Partisan thinking, according to two political partisans.
Last week, Drew Westen of Emory University announced the results of a study conducted before the 2004 election, which examined the brains of George Bush and John Kerry supporters. The results of this study suggested that partisan thinking derives not from reason but pure emotion. When faced with favorable facts about their candidates, the men’s brains lit up like junkies getting their fix on. When presented with negative facts, their brains simply refused to consider what they heard.
This, of course, comes as no surprise to me. I’ve always wondered why the things I say to most liberals and conservatives go in one ear and out the other. Now I know: Scientifically speaking, these people have no brains.
But rather than going on and on about this study, which would probably only get me in trouble, I’ve decided to take a break from spouting off this week to let representatives from both sides of the political aisle make the case for or against the study themselves. Here now are the opinions on this groundbreaking research, as written by two entirely fictional voters, whose names I made up because I wrote this on deadline and couldn’t find anyone real to interview. I think you’ll agree their essays are telling. In fact, both sides might be closer than you think.
*****
"My Brain is a Battleground in the War Against America: A View from the Right,” by Bush T. Conservatron
So… Drew Westen thinks he’s found scientific proof that Republicans are irrational? That’s interesting. Too bad there’s NO SUCH THING AS SCIENCE.
In an ideal world, I suppose life would be one giant fairytale. Special magicians called “doctors” would dazzle us with wonderful, health-improving capsules called “medicines.” Man would soar through the sky in big metal “airplanes.” And who knows? Maybe someday we’d have computers small enough to fit inside a single room. But that’s not the world we’re living in here. This is the real world. And the reality is, there’s no such thing as science.
What’re you going to tell me next, Mr. Westen — that the planet existed before I stepped foot on it? Or that mankind was meant to find “answers” to questions? Yeah, sure. Well, I’ve got a question for you: What’s black and white and red all over? All you liberals… with American blood and New York Times print on your hands.
Let me put this as simply as I can: I am a Bush supporter. And unlike all you communist, tree-hugging, Brokeback Mountain-watching Kerry supporters, I deal in cold, hard facts — not the colors of the rainbow. Emory University is just another Elite Leftist College, bent on teaching America’s youth about liberal values like research and free parking. It doesn’t surprise me that these people would conduct a study the likes of Mr. Westen’s, because they’ll do whatever it takes to regain political power. Only liberals deal in things like “emotions” and “feelings.” And only liberals would try to convince us these things are normal.
This is what we’re up against, people. First they tried to secularize Christmas. Now they’re trying to secularize our brains. Are we really going to sit here and stand for this?
Mr. Westen hates freedom. That’s what this comes down to. Anyone who would say I voted for Bush based on pure emotion obviously doesn’t remember September 11th. As a Bush supporter, I have personally rationalized each and every one of the president’s policies — from “torture” and “domestic spying” to “keeping secrets” and “destroying key freedoms and civil liberties.” This country was built on the blood, sweat, and tears of slaves and George W. Bush supporters — people like me who understand you can’t just roll out of bed in the morning and expect things to have “quote marks” around them. You have to work to put those “quote marks” there. You have to work to make things make sense to you.
So don’t talk to me about being irrational. Talk to all those freeloading hippie liberals at Emory University. They’re the irrational ones.
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"He’s George Bush, and He Approved This Hurricane: A View from the Left,” by John Kerry Mellencamp
Well, well, well. A new study out of Emory University finds that partisan thinking is completely irrational. Hey, guess what? As a Democrat, I’ve been saying this for years. In fact, if not for all those partisans in flyover country, John Kerry would be president right now. And America would be in a much better place.
Already, I know what you’re thinking. Actually, I always know what you’re thinking. And right now it’s this: “What makes Democrats less partisan than Republicans?” That’s easy. Democrats aren’t partisan because Democrats aren’t a party. Oh, sure, we run candidates in every election. We have our own mascot, a chairman, even a color (a nice shade of blue). But whereas Republicans exist to pillage and plunder the country, we exist to stop them by pillage-and-plundering cities and towns. Basically, we exist out of pure necessity. And if that somehow makes us a “party?” Well, that just shows how far to the right our country has gone.
I think it’s a shame America chose Bush over Kerry. If Kerry were president, Hurricane Katrina would never have happened. Nor would any of the other disasters that’ve occurred the last five years — including Enron and Ben Affleck’s Gigli. Most of the world understands this. But Bush supporters? Bush supporters are different. These people couldn’t care less about the environment, but when a Category 5 destroys the Gulf of Mexico, all of a sudden it’s a “force of nature.” All of a sudden it’s “just something that happens.”
Please.
John Kerry predicted Hurricane Katrina. And if John Kerry were president, the blind would be able to see again. And lepers would no longer have leprosy. And blacks would no longer be black. That’s why it’s crucial we get Democrats back in the White House. My party isn’t a party, and I don’t know who my party will nominate next time, but whoever it is — be it Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Evan Bayh, or even Hillary Clinton — it’s important that they win.
