© Photo/Courtesy of Brain and Creativity Institute at USCThe amygdala -- the two almond-shaped areas hugging the center of the brain near the front -- tends to become active when people dig in their heels about a political belief.
Neuroscientists at the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC said the findings from the functional MRI study seem especially relevant to how people responded to political news stories, fake or credible, throughout the election.
"Political beliefs are like religious beliefs in the respect that both are part of who you are and important for the social circle to which you belong," said lead author Jonas Kaplan, an assistant research professor of psychology at the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. "To consider an alternative view, you would have to consider an alternative version of yourself."
To determine which brain networks respond when someone holds firmly to a belief, the neuroscientists with the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC compared whether and how much people change their minds on nonpolitical and political issues when provided counter-evidence.
Comment: For more information on this phenomenon, check out the work of Bob Altemeyer, author of The Authoritarians which can be downloaded for free from his website. The article: Bob Altmeyer's Global Game Change and the authoritarian personality, is also a terrific read.