiattribute information (presented as text) is acquired during decision-making (Fellows, 2006), and to affect which attributes (inferred from faces) influence choice (Xia et al, 2015). Compared with healthy and other frontal-damaged individuals, people with VMF damage differed in how they weighted specific attributes when evaluating visual art (Vaidya et al, 2018).…”

A critical role for human ventromedial frontal lobe in value comparison based on multi-attribute configuration

“…This is the first direct evidence that VMF plays a critical role in decisions based on value information provided by the conjunction of individual attributes, each of which is uninformative on its own. The results complement previous work from our lab showing that VMF damage leads to the neglect of some value-predictive information in complex real-world objects (faces, art) (Xia et al, 2015;Vaidya et al, 2017). The current observations raise the possibility that such information may be 'neglected' because it relies more heavily on configural processing.…”

“…However, direct evidence that vmPFC is required for value integration is lacking. Damage to the vmPFC and adjacent orbitofrontal cortex (together termed ventromedial frontal lobe, VMF) has been shown to change how multi-attribute information is acquired during decision-making (Fellows, 2006), and to affect which attributes influence choice (Xia et al, 2015). When evaluating multi-attribute visual artworks, people with VMF damage differed in how they weighted specific attributes compared to healthy and other frontal-damaged individuals (Vaidya et al, 2017).…”

Political neuroscience: Understanding how the brain makes political decisions

“…This work has typically focused on a small number of regions of interest within the brain (e.g., amygdala, insula, anterior cingulate cortex) and examined whether those structures vary in relation to factors like political ideology. Some additional work in political neuroscience has relied on the lesion method to explore regions of the brain that are implicated in the evaluation of political candidates and voting decisions (Coronel et al, 2012;Xia, Stolle, Gidengil, & Fellows, 2015).…”