Los Angeles, Dec 24: Political beliefs are difficult to change as people become more hard-headed when provided with contradictory evidence, a new study has found.
"Political beliefs are like religious beliefs in the respect that both are part of who you are and important for the social circle to which you belong," said Jonas Kaplan, from the University of Southern California.
To determine which brain networks respond when someone holds firmly to a belief, researchers compared whether and how much people change their minds on nonpolitical and political issues when provided counter-evidence.
They discovered that people are more flexible when asked to consider the strength of their belief in non-political statements. However, when it came to reconsidering their political beliefs, such as whether the US should reduce funding for the military, they would not budge.
Scientists recruited 40 people who were self-declared liberals. The scientists then examined through functional MRI how their brains responded when their beliefs were challenged.
During their brain imaging sessions, participants were presented with eight political statements that they had said they believe just as strongly as a set of eight nonpolitical statements.
They were then shown five counter-claims that challenged each statement. Participants rated the strength of their belief in the original statement on a scale of one to seven after reading each counter-claim.
The scientists then studied their brain scans to determine which areas became most engaged during these challenges. Participants did not change their beliefs much, if at all, when provided with evidence that countered political statements such as, "The laws regulating gun ownership in the US should be made more restrictive."
However, the scientists noticed the strength of their beliefs weakened by one or two points when challenged on non-political topics, such as whether "Thomas Edison had invented the light bulb."
The participants were shown counter statements that prompted some feelings of doubt, such as "Nearly 70 years before Edison, Humphrey Davy demonstrated an electric lamp to the Royal Society."
The study found that people who were most resistant to changing their beliefs had more activity in the amygdalae (a pair of almond-shaped areas near the centre of the brain) and the insular cortex, compared with people who were more willing to change their minds.
"The activity in these areas, which are important for emotion and decision-making, may relate to how we feel when we encounter evidence against our beliefs," said Kaplan. The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.
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