Physiological responses reveal our political affiliations

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/au-prr061615.php

Public Release: 16-Jun-2015
Aarhus University

New research from Aarhus University in Denmark shows that political partisanship is rooted in affective, physiological processes that cause partisans to toe the party line on policies and issues, regardless of policy content.

Previous research has shown that party identifiers are more inclined to agree with policy proposals that are proposed by their own party, independent of the content of the proposal. If the same proposal is issued by a competing party, they will be inclined to respond negatively to it.

Until now, however, it has remained unclear whether this partisan bias is based on rational considerations or on more intuitive, affective reactions. Now researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark have established that only party supporters who are affectively and physiologically engaged in their party show evidence of partisan bias. Their study has been published in the journal PLOS ONE under the title "Physiological Responses and Partisan Bias".

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The study shows that when party supporters support a policy proposal issued by their own party, their sympathy is derived not so much from a rational analysis of policy content, but from their emotional attachment to the party in question. That being said, politics and debates have not become obsolete.

"Debates are important. Through debates, the parties signal to the voters which direction they want to take and how they plan to get there. But our results suggest that not all people are equally swayed by the person who presents the best argument. Affective reactions among sworn party identifiers will influence the degree of their agreement with proposals advocated by specific political parties - regardless of the quality of the arguments presented," concludes Michael Bang Petersen.