title: Nonpolitical images evoke neural predictors of political ideology.
abstract: Political ideologies summarize dimensions of life that define how a person organizes their public and private behavior, including their attitudes associated with sex, family, education, and personal autonomy. Despite the abstract nature of such sensibilities, fundamental features of political ideology have been found to be deeply connected to basic biological mechanisms that may serve to defend against environmental challenges like contamination and physical threat. These results invite the provocative claim that neural responses to nonpolitical stimuli (like contaminated food or physical threats) should be highly predictive of abstract political opinions (like attitudes toward gun control and abortion). We applied a machine-learning method to fMRI data to test the hypotheses that brain responses to emotionally evocative images predict individual scores on a standard political ideology assay. Disgusting images, especially those related to animal-reminder disgust (e.g., mutilated body), generate neural responses that are highly predictive of political orientation even though these neural predictors do not agree with participants' conscious rating of the stimuli. Images from other affective categories do not support such predictions. Remarkably, brain responses to a single disgusting stimulus were sufficient to make accurate predictions about an individual subject's political ideology. These results provide strong support for the idea that fundamental neural processing differences that emerge under the challenge of emotionally evocative stimuli may serve to structure political beliefs in ways formerly unappreciated.
authors.affiliation: Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA 24016, USA; Computational Psychiatry Unit, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA 24016, USA.
authors.forename: Woo-Young
authors.initials: WY
authors.lastname: Ahn
authors.affiliation: Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA 24016, USA; Computational Psychiatry Unit, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA 24016, USA.
authors.forename: Kenneth T
authors.initials: KT
authors.lastname: Kishida
authors.affiliation: Computational Psychiatry Unit, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA 24016, USA; Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK.
authors.forename: Xiaosi
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Gu
authors.affiliation: Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA 24016, USA; Computational Psychiatry Unit, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA 24016, USA.
authors.forename: Terry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Lohrenz
authors.affiliation: Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA 24016, USA; Computational Psychiatry Unit, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA 24016, USA.
authors.forename: Ann
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Harvey
authors.affiliation: Department of Political Science, Rice University, Houston, TX 77251-1892, USA.
authors.forename: John R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Alford
authors.affiliation: Department of Political Science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0328, USA.
authors.forename: Kevin B
authors.initials: KB
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.affiliation: Yale Law School, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
authors.forename: Gideon
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Yaffe
authors.affiliation: Department of Political Science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0328, USA.
authors.forename: John R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Hibbing
authors.affiliation: Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, UK.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Dayan
authors.affiliation: Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA 24016, USA; Computational Psychiatry Unit, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA 24016, USA; Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK; Department of Physics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA. Electronic address: read@vt.edu.
authors.forename: P Read
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Montague
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001290:Attitude; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006439:Hemodynamics; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011057:Politics