What is the difference between a Review staffer and a Free Press reporter? It sounds like the set-up for a comic strip in The Dartmouth. One plays croquet and the other fill in clever inversion here. But thanks to Marco Iacoboni of UCLA, science may now have a way to distinguish between Democrats and Republicans. Last week, it was announced that preliminary results from an experiment comparing the brain scans of Democrats and Republicans when exposed to campaign ads found significant differences. Although the study is far from complete, it raises some interesting questions both about our reactions to politics, as well as about the ethics of campaigning.
The study, which has tested 11 subjects to date, used an MRI to monitor brain activity while subjects were exposed to a number of current and past political ads. It was found that democratic candidates reacted to images of catastrophe, such as Johnson's infamous "Daisy" ad, featuring a nuclear explosion, and some of Bush's current ads featuring Sept. 11 by activating a part of the brain, the amgdayla, which reacts to danger and threats. Republicans did not have as strong a reaction to the same images in the amgdayla. According to The New York Times, Iacoboni speculates that this reaction is due either to a Democratic fear that Bush will use Sept. 11 to obtain re-election, or, more likely, to the fact that Democrats are often less eager to use force.
The researchers also found that when initially shown pictures of Bush, Kerry and Nader, subjects reacted using the ventromedial-prefrontal cortex, indicating a mostly emotional reaction. After being shown a Bush campaign ad, it was found that while subjects still respond emotionally to their candidate, they respond to the opposition using the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a part associated with rationality. Does this indicate that campaigns actually make people think? Researchers say it is too early to tell.
But it is not too early to consider the flaws in such an approach to campaigning, as well as the ethical issues. It seems that inherent in the study is the assumption that all people of one party or another react to politics in a similar way. It also looks at political affiliation based solely on personal reaction to political candidates. It fails to consider why someone loves Dubya or Kerry; it registers only their emotional or rational response. This does not take into account the "issues" in a campaign. While a wag might argue that the candidates avoid the issues too, is this really something we want to perpetuate? The use of this kind of research to create campaign propaganda may lead to the further perpetuation of the cult of personality in politics, to the possible detriment of our government.
Merely pointing out the current flaws in this study, which may be corrected when it is completed, ignores the bigger ethical issues. Can we really make up our minds about politics when campaign publicity is specifically engineered to induce certain chemical responses? Politics is already an arena of the irrational; do we really need exact instructions as to how to invoke an emotional response? The secret ballot has eliminated the ability of the powerful to coerce voters to vote specific ways, but giving politicians access to information turns consultants into manipulators and restores this ability.
But there is one glimmer of hope, although that may be an odd thing to call it. This study is being performed on people with political ideologies who take an active interest in politics. The reactions are to "their" candidates and the "other." There is no guarantee that this type of mind manipulation will work on the apathetic. Maybe for once those who don't know and don't care will be at an advantage. But regardless of the ultimate findings of the study, and of their ethically questionable use, there is one thing we don't need an MRI to tell us. Those who vote for Nader in 2004 will not be using their brains at all. And perhaps both a DFP writer and Review reporter could agree on that, regardless of their different reasons.
