This is a superhero movie I’m definitely signing up for.<\/p>\n
No reason why you should recall my near-decade obsession with answering the question: how could anyone in my family vote for Trump? Because a couple of them did; I haven’t spoken to them since. But I spent a lot of time trying to find out what was so wrong with them.<\/p>\n
It’s the blessing of my life — always needing to find out Why.<\/p>\n
That was during the First Kingdom, a\/k\/a Trump 1. I learned much, dug into a number of theories: Racism and rage. Postmodernism. Terror management. Dunning-Kruger, which was a favorite of many people; Paul Krugman refers to it even today to explain Trump 2’s cabinet and other minions.<\/a><\/p>\n But the one that rose over all the other explanations was the scientific one, about the key role of our amygdalas.<\/a> As much as I love psychology and, pertinently, psychopathology as fields in which I can learn about human behavior, give me physiology any time, because it’s not amorphous. It’s real and solid.<\/p>\n So as soon as I saw an essay in the New York Times entitled, “Ideology May Not Be What You Think but How You\u2019re Wired:<\/a> In her new book, \u201cThe Ideological Brain,\u201d the neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod outlines what makes some people prone to rigid thinking,” I jumped right in. As I read, I murmured to Leor Zmigrod, “What about the amygdala?” over and over.<\/p>\n And then she did it: amygdalas!! To wit:<\/p>\n In fact, we find that people with different ideologies have differences in the physical structure and function of their brains. This is especially pronounced in brain networks responsible for reward, emotion processing, and monitoring when we make errors.<\/em><\/p>\n For instance, the size of our amygdala \u2014 the almond-shaped structure that governs the processing of emotions, especially negatively tinged emotions such as fear, anger, disgust, danger and threat \u2014 is linked to whether we hold more conservative ideologies that justify traditions and the status quo…<\/em><\/p>\n Some scientists have interpreted these findings as reflecting a natural affinity between the function of the amygdala and the function of conservative ideologies. Both revolve around vigilant reactions to threats and the fear of being overpowered.<\/em><\/p>\n But why is the amygdala larger in conservatives? Do people with a larger amygdala gravitate toward more conservative ideologies because their amygdala is already structured in a way that is more receptive to the negative emotions that conservatism elicits? Or can immersion in a certain ideology alter our emotional biochemistry in a way that leads to structural brain changes?<\/em><\/p>\n The ambiguity around these results reflects a chicken-and-egg problem: Do our brains determine our politics, or can ideologies change our brains?<\/em><\/p>\n If we\u2019re wired a certain way, can we change?<\/strong><\/p>\n You have agency to choose how passionately you adopt these ideologies or what you reject or what you don\u2019t.<\/em><\/p>\n I think we all can shift in terms of our flexibility. It\u2019s obviously harder for people who have genetic or biological vulnerabilities toward rigid thinking, but that doesn\u2019t mean that it\u2019s predetermined or impossible to change.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is a superhero movie I’m definitely signing up for. No reason why you should recall my near-decade obsession with answering the question: how could anyone in my family vote for Trump? Because a couple of them did; I haven’t … Continue reading