Dark art of neuropolitics allows politicians to mess with your mind

Professor Matt Qvortrup, one of the world’s leading political scientists, raises a red flag today over the threat neuropolitics poses. Qvortrup, familiar to many Scots due to his expertise in analysing referenda, is about to publish his latest book The Political Brain: The Emergence Of Neuropolitics.

He gave The Herald on Sunday exclusive access to his findings, including work done with brain scientists, and sat down for an in-depth discussion about the risks to democracy.

Qvortrup, who trained as a neuroscientist before moving into politics, is an expert on the decline of democracy.

His book Death By A Thousand Cuts: The Slow Demise Of Democracy is regarded as a seminal text. He is professor of political science and international relations at Coventry University, and editor-in-chief of the European Political Science Review.

Qvortrup often monitors referenda around the world on behalf of the international community. Currently, he’s in Australia observing the referendum on rights for Indigenous people.

Qvortrup turned his attention to neuropolitics as he “wanted to understand our current predicaments, like the rise of hate crime. We see a lot of anger in politics, a lot of irrational actions”.

He wanted to know why voters are choosing to back authoritarian, anti-democratic leaders like Donald Trump; why people turn against their best interests in votes like Brexit; and why so many recent political upsets are “emotionally driven”.

Matt Qvortrup

Findings

What he has found is both fascinating and disturbing. There are three key “political” parts of the brain. There’s the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex – behind your forehead and to the side. It governs what can be termed the “conservative mind”. “It’s activated when people are cautious,” Qvortrup says, “when you’ve decisions to make, and there are reasons why you shouldn’t act.”

People with cautious personalities “tend to have activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which goes with the traditional tendencies of small ‘c’ conservatives. People who self-reportedly say they’re ‘capital letter Conservative’ also tend to have activation here.”

Then there’s the insula – a “flap to the side of the brain”. This governs the “liberal mind”. It focuses on “empathy and sympathy”. The insula is “associated with holding more liberal beliefs … Pretty much all research suggests liberals – and those on the left

– are more likely to feel empathy, as an activated insula shows, than conservatives”.

Finally, there’s the amygdala – a very primitive part of the brain, which we share with animals. It’s the “populist” angry brain, the “Trumpian” brain. “The amygdala isn’t the thinking part of the brain – it’s impulse-driven. If you come at me with a gun, my amygdala will be very activated.”

If hardline Trump supporters see, for example, “pictures of Mexicans, or minority groups, the part of the brain that’s activated is the amygdala. Whereas if you show the same images to people of liberal persuasions, the insula activates”. So if the amygdala could speak it might shout “lock her up” or “build that wall”.

Importantly, that doesn’t mean the amygdala is exclusively “right wing”. It’s not. It’s populist, angry and unthinking. In previous decades, left-wing extremists like the Baader-Meinhof gang operated on the amygdala. It’s pretty likely that Bolsheviks and French revolutionaries who guillotined Louis XVI were under the amygdala’s sway. It just so happens that in the 2020s, the amygdala fits with hard-right politics.

Ideology

IN an interesting twist, however, one recent British experiment found that young people who identified as Conservative weren’t showing an activated dorsolateral prefrontal cortex – the classic Conservative brain, associated with One Nation Tories like Kenneth Clarke. Rather, young Conservatives showed increased amygdala activation.

Why? “Probably because being Conservative in Britain now means being populist,” says Qvortrup. In other words, as party ideology changes, so does the part of the brain which responds to its messaging. Qvortrup suggests these amygdala-driven Tories “probably ended up voting Brexit”.

Brain scans – FMRIs – make almost perfect lie detectors. Traditional lie detectors are accurate to about 65%; brain scans are almost “100%” accurate. Brain scans have even been used in Indian criminal trials. The company No Lie FMRI provides lie-detection services.

Qvortrup explains that if someone self-describes as liberal and tolerant, but their amygdala lights up in an FMRI when shown images of migrants, they’re clearly racist and lying.

The brain of, for example, Senator John McCain, a classic old-school Republican and bitter opponent of Trump before his death, wouldn’t in any way scan the same as a Republican-voting rioter at the Capitol.

Riot at the capitol

Susceptible

ATTEMPTING to determine someone’s political affiliations through their work, education and background is accurate around 65% of the time – FMRI scans are right around 90%. More liberal people will exhibit greater activation in the anterior cingulate cortex – “deep in the valley of the brain”.

It spots inconsistencies, meaning those with less activation are more “susceptible to arguments that don’t add up, like Brexit”. It’s also associated with being “wary of conflict”.

However, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, associated with more conservative views, is also linked to “fairness” and “economic rationality”. It activates when someone tries to con you.

So far, so theoretical, right? Well, let’s take the dark arts of neuropolitics into the real world. Mexico’s PRI Party, says Qvortrup, “used neuropolitical techniques to win votes”. Neuroscience shows that facial micro-expressions reveal when the amygdala lights up in brain scans. The PRI took that fact and ran with it. They put up photos of candidates near secret cameras and recorded the expressions of passers-by.

