Partisans process policy-based and identity-based messages using dissociable neural systems

Abstract

Abstract Political partisanship is often conceived as a lens through which people view politics. Behavioral research has distinguished two types of “partisan lenses”—policy-based and identity-based—that may influence peoples’ perception of political events. Little is known, however, about the mechanisms through which partisan discourse appealing to policy beliefs or targeting partisan identities operate within individuals. We addressed this question by collecting neuroimaging data while participants watched videos of speakers expressing partisan views. A “partisan lens effect” was identified as the difference in neural synchrony between each participant’s brain response and that of their partisan ingroup vs. outgroup. When processing policy-based messaging, a partisan lens effect was observed in socio-political reasoning and affective responding brain regions. When processing negative identity-based attacks, a partisan lens effect was observed in mentalizing and affective responding brain regions. These data suggest that the processing of political discourse that appeals to different forms of partisanship is supported by related but distinguishable neural—and therefore psychological—mechanisms, which may have implications for how we characterize partisanship and ameliorate its deleterious impacts.