Political Uncertainty Moderates Neural Evaluation of Incongruent Policy Positions

Authors

Ingrid J. Haas, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Melissa N. Baker, University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Frank J. Gonzalez, University of ArizonaFollow

ORCID IDs

Haas 0000-0002-7316-6605

Baker 0000-0002-0125-5596

Date of this Version

2021

Document Type

Article

Citation

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2021) 376: 20200138

https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0138

Electronic supplementary material is available online at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5252493 and appended to this version

Comments

Copyright 2021, the Royal Society. Used by permission

Abstract

Uncertainty has been shown to impact political evaluation, yet the exact mechanisms by which uncertainty affects the minds of citizens remain unclear. This experiment examines the neural underpinnings of uncertainty in political evaluation using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). During fMRI, participants completed an experimental task where they evaluated policy positions attributed to hypothetical political candidates. Policy positions were either congruent or incongruent with candidates’ political party affiliation and presented with varying levels of certainty.Neural activitywas modelled as a function of uncertainty and incongruence. Analyses suggest that neural activity in brain regions previously implicated in affective and evaluative processing (anterior cingulate cortex, insular cortex) differed as a function of the interaction between uncertainty and incongruence, such that activation in these areas was greatest when information was both certain and incongruent, and uncertainty influenced processing differently as a function of the valence of the attached information. These findings suggest that individuals are attuned to uncertainty in the stated issue positions of politicians, and that the neural processing of this uncertainty is dependent on congruence of these positions with expectations based on political party identification. Implications for the study of emotion and politics and political cognition are discussed.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms.’