Is That Your Pre-Frontal Lobe, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

"Emory University psychologist Drew Westen put self-identified Democratic and Republican partisans in brain scanners and asked them to evaluate negative information about various candidates. Both groups were quick to spot inconsistency and hypocrisy -- but only in candidates they opposed.

"When presented with negative information about the candidates they liked, partisans of all stripes found ways to discount it, Westen said. When the unpalatable information was rejected, furthermore, the brain scans showed that volunteers gave themselves feel-good pats -- the scans showed that 'reward centers' in volunteers' brains were activated. The psychologist observed that the way these subjects dealt with unwelcome information had curious parallels with drug addiction as addicts also reward themselves for wrong-headed behavior."

Well, that explains a lot! Both about the minority of Americans who still believe El Presidente is doing the Lord's work in the best way possible and about my own staggering giddiness when beholding the hypocrisy of those who lecture all the rest of us about "morality" whilst sucking from the public teat. (You know who you are, V.F.)

The same article that offers the research above also clues us in on something that will have Ken Mehlman at the R.N.C. kicking up a huge fuss, over another psychological study which "found that supporters of President Bush and other conservatives had stronger self-admitted and implicit biases against blacks than liberals did."