With politics, as usual, being little more than an exercise in emotional immaturity, I’m compelled to revisit a 2006 psychological study from Emory University that irrevocably (and irreverently?) puts politics in its place.
    
The study took people who merely described themselves as being left or right and analyzed regions of their brain activity in response to data, specifically regarding George Bush or John Kerry before the 2004 election. The subjects were asked to think about inconsistencies in contradicting statements of the two candidates.
    
Basically, John Kerry might say something about being in Vietnam and justly earning his purple hearts, and George Bush might say something questioning Kerry’s service. The subject would then be confronted with “new” information that might explain the inconsistencies. New information about an opposing candidate was never really given a chance to take root.
    
“None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged” said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. “Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones.”
    
No activity increases in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the brain most associated with reasoning and logic, was detected. With minds made up on any given scenario, brain activity greatly increased in areas that involved reward, Westen explained. The reaction is similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix.
    
These results should seem painfully obvious: The system our representatives and the mediums they use to communicate their intentions to us are built solely upon emotion, because it is what we, as little more than animals that have managed to barely suppress the thralldom of instinctual drive, still respond to. And yet I venture to say that when there is such exciting evidence about the very defunct nature of our culture’s (species’?) most fundamental dialogue with itself, preexisting notions about the fallible, too human institution of government must be revisited with new vigor.
    
Why do we, who consider ourselves the highest form of life, still respond to such complicated and multi-layered issues in such a roundly emotional and instinctual way? Compared to other creatures, we have the incredible power of deliberate action; we are able to abstract and therefore defy the instincts that enslave lesser beings, such as the all-powerful genetic drive for reproduction. Contraception is a fine example: While mostly unable to adequately suppress the instinctual drive to have sex, we are intellectually free of the gene’s demand for procreation — the reason we even have the drive in the first place.
    
Objective thought takes a kind of intellectual high road, and a different part of the brain than emotion. Consider the national dialogue on taxes: Apparently raising taxes and lowering taxes both stimulate the economy. Where’s the simple truth? The tax game is a double-edged sword with no consistent formula that comes in many forms. Straightforward tax increases for any group are politically unpopular with the voting mob out of sheer propaganda, while borrowing and spending, the deceptive alternative, should raise taxes and debt more because of interest owed.
    
Complacent political partisanship and the chemical sense of reward that Westen talks about result from indulging in lower instincts we’ve always had, when ambivalence on a subject tended to get one eaten. That’s why it feels so “good” to know for certain that you’re correct, and new information is sort of unconsciously blocked out: Cognitive dissonance simplifies the world. It worked when the world was relatively simple.
    
There are not two kinds of people in the world. But if there were, it would include people who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t. Resist the dumb little worlds the media anticipates your stupidity with. Conflict-based political rhetoric is indulged in to the detriment of the species, as it discourages use of our full human potential — but much more immediately it is to the detriment of our country.

— Wiley Robinson is a junior in ecology and evolutionary biology. He can be reached at rrobin23@utk.edu.