Strib Editorial: How biases rule the partisan mind

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune
January 28, 2006

A team at Emory University has found evidence that highly partisan people process political information strictly with the emotional sectors of their brains, avoiding any mental activity that resembles actual thinking. They embrace messages that match their beliefs, making them feel good, and reject those that challenge them, to avoid feeling bad....

Across the board, the partisans forgave their man and took a dim view of his opponent.... They did so without firing up the parts of their brains associated with reasoning. Instead, they shut down the circuits associated with negative emotions, like disgust, and activated those associated with pleasurable rewards, like drugs.

For the whole editorial, go here. For more on the Emory University study, go here.