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Why Our Brains Crave Ideology
A neuroscientist reveals how to nurture authentic and flexible thinking
Explore As the lights in the lecture hall slowly brighten, political neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod braces herself for the onslaught of questions from an audience brimming with rising hands—and one clenched fist. To Marx’s question, “What does your ‘new method’ genuinely show?” Zmigrod answers: “That we can bypass self-reports of ideological oppression and that, instead of relying solely on the tools of history, economics, demographics, and ethnography, we can study unconscious processes that are inconspicuous to the observer’s naked eye or the believer’s storytelling tongue.” When we ask participants to make very simple perceptual judgments about whether there’s a red square on the left of the screen, or a green circle on the right side of the screen—often in 400 milliseconds or so—this allows us to understand how their brains are processing information, how they’re responding to evidence, how quickly or cautiously they evaluate stimuli.
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