Judging brains by politics? That’s not science. ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, April 09, 2025

Judging brains by politics? That’s not science.

As my readers know, I have been on a "Jewish ethics" kick recently, writing essentially a chapter a day of a planned book on antisemitism and different ideologies. My theory is that making Jewish ethics part of our everyday thought process can help teach people not only how to fight antisemitic philosophies but also to help restore Western civilization from what it is becoming.

This exercise is reshaping my own thinking, as I increasingly view everything I read through this ethical lens. (My upcoming chapter/post uses this to analyze Seinfeld, Star Trek and other topics.)

So when I saw this interview in the New York Times with a brain scientist that claims that some people's brains might be wired to make them right-wing unthinking drones, I cannot resist pointing out that the problematic thought processes come from the NYT and the scientist, not the "conservatives."

So sharp are partisan divisions these days that it can seem as if people are experiencing entirely different realities. Maybe they actually are, according to Leor Zmigrod, a neuroscientist and political psychologist at Cambridge University. In a new book, “The Ideological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking,” Dr. Zmigrod explores the emerging evidence that brain physiology and biology help explain not just why people are prone to ideology but how they perceive and share information.

What is ideology?

It’s a narrative about how the world works and how it should work. This potentially could be the social world or the natural world. But it’s not just a story: It has really rigid prescriptions for how we should think, how we should act, how we should interact with other people. An ideology condemns any deviation from its prescribed rules.

Any scientist knows that when you start with an incorrect premise, then everything that follows is likely to be wrong as well.

Judaism is an ideology. It is, as we have seen, far more flexible than progressive or Marxist or other Leftist ideologies. It is the counterexample that proves the premise wrong.

You write that rigid thinking can be tempting. Why is that?

Ideologies satisfy the need to try to understand the world, to explain it. And they satisfy our need for connection, for community, for just a sense that we belong to something.

There’s also a resource question. Exploring the world is really cognitively expensive, and just exploiting known patterns and rules can seem to be the most efficient strategy. Also, many people argue — and many ideologies will try to tell you — that adhering to rules is the only good way to live and to live morally.

I actually come at it from a different perspective: Ideologies numb our direct experience of the world. They narrow our capacity to adapt to the world, to understand evidence, to distinguish between credible evidence and not credible evidence. Ideologies are rarely, if ever, good.

OK, let's see who is dogmatic in their thinking.

Rigid thinkers tend to have lower levels of dopamine in their prefrontal cortex and higher levels of dopamine in their striatum, a key midbrain structure in our reward system that controls our rapid instincts. So our psychological vulnerabilities to rigid ideologies may be grounded in biological differences.

In fact, we find that people with different ideologies have differences in the physical structure and function of their brains. This is especially pronounced in brain networks responsible for reward, emotion processing, and monitoring when we make errors.

For instance, the size of our amygdala — the almond-shaped structure that governs the processing of emotions, especially negatively tinged emotions such as fear, anger, disgust, danger and threat — is linked to whether we hold more conservative ideologies that justify traditions and the status quo.

Some scientists have interpreted these findings as reflecting a natural affinity between the function of the amygdala and the function of conservative ideologies. Both revolve around vigilant reactions to threats and the fear of being overpowered.

But why is the amygdala larger in conservatives? Do people with a larger amygdala gravitate toward more conservative ideologies because their amygdala is already structured in a way that is more receptive to the negative emotions that conservatism elicits? Or can immersion in a certain ideology alter our emotional biochemistry in a way that leads to structural brain changes?

The ambiguity around these results reflects a chicken-and-egg problem: Do our brains determine our politics, or can ideologies change our brains?

Her research is based around differences in "conservative" and "liberal" brains. She makes an assumption that "traditions" are part of the problem. Her research appears to assume that liberals, however she defines them, are more flexible in their thinking than conservatives. Furthermore, she does not consider that there are leftist ideologies by her own definition that are just as rigid in their thinking as anyone on the Right.

Her assumptions are themselves flawed and show that she is the one with inherent biases and rigid thinking.

In Zmigrod’s telling, flexible thinking is good—and seemingly aligned with progressive values—while rigidity is associated with conservative ideology. The implication is clear: one side of the spectrum is more “evolved” neurologically. But anyone paying attention knows that rigidity, groupthink, and moral absolutism exist across the political spectrum.

You don’t need a neuroscience degree to recognize the ideological rigidity of, say, campus cancel culture or dogmatic anti-Israel activism. But somehow, those examples are invisible to this analysis—because the premise is already loaded.

Zmigrod makes an assumption that having "traditions" is evidence of rigidity. Where does that come from? Is brushing your teeth every morning evidence of an atrophied brain? Is choosing to stop at a red light ruining your ability to think?

A more subtle but critical point. Zmigrod says that ideology is a narrative about how the world works and how it should work. Isn't putting everyone in the cookie cutter category of "right " and "left" and then demonizing the "right" an ideology by her very definition?

My recent writings examine antisemitic ideologies, on the right, left, and seemingly places that don't fit either. From the Jewish perspective, differences between "right" and "left" are arbitrary. We've been around long enough to see how supposedly liberal positions can suddenly become conservative and vice versa. We've been persecuted by both sides. And there are good people on both sides, too.

Zmigrod, and the New York Times, look at the world through the ideological glasses that the defining feature of a person is whether they are on the Left or Right. That premise is wrong. When you study antisemitism, you can see that those who hate Jews come from all parts of the ideological spectrum - meaning that we are looking at the spectrum wrong. Since every normal person should agree that antisemitism is wrong, then any ideology or political position that accepts or encourages it is by definition an immoral philosophy. So that is a better lens to use when deciding who is moral and who is immoral.

The real divide seems to be between those who tend to extremes and those who can understand other viewpoints. The extremist Left is not morally superior to the extreme Right, and there are plenty of conservatives who think more clearly and objectively than much of the Left. Zmigrod's research would be valuable if she would ask the right questions to begin with.

The intellectuals in the West today have elevated political thinking so much that they cannot see past politics to the real differences between people.

It isn't whether people have ideologies. Everyone has ideologies, whether they admit it or not. It is whether their ideologies are rigid and extremist, whether they have blind spots, whether they demonize people because they have a different way of looking at the world.

Asking the wrong questions guarantees coming to the wrong conclusions. That is a problem for everyone - Right and Left. Leor Zmgrod calls herself a "political psychologist." Can she not see how her own self-definition can blind her to other ways of looking at the world - that she might be subject to the same rigid mindset that she accuses others of?

Being able to apply a different and time tested way of thinking, like the Jewish ethical lens, helps everyone see things flexibly and more accurately - no matter what their politics.