“Presto,” says Qvortrup. PRI could determine if candidates – or slogans, perhaps designed to elicit fear – really got inside potential voters’ heads … quite literally. “They used neuropolitical techniques to get the message right.” Here’s the shocker: PRI were up to these high jinks in 2012. Back then, neuropolitics was in its infancy, “things were pretty primitive”, says Qvortrup. The science has developed spectacularly since, however.

Trigger

QVORTRUP says there’s “more than anecdotal evidence” the 2016 Trump campaign deployed neuropolitical techniques. “Neuropolitics is happening in the real world,” he says, “that’s why we need to know about it.”

Fear is the “most potent” form of messaging used to trigger the amygdala, something the Trump campaign exploited ruthlessly. Fear was also exploited by hardline Brexiters: remember Nigel Farage’s notorious “Breaking Point” poster, showing huge lines of mostly non-white migrants?

Political campaign teams can use brain scans, Qvortrup says, to monitor how people react while they watch party broadcasts and adverts, honing messaging until it fires up the amygdala, unleashing waves of emotion in viewers.Politics is learning from neuro-marketing used by big corporations to persuade customers to buy their products. One German experiment showed how customers could be made to forgo their favourite chocolate for Duplo bars, a German brand, using tailored images and messaging. Neuroscientists put women in FMRI machines, showing them different Duplo merchandising.

Adverts were then created and put up across Germany. The experiment proved which messaging increased sales. People were buying Duplo bars, says Qvortup, “who preferred different brands”.

Coca-Cola even has an in-house neuroscience lab. One famous ad called Pool Boy – which linked sex, love and music to Coke – was proven in experiments to bury itself in participants’ memory banks, creating deep emotional intensity. Many adverts now prey on what’s called “the basal ganglia”, which “activates when we crave something”. Dopamine – a crucial neuro-transmitter - gets released, keying up “expected gratification”. It’s the same effect, says Qvortrup, gamblers experience when betting. It creates “excitement”.

Pavlov

“ADVERTISEMENTS,” says Qvortrup, “create Pavlovian reflexes. Now the very same techniques are being used in political marketing”. Political campaigners can now “figure out if people get a kick out of a particular ideology”. Music is often central to triggering the amygdala. Remember Tony Blair’s theme song Things Can Only Get Better?

Ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair plays the guitar with pupil Andrew Cragg on saxaphone

“Music fires you up,” Qvortrup says. “It can make us feel we’re all marching together.” Blair’s theme “would have created a sense of anticipation, that something was going to be pleasurable, namely a Labour government”.

The bottom line is this: politics doesn’t depend on rationality. It’s not the case that “people will understand that somebody like Hillary Clinton is better than Trump, or Brexit is a bad idea because of economic arguments”. The party which hits you up emotionally – that exploits “the primitive parts of your brain” – will probably win.

Intellect

Sounds depressing? Well, there’s an upside. When we engage in rational intellectual discussion all parts of the brain light up: insula, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, as well as the dorsomedial which governs self-reflection and questioning. In other words, we literally become open-minded, we show empathy, and caution – the “liberal brain” activates along with the more conservative. Philosophers’ brains show highly-developed dorsomedials, indicating how deeply they think.

Our “political brains” can also change. One fascinating study put Chinese people in an FMRI machine and showed them images of both Chinese and Caucasian patients getting injections and reacting in pain. It was an experiment, says Qvortrup, designed to explore “dehumanisation”.

For Chinese people who had never been abroad, scans showed little insula activation, in other words low empathy, when Caucasians suffered, but high empathy when Chinese people were in pain. For those who had lived abroad and met white people, there were similar levels of empathy for both Caucasians and Chinese. Repeat experiments in America showed effectively the same results for white people regarding their empathy for Chinese people in pain related to whether or not they had lived overseas and encountered different cultures.

This tallies with studies showing that those who live in Britain’s more multicultural areas are less racist compared to those in predominantly white areas. One American study showed how those in whitest areas, says Qvortrup, “would be the first to kick Mexicans out”.

Foreign

QVORTRUP explains Theresa May’s infamous “citizens of nowhere” speech played on this effect: lack of empathy for those deemed “foreign”. However, the “injection experiment” also proves the brain is “plastic”. If you experience other cultures, you become more tolerant and empathetic of “foreigners”, more “pro-multiculturalism”. So political belief isn’t “hardwired, we don’t just have brains that are once andfor all. We can, if exposed to certain things, become more tolerant and our brains change as a result. We learn to humanise others and ‘feel their pain’.”

However, “political campaigns often end up being very hateful” as it’s easy to trigger the amygdala-driven response against “the other”.

Significantly, the more we use different parts of our brain, the better our brain health. Being broad-minded has the same effect as “learning the saxophone at 60, or new languages at 80, it keeps neural pathways open”. In terms of Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, that matters. People who are “just angry”, says Qvortrup, basically “use one part of the brain”: the amygdala.