Don’t let all those Republican spinmeisters spin the results of this Emory study. Because they’ll just keep spinning like dreidels if you let them. Yes, there are folks in this world who approach politics based on pure emotion. But Fox News has a name for those people. They’re called “Fox News viewers.”
Bush supporters aren’t human. Their brains aren’t misshapen and clumpy like our brains. Theirs are perfect circles, and they taste a little like egg whites. These people are crazy. They wave tiny flags and don’t go to the bathroom. They’ll do whatever you tell them to do, unless you tell them to vote Democrat, in which case they’re suddenly independent thinkers. This makes no sense. And it’s flat out irrational.
If Republicans stay in power, the grass will melt and the sun will fall down. That’s the lesson of this Emory study. So keep that in mind at the next election. Vote Democrat and all of your wildest dreams will come true.
Once again we must thank Jonathan David Morris for taking us to task for being the mental midgets and science loathing Luddites we are. Mr. Morris has joined that elite that regards anyone who sullies their hands in politics must be either a crook or a moron; yet love to sit on the sidelines commenting on our tendencies. Now, he has found a respected professor and ivy bedecked psychology department chairman to back his perception. He has couched his rebuke in such a way that, howsoever we respond, we ‘must’ be lashing out in the emotional and dysfunctional manner he proscribes, thus proving his case. So, let me see if I can respond to his charge without sinking to the level he intends.
Mr. Morris has tossed another can of napalm at us without really checking its contents. His take on the Washington Times piece (and subsequent torturing of it to smear one and all) turns out to be a distortion (at best) of Dr. Westen’s study, which is, itself, inconclusive and possibly tainted with bias. A little questioning and web searching finds Dr. Westen regularly graces the airwaves of NPR and was involved in the famous RATS study that tried to prove Republican operatives working for Bush skewed the 2000 election (also, possibly, implicated in the hit and run that was Abu Graib). Yet, as one commentator put it, Gore lost the 2000 election despite the exposure from Westen, rather than because of it. Westen’s exposé, if anything, had the effect of reversing any subliminal persuasion of public opinion in that election, and may be what Westen intended. Westen, himself, calls his current study little more than a beginning, and not definitive.
To break it down and put this in perspective, I made the following Q&A and followed it in my searches, in order to give Mr. Morris the well reasoned (i.e., unemotional) response he requires.
Who is Westen, and how might his personal agendas invalidate his conclusions?
• http://www.med.emory.edu/faculty/profile_bio.cfm?id=12769
What is Westen’s agenda, and does he begin from neutral assumptions?
• In lead up to 2004 Presidential election, Westen authored advice piece to Senator Kerry to improve his image (suggests he favors Kerry or disfavors Bush, despite crediting Bush as more “appealing” candidate, see http://www.news.emory.edu/Releases/westen1096056134.html)
• Westen formerly moonlighted as standup comic in Boston (not sure what that means, other than he likes poking fun)
• Westen airs commentaries via NPR (suggests he swings liberal, could not find any associations with conservative sites)
• completed undergraduate studies at notoriously liberal school (Harvard) – (ditto)
• member of notoriously liberal profession (ditto)
former Associate Professor of Psychology at Harvard (ditto)
• publicly defended fellow Harvard liberal, University President Lawrence Summers, remarks regarding women and science (suggests he’s open minded)
What is Westen’s study methodology, and is it unbiased?
• Not all liberals are DNC party members, anymore than all conservatives are RNC members. Ergo, this study does not appear to represent anyone not a member of one party or the other, and suggest Westen feels tendency more pronounced in those who affiliate (why?)
• Starts with premise that most or all political thinking is emotional and rigid
• studies equal number of Republicans and Democrats (okay so far)
• informs us his questions are posed in such manner as to validate ‘reasoning’ is not engaged when ideologically loaded questions are asked of a subject. (No examples of actual questions used available).
• Study is not formatted to elicit well reasoned responses; and it should be no surprise that it did not (this may be an unconscious bias). Subjects are not asked to expound, merely respond on the question’s validity, though it does not appear they are prevented from it. Lack of extended response suggests subjects would tend to react without engaging deep thought processes as unnecessary to a response and is about what even a layman would expect. (poor study design?)
• Demonstrates only that “flashed” messages register in the brain as emotions, not reason, as evidenced by MRI imaging (no reason to suppose a briefly posed question with little opportunity to expound would elicit anything but a ‘gut’ response, and does not prove people are bounded or persuaded by emotion in questions of political thought or decisions).
• very small sample population
• Demographics regarding age, intellectual development, or other possible determinants unavailable. For all we know, these are teens on a hormonal rollercoaster.
