That Neuroscience Guy - Season 10 Premier - The Neuroscience of Politicians

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Politicians are becoming increasingly eye-catching in the modern world, as is the prevalence of so-called "fake-news". In today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we discusss the neuroscience behind how our brains criticize, consider, and embrace modern modern politicians. 

Hi, my name is Olav Kurgolson and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. And welcome back. I would assume most of you thought that Matt and I had abandoned you and that's a fair assumption. I think it's been two months since we released an episode. Well obviously we took a bit of a Christmas break. Sorry about that but it was what it was. But then actually

I got really sick for a couple weeks so it just knocked me completely out and I'm just slowly getting back into the swing of things. So we're not going away we're here for you. We have another full season of episodes ahead. So thank you for your patience. Hopefully we haven't lost you as listeners, but we're back for you. That neuroscience guy is back on the air. I don't even know if on the air makes sense anymore

in this day and age, but you get what I mean. All right, let's get going. So I don't wanna name any names or take any positions, but you know, sometimes politicians say and do things that make us really, really question the world in a sense. We listen to their comments, we see their actions, and we're scratching our heads, kind of going, what? They say things that we're just like, how could you even say that or believe that? And to be fair, that doesn't matter

whether you're on the liberal side or the conservative side of things. Both sides look at the other side and think the same things. And the other thing that astounds me in this day and age is it's a matter of record that pretty much every politician lies. Some just lie more than others, but every single politician lies. They tell us things that aren't true. So today, on the podcast to start off this new season, the neuroscience of politicians. Well, let's start with something that's kind of obvious, which is why do we believe the lies?

Like if a politician says something that we know not to be true, why do we believe it? Well, first of all, we might not know it's not true. All right. And what I mean by that is it goes back to themes throughout the podcast, which is this left brain, right brain sort of thing. And I want to be clear when I talk about this, this isn't left brain versus right brain thinkers.

This is a model of how we think the prefrontal cortex works. And within this model, the left prefrontal cortex is primarily responsible for maintaining your worldview. So you have a view of the world. You believe that when apples fall from trees, they drop to the ground. You believe that in the summer, it should be warmer than the winter, and so on and so forth.

And the left prefrontal cortex, its job is to maintain this worldview. So if you encounter information that's counter to the worldview, it basically suppresses or biases against that information, if that makes sense. So your left brain is going, well, hey, no, no, I'm gonna disregard that

because it doesn't really fit with what I think is true. All right? And the role of the right prefrontal cortex is to update the worldview. So at some point you have sufficient evidence that you believe that your worldview is wrong or it needs a bit of modification. So if you think of politicians and lying,

all right, what happens is when they say something, it basically aligns with our worldview if you believe it. All right, so, and if you don't believe it, the same thing is true, right? So let's say that you believe the lie, whatever it is. Well, that's because the lie aligns with your worldview. All right, so if we think back to coronavirus and vaccinations, right? Some people believe that vaccinations worked

and were a good idea, and some people didn't. All right? So if your worldview was that vaccinations did work and you got information affirming that, then guess what? Your left brain would just go, well, this makes sense. This aligns with the worldview. And if you got information that vaccines didn't work, to a point your left brain would suppress that information

and say, well, you know, that's not quite right. I believe vaccines work. Now, at some point, if you found out and there was sufficient information that vaccines didn't work, then your right brain would overrule this and change your worldview. And conversely, if you believe that vaccines didn't work, and that was your worldview, then your left brain would maintain that and suppress information showing that vaccines do work.

But at some point again, if you had sufficient information the right brain or the right prefrontal cortex more specifically would chime in and go well hang on a second. All right vaccines do work based on this evidence and would update your world view. Now I'm not taking a stand there on purpose. I'm going to sit on the fence. My personal opinions are mine. You get the idea with politicians, right? If they tell you a lie, right? Something that's clearly, you know, what's interesting is if you believe the lie, you think it is true.

And those of us on the other side would be saying, well, that's clearly a lie. How can they say that? But it's just your left brain maintaining that. The other reason we believe the lies that politicians tell us and we know politicians 100% honest. If you believe that then you're lying to yourself. But is emotion. A lot of politicians make plays to emotion.

