Study Finds That Committed Partisans On Both Sides Are All Batshit Crazy

I hate posting "studies" of the soft-science sort, because they're always such nonsense, but I can't help myself:

Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows.

Shut up, really?

And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to their point of view.

I'd like to see the Republican/Democratic split on this one.

Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election. The subjects' brains were monitored while they pondered.

The results were announced today.

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."

The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.

Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained.

The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making.

I could have told them that for six fifty.

Thanks to Right Side Redux.

posted by Ace at 02:54 PM

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