Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Who Can Deviate From The Party Line? Political Ideology Moderates Evaluation Of Incongruent Policy Positions In Insula And Anterior Cingulate Cortex, Ingrid J. Haas, Melissa N. Baker, Frank J. Gonzalez

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Political polarization at the elite level is a major concern in many contemporary democracies, which is argued to alienate large swaths of the electorate and prevent meaningful social change from occurring, yet little is known about how individuals respond to political candidates who deviate from the party line and express policy positions incongruent with their party affiliations. This experiment examines the neural underpinnings of such evaluations using functional MRI (fMRI). During fMRI, participants completed an experimental task where they evaluated policy positions attributed to hypothetical political candidates. Each block of trials focused on one candidate (Democrat or Republican), but all …