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Related Experiment Video

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How to Detect Amygdala Activity with Magnetoencephalography using Source Imaging

How to Detect Amygdala Activity with Magnetoencephalography using Source Imaging

Published on: June 3, 2013

Voting behavior is reflected in amygdala response across cultures.

Nicholas O Rule¹, Jonathan B Freeman, Joseph M Moran

¹Psychology Department, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 02155, USA. nicholas.rule@tufts.edu

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

|December 8, 2009

Summary

Brain imaging reveals that the amygdala, a key emotion center, shows similar activity when people vote for political candidates across cultures. This suggests a universal neural basis for snap judgments in voting decisions.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Social Psychology
Political Science

Background:

Voting decisions are crucial yet poorly understood neurologically.
Behavioral studies show snap judgments of candidate faces predict outcomes, varying culturally.
The neural underpinnings of these cross-cultural social inferences remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the neural basis of voting decisions.
To explore cross-cultural similarities and differences in neural responses to political candidates.
To identify brain regions involved in snap judgments during simulated voting.

Main Methods:

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure brain activity.
Participants from American and Japanese cultures judged American and Japanese political candidates.
Simulated voting decisions were made based on candidate faces.

Main Results:

Stronger bilateral amygdala activation was observed for chosen candidates versus rejected candidates, irrespective of culture.
A significant interaction between participant culture and target culture was found in the bilateral amygdala.
Both American and Japanese participants showed heightened amygdala responses to outgroup faces, unrelated to voting choice.

Conclusions:

The bilateral amygdala plays a consistent role in voting decisions across cultures.
Cross-cultural consensus in social inferences may be linked to amygdala activity.
Cultural group membership influences amygdala responses to faces, independent of voting preference.