Neuroscience explains how right-wingers' brains work differently

04 December 2024

US Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) takes a phone call at the Hyatt Regency hotel during a meeting with House Republicans and President-elect Donald Trump in Washington, DC, U.S. on November 13, 2024. ALLISON ROBBERT/Pool via REUTERS

In the United States, liberals and conservatives have been having heated debates for generations. But the country has been especially divided in recent years.

Following President-elect Donald Trump's narrow victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, many MAGA Republicans are delighted that he will be returning to the White House on January 20, 2025. Democrats and Never Trump conservatives, however, view Trump's incoming second administration as a full-blown threat to democracy and are slamming some of his nominees — including Kash Patel for FBI director and Pete Hegseth for defense secretary — as flat out dangerous.

Trump's supporters and detractors, many political experts have said, live in separate worlds.

But the divisions between the left and the right did not start with Trump and his MAGA movement. And research highlighted in 2020 offers insights on why Republicans and Democrats can process information so differently.

In an article published by Scientific American, journalist Lydia Denworth delved into "political neuroscience."

Hannah Nam of Stony Brook University told Scientific American, "Brain structure and function provide more objective measures than many types of survey responses. Participants may be induced to be more honest when they think that scientists have a 'window' into their brains…. Neurobiological features could be used as a predictor of political outcomes — just not in a deterministic way."

Denworth noted that the differences between conservatives and liberals were on full display when the National Review's William F. Buckly famously debated liberal author Gore Vidal back in 1968.

The journalist pointed out, however, that conservatives and liberals aren't necessarily black-and-white in their thinking, and that both can have nuance.

"To study how we process political information in a 2017 paper, political psychologist Ingrid Haas of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and her colleagues created hypothetical candidates from both major parties and assigned each candidate a set of policy statements on issues such as school prayer, Medicare and defense spending," Denworth explained. "Most statements were what you would expect: Republicans, for instance, usually favor increasing defense spending, and Democrats generally support expanding Medicare. But some statements were surprising, such as a conservative expressing a pro-choice position or a liberal arguing for invading Iran."

Denworth added, "Haas put 58 people with diverse political views in a brain scanner. On each trial, participants were asked whether it was good or bad that a candidate held a position on a particular issue and not whether they personally agreed or disagreed with it."

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