Cognitieve psychologie

Subjects in an experiment were told various facts about Bush and Kerry in 2004. Their brains were tested during this, and they came up with ways to make their candidate look good no matter what the fact was or who they supported. “When this “emote control” began to occur, parts of the brain normal involved in reasoning were not activated. Instead, a constellation of activations occurred in he same areas of the brain where punishment, pain, and negative emotions are experienced (that is, in the left insula, lateral frontal cortex, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex). Once a way was found to ignore information that could not be rationally discounted, the neural punishment areas turned off, and the participant received a blast of activation in the circuits involving rewards – akin to the high an addict receives when getting his fix. In essence, the participants were not about to let facts get in the way of their hot-button decision making and quick buzz of reward.”