Thinking as a matter of convenience

[Kaelan]

Hopefully not OFN

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11009379/

Several Democratic and Republican campaign workers were tested by presenting them with contradictory statements from various candidates, followed by additional statements that could explain away the contradictions.

They could easily see the contradictions for candidates other than theirs, whether from the other major party or from third parties. But when it came to their own, they became incapable of seeing the contradictions.

Democrats and Republicans both adept at ignoring facts, brain scans show

And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to their point of view.

A brain-scan technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, revealed a consistent pattern. Both Republicans and Democrats consistently denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate but detected contradictions in the opposing candidate.

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."

"The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data," Westen said.

How many times have we seen people turn totally obtuse when presented with counterevidence to their viewpoints?

They decided what to believe because of what they wanted to believe, rather than what was the most reasonable conclusion.

The conclusions here on how belief works are obviously nothing new, but it's nice to see actual scientific evidence on it

[Ghost_Wheel22]

So it takes science to figure out "no u!"?