So, neuropolitics does two things: it “reveals how we can be hoodwinked into voting for parties because we’re susceptible to similar advertising big brands use”, and it also shows that if we use the “complex, evolved, highly sophisticated” parts of our brains, rather than the primitive side, to debate rationally about politics, we boost our brain health.

“The physical body gets healthy, as does the body politic,” Qvortrup adds. “Neuropolitics shows we can become healthier societies and individuals. If we use the parts of the brain that took six million years to evolve we can create better societies. But the problem is we’ve that leftover, residual brain – and the danger is populist, political campaigns focus on that, sending us backwards down the evolutionary ladder. This isn’t good for us as humans.”

Twitter

BUT here’s the rub: we live in the social media age. Rather than opening minds, we’re closing them. Twitter, says Qvortrup, is “tribal, amygdala-driven. Hate speech and amygdala activation are closely correlated”.

Qvortrup stresses that anybody – regardless of political affiliation – is “susceptible” to that amygdala response. Being an “old-fashioned conservative”, he underscores, “isn’t amygdala-driven” – it’s about caution.

“We’re all potential sinners,” he says. “We can all go down the route of being very angry.” As society has increasingly gone from “policy to politics” – in other words, abandoning debates about solutions, to just trying to beat the other side – the amygdala has come to dominate society.

Indeed, many left-wingers also show they’re amygdala-dominated if they yell “racist” or “bigot” at anyone they oppose. However, rage does predominate currently on the hard right. “The problem for the left is that currently it fails to “appeal to the emotions”, ” Qvortrup notes. The left just can’t fire up amygdalas the way the right currently can. Though, obviously, that wasn’t always the case if we think of the labour movement’s heyday. “There’s a place for anger,” says Qvortrup, “but just not when you’re trying to decide complex public policy issues. Political campaigns lend themselves to anger and referendums, as we know to our cost in Britain.”

Independence

HOWEVER, for Qvortrup the Scottish referendum wasn’t amygdala-driven. Those opposed were more “cautious” than angry. “Famously, just one egg was thrown, as opposed to Brexit where an MP was murdered,” he says, referring to the assassination of Jo Cox by a far-right terrorist.

Jo Cox

What made Brexit different? Social media, certainly. In 2014, Qvortrup says, fewer of us were on Twitter. By 2016, that changed. “From a political campaigning perspective, amygdala-driven responses are strongest.”

We talk of “the death of democracy”, says Qvortrup, as politics now “appeals to the amygdala to the extent where people start thinking irrationally and vote for demagogues”.

To some extent, the amygdala echoes Sigmund Freud’s concept of the “id” – the dark, destructive and dangerous side of human nature, Qvortrup suggests. Campaigns, particularly among Team Trump, have “road-tested” neuropolitical ideas “for populist messages, to see what kind of hates works best, what activates the amygdala.

“It’s not that this is a potential danger – it’s already being used. My fear isn’t that this will be abused by populist campaigners, it’s already being abused by sinister campaigns. Unless we start talking about it, more of us will be hoodwinked into being susceptible to hate speech. If we know about neuropolitics, we can at least be cautious.”

Warning

Qvortrup says his forthcoming book The Political Brain is “a warning shot” to “fireproof” voters against exploitation. He notes that the threat of the emotions being politically exploited was known by the ancient Greeks. Socrates famously opposed the “Sophists” – effectively spin doctors of their day – accusing them of using “the techniques of salesmen. As long as we’ve had democracy, you’ll get sinister people. We need to expose them and their practices”.

He adds: “Fundamentally, we’re being played, and played increasingly. If you can use neuroscience to convince people to eat different chocolate bars, think what you can do in political campaigning. At least corporations are relatively upfront about it. There’s a time and place for emotions, but if reason completely falls by the wayside – if we’re only passionate and not reasonable – then we come to a very dark place where we don’t want to be.

“I make bold claims in this book, and I think people of a more right-wing persuasion will be less happy with it, but at the same time there’s pretty solid evidence suggesting those who are far-right are less sophisticated in their use of the brain.

“If people are reacting with the part of the brain that we didn’t need evolution for, that we’ve had for six million years, as opposed to parts of the brain we’ve had only for the last half million years, then that indicates something.”

Fundamentally, then, modern politics, Qvortrup says, is making some of us “devolve, or perhaps regress”. Clearly, though, we’ve been here before. Hitler directly “appealed to hate”, and left-wing terrorists in the 1970s like the Red Brigade traded in rage and violence.

What’s significant today, says Qvortrup, is that populists pushing that amygdala-driven anger are “backed by big banks, that makes them rather like the people who had similar support in the 1930s – that’s where things become very dangerous”.

And if this all worries you, perhaps you ain’t seen nothing yet. Imagine what society may become, Qvortrup suggests, when AI meets social media and neuropolitics. “The algorithm will get us into a vicious amygdala-driven cycle.”

Qvortrup says if we think of the 1960s with its spirit of peace and love, that was almost “the age of the insula”. The 1980s with Thatcherism and Reaganomics was “the age of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex”.

Today, we’re in “the age of the amygdala. It’s almost like different parts of the brain have their own decades”.