The Ohio State University, Columbus.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2022 Dec 1;35(1):60-73. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_01888.
With rampant polarization in current U.S. politics, it seems as though political partisans with opposing viewpoints are living in parallel realities. Indeed, prior research shows that people's impressions/attitudes toward political candidates are intertwined with their political affiliation. The current study investigated the relationship between political affiliation and intersubject neural synchrony of multivariate patterns of activity during naturalistic viewing of a presidential debate. Before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, 20 individuals varying in political affiliation underwent functional neuroimaging while watching the first debate between candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Pairs of participants with more polarized political affiliations were higher in neural synchrony in a system of brain regions involved in self-referential processing when viewing the opposing candidate speak compared with that candidate's supporters regardless of which extreme of the political spectrum they occupied. Moreover, pairs of political partisans matching in the candidate they supported were higher in neural synchrony when watching the candidate they opposed compared with the one they both supported. These findings suggest that political groups' shared understanding may be driven more by perceptions of outgroups than of their own party/candidates.
随着当前美国政治的两极化愈演愈烈，似乎观点对立的政治党派人士生活在平行的现实中。事实上，先前的研究表明，人们对政治候选人的印象/态度与其政治派别交织在一起。本研究调查了政治派别与多元活动模式的主体间神经同步性之间的关系，这些模式是在观看总统辩论的自然场景下产生的。在 2016 年美国总统大选之前，20 名政治派别不同的个体在观看候选人希拉里·克林顿和唐纳德·特朗普之间的第一场辩论时接受了功能神经影像学检查。与支持该候选人的人相比，观看对立候选人发言时，具有更极化政治倾向的参与者配对在涉及自我参照处理的大脑区域系统中的神经同步性更高，而无论他们处于政治光谱的哪个极端。此外，在观看他们反对的候选人时，支持同一候选人的政治派配对的神经同步性更高，而不是他们都支持的候选人。这些发现表明，政治团体的共同理解可能更多地受到对外群体的看法驱动，而不是他们自己的政党/候选人。