• conclusion drawn is that people are politically irrational based on a single modality of message interaction
• does not test for reasoning when other modalities of expression-persuasion are used (e.g., written discussions as in these pages)
• study did not include any “non-partisans” to validate emotion based responses are peculiar to partisans
• The tests involved pairs of statements by the candidates, President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry, that clearly contradicted each other and are artificially made inconsistent (altered to force respondents to defend lies attributed to their candidate without any means to verify or contest attributions).
• test subjects were asked to consider and rate the discrepancy. Then they were presented with another statement that might explain away the contradiction. The scenario was repeated several times for each candidate.
• functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) used to reveal a pattern of partisans consistently detecting contradictions only in the opposing candidate (how is this shown, where can responses be seen to validate — data unavailable)
• used similar methodology in 2004 when he studied effect of infamous Republican RATS subliminal message (samples of actual questions and flashed messages not available). Concluded emotional responses noted were to the hidden messages and not to the obviously “negative” statements, despite no correlation of negative hidden message with positive statements.
• In 2004 RATS study, a questionnaire was administered via an Internet site. Respondents were asked to rate a purported candidate. After participants viewed the candidate’s photo, they rated the candidate in relation to 10 statements, such as, “This candidate looks competent” or “I dislike this candidate.” Before the photo appeared on the screen, however, the researchers flashed one of four short messages–RATS, STAR, ARAB, or XXXX–for a mere six-thousandths of a second. Note: that RNC ad flashed RATS subliminal for 1/30th second. (hard to see how message can even register at 1/6000th second).
JDM misrepresentations regarding Westen study.
• Westen refrains from calling his study definitive, only suggestive
• Westen’s reference to “they get their fix” is descriptive of our emotions and response to them, and is the same in everyone (including smart-aleck commentators). It merely describes a brain function and does not assert party loyalists are addicted to lying, only that they get a positive feedback for successfully defending a cherished belief, and this “rush” is qualitatively similar to that of a drug addict getting his fix.
Actual Westen quotes from Washington Times article
• “We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning,” said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory, who led the study. “What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up.”
• “None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged,” he said. “Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want.”
• Mr. Westen compared the process to what drug addicts receive when “they get their fix.”
• “Partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data,” Mr. Westen said, adding that these biased judgments occur outside of awareness and are distinct from normal reasoning processes.
Westen quotes from other sources
• “the format of cable TV news, throwing out a topic to two representatives of opposite sides, capitalizes on a design flaw in the human brain. People believe what they want to believe, no matter what the facts are.” (NPR)
• “Everyone from executives and judges to scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret ‘the facts,’” (http://www.emorywheel.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/02/03/43e2cbf8eaff3)
• “We have grown accustomed to hearing two versions of every story, one from the left and one from the right, as if the average of two distortions equals the truth,” he said in an interview. “Unfortunately, this format of ‘from the left, from the right’ capitalizes on a design flaw in the brain.”
I could have taken this farther, but think this will be enough to make my following points. Admittedly, the information on Westen and his studies is pretty scanty. Also, the approach I followed partially validates some of Westen’s statements regarding defensiveness and rationalizing away inconsistencies, but such was the gauntlet thrown down by Mr. Morris and taken up.
I find it intriguing that Dr. Westen engages in studies calculated to put partisans on the defensive and questions our collective political wisdom, but has seen fit to voice his conclusions before publishing his results where they can be scrutinized by the public. If Westen’s conclusion is to be regarded as an accurate representation of his study, might this invalidate Westen’s study as agenda driven science; and Morris’s conclusions regarding those who adhere to any persuasion place his own fixated and emotional biases in the same pot? I don’t have enough information to evaluate Westen’s methodology as fair or unfair, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that neither does Mr. Morris. Thus, Morris’s co-opting of Westen is just as rationally baseless as those he finds politically fixated.
If Westen’s theory is to have any validity, then none of us have free-will and can only respond mechanically based on inborn biases (including Westen and Morris). Yet, we know that we each form biases over time based on experience and thinking about the way the world works (i.e., reason). Many of us (and we can presume the same will be true for others) have gone through changes in political outlook and affiliation over the course of many years. Moreover, we occasionally criticize our chosen candidates or parties when they act inconsistently or without recognizable design. We don’t reformulate political opinions with each passing comment, poll, argument, study question, slogan, disappointment or rant. We simply retrieve those opinions we have previously formulated and stored as the most reasoned we’ve produced through a lifetime of refinement (and, possibly update our view — good discussion of this at http://mahalanobis.twoday.net/stories/465967#501815). We do this to minimize the effort it takes to recalibrate our thinking against every passing argument. Westen calls this inefficient and a design flaw in the brain, but I find it just the opposite. If we engaged in critical reasoning for something as trivial as responding to Dr. Westen’s survey questions as test rats when it doesn’t matter, we would tie ourselves in knots deciding anything at all. Instead, our brains register the context and importance of the question, and inform us to a) shoot from the hip or b) warning – needs some attention. The effort Westen’s test took did not require the higher brain centers to kick into gear because his subjects weren’t trying to fit something new into their thought matrix or defend positions using extended reasoning. Instead, his subjects were relaxed enough regarding the context, presentation and points that they felt no need to shift gears. I would bet the same level and type of brain activity would be exhibited by an MRI were the questions posed related to child-rearing, the legalizing of medical marijuana, or sex preference. And, I would venture, had Mr. Morris been a subject in Westen’s study (without detailed knowledge of Westen’s objective), his MRI scans would have registered no greater ‘reasoning’ than any one else’s.