If you remember our old friend the amygdala, it biases your decisions. So if a politician biases your decisions, right? So if a politician makes a play to emotions, the reason they're doing that is that they know it's gonna bias your decisions. You might actually choose to do something that's irrational or choose to believe something that doesn't make perfect sense,

but that play to emotion, all right, that will help bias your decisions. So that's why we believe the lies and why we, or we don't see the lie, right? If you believe it, it's because your left brain is telling you it's there and that's your left prefrontal cortex. Now, there's more to it than just the lies

that politicians say. Do politicians believe the things that they say? You know, if a politician looks out at the world and says some of this stuff, do they believe what they're saying? Well, it's actually the exact same logic, right? In their worldview, what they're saying is a true statement. All right? So they see the world and they go, well, hey, this is a true statement about the world because it fits my worldview. Alright, and the left prefrontal cortex is sitting there reinforcing it.

So the politician goes, yeah, well see, there's my brain affirming this. And remember, this of course is all subconscious. This builds up to stuff that becomes conscious at some level. And again, if a politician got sufficient evidence that things weren't great, all right, then at some point they would update their worldview that, hey, this isn't true, all right. And this is true if you think back historically, because I'll use historical examples,

you know, as the Second World War was beginning to come about, there were a lot of people in England that looked at Germany and went, well, this Hitler guy isn't that bad, you know, because it fit with their worldview, some of what he said. But at some point there was sufficient evidence that most people, I would like to think, their worldview was overturned and they went, well, hang on a second. All right, this Hitler guy isn't so great. So I need to change my worldview about this.

So politicians, they tend to believe what they say because it's their worldview. Now, the last thing I'll touch on in our brief time together is why do politicians make decisions that we might go, what could you possibly be thinking? Like, why would you do that? I won't say anything here, although I'm really tempted to, but you could imagine like defunding science, for instance, that happened to us in Canada, not that

long ago where the government in Canada decided to reduce funding to science. Now luckily the current government, although they're on their way out, isn't doing that. They're actually very pro science. But you have to remember, and we've talked about this in a lot of contexts, but when people make decisions that you disagree with or you can't understand, you have to remember that they have their own value framework, right? So they look at the world and it's not quite the same as the worldview thing. Cause you're talking about choices. They have a choice a and a choice B and whatever those two choices are.

Right. And I'll give you a humorous example. You know, what should I have for lunch today? Should I have sushi or tofu? All right. I personally have never gotten into tofu. So for me, choosing sushi is a no-brainer. I have a higher value for sushi if you think back to our talks on decision making. But some people choose sushi. Now in my world view, in my framework, I go, that's a crazy decision. Why would you ever possibly choose tofu? But in their world view worldview it's a perfectly rational

choice, alright? What they're choosing to do or eat makes sense. So when you think about politicians making crazy decisions, you know, when they make that decision within their framework, their value framework of the world, what they see is they see a choice that has high value that aligns with their worldview. So the two things go hand in hand and because it's a higher value choice to them at that point in time, that's what they tend to go with. So there you go. Politicians. Why do we believe the lies? Because in our world, it's not a lie. It aligns with our worldview. Our left prefrontal cortex is going, yep, this

makes sense. And if you're looking at it and you think it's a lie, well, it's because guess what? Your left prefrontal cortex and your worldview is different. All right. Do they believe what they say? Yes, same logic within their worldview. The things they're saying make sense. Now in some cases, I have to admit, they're probably deliberately lying to you, but that's a whole other ball game. And then why do politicians sometimes make what we would call crazy decisions? Well, again, it ties to their worldview, but also their value framework.

They're choosing a choice that within their value framework makes sense. It's the highest value choice, so they go with it. All right, there's a quick bit on the neuroscience of politicians. Hopefully that just allowed you to look at the world today the way it is and think about what's going on and think, okay, well, maybe I don't agree with it, but at least I understand why it's happening and why people are thinking the way they do and why some of our politicians are making the choices and acting the way they are. All right, we still have a website, thatneuroscienceguy.com. There's links to Patreon. Thanks to those of you that support us there. It's awesome. All of the money goes to our production team. We actually have added a new member. Matt has got some support now. We'll go into that in a future episode.

All right, there's also links to Etsy. Our t-shirts are still there. We sell one a month or two a month. It's not a lot, but thank you for those of you that buy them. I'm just laughing because I keep promising new designs and to up our game. But the reality is between Matt and I, we don't exactly have a lot of artistic or creative talents at least in terms of

t-shirts and merch. Of course if you have ideas everything we're talking about this season was suggested by you the listeners on X or threads at that Neurosci Guy or you can email us that NeuroscienceGuy at gmail.com and last but not least thank you for listening to the podcast. Sorry once again for the hiatus. We've got lots of content planned. We're going to be going hard until we're into the summertime when we take another break. So if you have ideas, keep sending them, but we're listening to you.

And thank you for being patient and thank you for listening. My name is Olav Krogolson and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll see you soon for another episode of the podcast.