Politics on the brain: An fMRI investigation

Abstract

We assessed political attitudes using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) in which participants were presented faces and names of well-known Democrat and Republican politicians along with positive and negative words while undergoing functional MRI. We found a significant behavioral IAT effect for the face, but not the name, condition. The fMRI face condition results indicated that ventromedial and anterior prefrontal cortices were activated during political attitude inducement. Amygdala and fusiform gyrus were activated during perceptual processing of familiar faces. Amygdala activation also was associated with measures of strength of emotion. Frontopolar activation was positively correlated with an implicit measure of bias and valence strength (how strongly the participants felt about the politicians), while strength of affiliation with political party was negatively correlated with lateral PFC, lending support to the idea that two distinct but interacting networks-one emphasizing rapid, stereotypic, and emotional associative knowledge and the other emphasizing more deliberative and factual knowledge-cooperate in the processing of politicians. Our findings of ventromedial PFC activation suggests that when processing the associative knowledge concerned with politicians, stereotypic knowledge is activated, but in addition, the anterior prefrontal activations indicate that more elaborative, reflective knowledge about the politician is activated.

The Quadruple Process model approach to examining the neural underpinnings of prejudice

“…In other words, this study will be the first to disentangle two distinct processes that contribute to prejudiceingroup favoritism (positive associations) and outgroup negativity (negative associations). Further, application of the Quad model will also refine our understanding of the frontal lobe activations found in previous research on the IAT (e.g., Chee et al, 2000;Luo et al, 2006;Knutson et al, 2006;2007;Richeson et al, 2003) by generating independent estimates of two distinct controlled processes (D, OB) that can be related to neural activity.…”

“…Therefore, fMRI studies of IAT performance typically compare neural activity in the Incongruent condition to the Congruent condition. These studies have found neural regions associated with controlled processes to be more active in Incongruent than Congruent conditions (middle frontal gyrus: Knutson et al, 2007;ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate: Luo et al, 2006; left inferior frontal gyrus: Knutson et al, 2006;Chee et al, (2000) did not design their study to permit a direct comparison between the Incongruent and Congruent conditions). However, although the discrepancy in reaction time between the Incongruent and Congruent conditions is the basis for behaviorally measuring implicit bias, it is unlikely that neural activity associated with this comparison measures automatic components of attitudes in an fMRI environment.…”

“…Most of the hypothesized neural regions were based on activations identified in previous neural investigations using the IAT. These regions included amygdala, insula, caudate, orbital, and medial and lateral portions of the frontal lobes (Chee et al, 2000;Cunningham et al, 2004;Knutson et al, 2006;2007;Luo et al, 2006;Phelps et al, 2000;Richeson et al, 2003). These analyses were conducted using the AAL map to identify anatomical boundaries and an ROI toolbox designed for use with SPM ('MarsBar'; Brett et al, 2002) to correct for these regions.…”

“…In other words, automatic associations may not be expressed because of controlled processing. In order to address the problematic behavioral measurement of automatic aspects of attitudes, a small amount of neural research interested in the neural systems underlying prejudice has drawn on the Implicit Association Test (IAT: Greenwald et al, 1998) (Chee et al, 2000;Cunningham et al, 2004;Knutson et al, 2006;2007;Luo et al, 2006;Phelps et al, 2003;Phelps et al, 2000;Richeson et al, 2003). Although the IAT is one of the most popular behavioral measures of automatic (or implicit) attitudes, particularly for prejudice (Fazio and Olson, 2003), behavioral and modeling research suggests that IAT performance reflects both automatic and controlled processes (Conrey et al, 2005;Sherman et al, 2008).…”

An fMRI study of violations of social expectations: When people are not who we expect them to be

“…Previous fMRI studies have examined the congruency of affective associations towards social targets (Harris & Fiske, 2010;Knutson, Wood, Spampinato, & Grafman, 2006;Westen, Blagov, Harenski, Kilts, & Hamann, 2006) and, using electroencephalography (EEG), both regulation of racial bias and perceived violations of social expectations have been investigated (Amodio, Harmon-Jones, Devine, Curtin, Hartley, & Covert, 2004;Amodio, Kubota, Harmon-Jones, & Devine, 2006). Furthermore, with the help of EEG, the neural operations underlying the processing of words or sentences that are either congruent or incongruent in terms of gender stereotypes have been studied (Osterhout, Bersick, & McLaughlin, 1997;White, Crites, Taylor, & Corral, 2009).…”