I should have thought someone with Dr. Westen’s credentials would have given some space to explaining these points and weakness in his theory, but he seems silent on it and, instead, focuses on the tiny, unimportant modality of emotional response as if it were a talisman for political fixation and rationalization. Probably, this is all covered in his study notes, but who’s to know? His study (from the little I can find on it) appears designed to reach but one conclusion. His own comments bear out his assumption that few or none of us are capable of performing sanity checks on our own thinking. Yet, Westen’s voluminous writings and expertise indicate someone of a much higher caliber. Although, I will not go so far as to say there is no merit in Westen’s premise (i.e., we often don’t use our brains appropriately), his comments are so sweeping as to preclude any other possibility. If this is the state-of-art in psychology, then psychology has not reached the stage we can yet call it “science” (clearly, something Mr. Morris holds in higher regard than political allegiance). Without seeing his questions or witnessing his procedure, I would have to conclude his tests are useful for categorizing how we respond to certain types of questions passively; and no more. If his questions elicit somewhat different responses in Republicans than in Democrats, it is only a matter of distinguishing which biases they’ve developed, rather than any validity of those biases, quality of engagement, entrenchment, or ‘suggestibility’.
Another point is that many of us may get into a slugging match when confronted, but revise our opinions later to avoid getting jumped a second time. As such, we do our critical reasoning off-line, not in the midst of a fight. Consider, a man jumps out of a dark alley and comes at you. Do you take time to ask is he a good or bad guy, or knock him down and ask later? That’s a bit extreme, but Westen’s subjects felt provoked and likely gave more thought to their answers later than in the middle of his confrontational test. We’ve all been caught that way and felt pretty stupid (say at a social gathering with people listening). So what do we do? We check our facts, revise our opinions and hope we are better prepared when the next gunslinger comes along.
I agree with Westen that people don’t spend enough time thinking about political choices or consequences. But, then our political systems are something of an after thought in most people’s minds. Family, jobs, health, and personal wealth get higher priority; and they ought to. But every couple of years we do need to get up to speed with what is going on and figure out who we prefer piloting our political ship.
As for Mr. Morris, he has visited us before with his witty impersonal contrivances. I have corresponded with him and seen his web site. He uses his blog as a personal reserve for mocking those he takes to task, which he considers high journalism. He is capable of civility one on one, but, in addressing all and sundry, it is as though we cease to exist as individuals for him. He manages to imply he is endowed with greater brain-matter than the rest of us (see his second paragraph), and we should be grateful for his carefully crafted analysis of our shortcomings. I don’t know if he is aware of these traits, but I would ask that he reread what he writes with an eye toward muting the condescension. He does have some interesting occasional thoughts, but I can’t say I am impressed with the general way he deploys them (despite his writing awards); and he doesn’t pose ideas with solutions attached to them. His writing style is good, but, if he uses it only to make fatuous generalizations like the slam piece above, then he is wasting his effort and talent. I’m sorry, but this is a bit too juvenile and sneering; and more than a little unpalatable to remain forever the passive butt of his jokes.
I would pose to Mr. Morris, it is easy to sit on a political fence and take pot shots on those who risk their opinions. But, who cares? You are an equal opportunity gunslinger, with no fixed position you seem willing to sully your name on. What do you stand for if you refuse to get down in the mud with the rest of us and put your talent to work figuring out what can be accomplished rather than forever pointing out the futility and stupidity of those who try? What agenda will you put forward for addressing the taxing issues facing us as a people that are superior to those voiced here? Taking a position means someone will object and take your argument apart, and that’s okay. Over time, you get to refine your ideas without surrendering your dignity. We are not put off by your criticism, and use criticism ourselves. However, it ought to be constructive and civil. We even enjoy some rib poking, if done in a spirit of camaraderie. A friend of mine used to keep a plaque over his desk that read: ‘Tact’ is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way he anticipates the journey with pleasure. Without the condescension and derision, your writing would be much improved and your criticisms appreciated. Please, come down off your fence and be one of us.