A neuroscientist explains what could be wrong with Trump supporters’ brains

So how exactly are Trump loyalists psychologically or neurologically different from everyone else? What is going on in their brains that makes them so blindly devoted?

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

The Dunning-Kruger effect explains that the problem isn’t just that they are misinformed; it’s that they are completely unaware that they are misinformed. This creates a double burden.

Essentially, they’re not smart enough to realize they’re dumb.

Hypersensitivity to Threat

Science has unequivocally shown that the conservative brain has an exaggerated fear response when faced with stimuli that may be perceived as threatening.

These brain responses are automatic, and not influenced by logic or reason.

Terror Management Theory

The theory is based on the fact that humans have a unique awareness of their own mortality. The inevitably of one’s death creates existential terror and anxiety that is always residing below the surface. In order to manage this terror, humans adopt cultural world views — like religions, political ideologies, and national identities — that act as a buffer by instilling life with meaning and value.

By constantly emphasizing existential threat, Trump creates a psychological condition that makes the brain respond positively rather than negatively to bigoted statements and divisive rhetoric. Liberals and Independents who have been puzzled over why Trump hasn’t lost supporters after such highly offensive comments need look no further than Terror Management Theory.

High Attentional Engagement

His showmanship and simple messages clearly resonate at a visceral level.

Conclusion

So what can we do to potentially change the minds of Trump loyalists before voting in 2020? As a cognitive neuroscientist, it grieves me to say that there may be nothing we can do. The overwhelming majority of these people may be beyond reach, at least in the short term. The best we can do is to motivate everyone else to get out to the booths and check the box that doesn’t belong to a narcissistic nationalist who has the potential to damage the nation beyond repair.

Bobby Azarian is a neuroscientist affiliated with George Mason University and a science writer. His research has been published in journals such as Cognition & Emotion and Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, and he has written for The New York Times, Scientific American, Psychology Today, Slate, The Daily Beast, and The Huffington Post. He also runs the website Science Is Sexy. Follow him @BobbyAzarian.

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/04/neuroscientist-explains-wrong-trump-supporters-brains/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Why Mobilize Society?

Oregon

There was a time when the world was not locked in the grip of a climate crisis.  After over 130 years of science confirming that the laws of physics explain why the atmosphere is warming, we continue to watch and gather evidence.  We wait and delay.  We verify and confirm the warming atmosphere and oceans.  We avoid mobilizing everyone to take appropriate action.

I’m from Oregon.  Born and raised in a state that I love.  If you talk to anyone with cynicism about what causes the climate to change, invite them to visit Oregon.  Talk to the politicians and people who vote. Talk to business leaders and educators.  

If you talk to anyone with cynicism about the effects of climate change, invite them to visit Oregon.  Talk to the politicians and people who vote.  Read the reports, policy statements and laws passed.  Talk to the business leaders and people on the street.

Here you will not see the effect of a natural disaster or unanticipated crisis.  Oregon does not have a philosophy of government that measures the quality of decisions based on numbers on a piece of paper.  Oregon does not have a philosophy of government that says “you’re on your own.”  Oregon does not rely on a morally bankrupt philosophy.

Oregon politicians have thought of a way forward.  Oregon does not require winners and losers in an unregulated marketplace.  Oregon does not have evidence that our society, our economy or our community is a marketplace where we’re all on our own.

We are bound together as humans by the consequences of our actions here and now, and our actions that effect lives in India and future generations.  Oregon’s way forward means we’re next-door neighbors to people on the other side of the world.  Oregon’s way forward means we must protect future lives from the effects of unlimited climate change.

The rhetoric to justify imposing laissez-faire on society, so that only corporations profit, does not apply to Oregon.  We support a countermovement to protect society from the devastating consequences of markets.  Oregon’s way forward protects society from environmental degradation and destructive economic cycles.

Games and Imagination

Games help us solve complex problems.  Games exercise our imagination to solve a problem where the cause and effect are distant in time and space.  For example, climate change is a complicated system caused by carbon dioxide released in America effecting the lives of people in India ten years later when extreme weather kills people.

How do we know this?  One law of physics defines the energy in the atmosphere as the concentration of CO2 increases and absorbs radiant energy from the land and oceans. The Stefan-Boltzmann Law states that the energy is equal to a constant times temperature to the fourth power.  Climate change models (games) are based on this fundamental law of physics. Not everyone in Oregon needs to understand the physics of climate change.  We vote for politicians that rely on data, evidence and science.

Oregonians do not have the illusion of separateness.  The Oregon way forward imagines a society that is not in the middle of a moral crisis.  Oregonians experience the interdependence that bonds humans together to support a common way forward.

Models and forecasts of climate change are like games in that they imagine a world where cause and effect are distant in time and space from today. The Oregon way forward includes political and economic support for reducing emissions of CO2 from all sources.  Oregon politicians have played the climate game, using their imaginations, to envision a world with and without government protection for society.

Consequences of Voting

Oregonians vote time and again to expand our freedoms and liberty to include a whole range of socio-economic rights including a job and a quality education.  The movement is not without setbacks and suffering.  Like every other state, Oregon has wealthy citizens wanting to limit benefits solely to those who already have income, leisure and security.  

The conservative idea of a free market system limits the freedoms and liberty of 90 percent of the population. Fred Block and Margaret Somers in their book “The Power of Market Fundamentalism,” analyze Karl Polanyi’s critique of so called “free markets.”

The book describes the consequences of voting for politicians supporting a free market.  The children born to parents in the bottom half of the income distribution experience “dramatically diminished opportunities for upward social mobility.”  The US has experienced fundamental changes in society when social movements emerge outside of the organized political party system as a counter-movement to a free market society.

Mobilizing society to deal with the causes and effects of climate change requires a imagining a way forward that includes everyone in the world.  In Oregon, our votes have consequences that effect future generations and people living halfway around the world.

Vote for politicians in America to expand freedoms and liberty for all of society to include the right to an environment free of pollution, to affordable housing, to higher education for boys and girls, and to many other freedoms only available to the wealthy.  Vote to mobilize society.