Psychologists have discovered that it is possible to significantly alter people’s religious and political beliefs by merely stimulating their brains with magnets. With the help of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, researchers were able to temporarily shut down parts of the brain that are associated with identifying and solving problems. Those who participated in this study reported that their belief in God had reduced significantly while their feelings towards immigrants had become more positive.
Keise Izuma from University of York along with Colin Holbrook from University of California, Los Angeles recruited a group of 38 participants, aged 21 years on an average, to take part in their study. All of the participants said that they had significantly strong religious beliefs and a vast majority of them said that their political beliefs were either moderately or extremely conservative. Political views played an important role in the study as they suggested that the participants were more likely to have stronger opinions on the subject of immigration.
While half the participants constituted the control group that received a low-level sham procedure of TMS, which did not impact their brain functions, the other half received enough energy through TMS that did in fact lower activities in their posterior medial frontal cortexes. This part of the brain, situated near the surface, is known to identify problems and offer solutions.
After the procedure, all participants were questioned about their religious and political beliefs. The study, which was published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, revealed that those participants whose brains had been affected with TMS reported 32.8 percent less belief in God, heaven and angels. Additionally, they were 28.5 percent more positive in their feelings toward immigrants who criticized their country.
“We think that hearing criticisms of your group's values, perhaps especially from a person you perceive as an outsider, is processed as an ideological sort of threat,” said Izuma. “One way to respond to such threats is to 'double down' on your group values, increasing your investment in them, and reacting more negatively to the critic. When we disrupted the brain region that usually helps detect and respond to threats, we saw a less negative, less ideologically motivated reaction to the critical author and his opinions.”
According to the researchers, this reduction in religious beliefs and political prejudices highlights how such notions are greatly influenced by the part of the brain that identifies and solves problems. Given the narrow margin of the percentages, they concluded that there might be a link between a person’s religious beliefs and his or her political prejudices.
Izuma said, “People often turn to ideology when they are confronted by problems. We wanted to find out whether a brain region that is linked with solving concrete problems, like deciding how to move one's body to overcome an obstacle, is also involved in solving abstract problems addressed by ideology. We decided to remind people of death because previous research has shown that people turn to religion for comfort in the face of death. As expected, we found that when we experimentally turned down the posterior medial frontal cortex, people were less inclined to reach for comforting religious ideas despite having been reminded of death.”
Holbrook added that their findings prove how the same regions of the brain that have evolved to solve problems are repurposed to produce ideological reactions.
“The most striking finding was that the shifts in ideology did not appear driven by shifts in emotion. The participants did not report any difference in their emotional states whether their brain area had been turned down or not. In addition, we observed a decrease in emotionally positive beliefs in God, and an increase in acceptance of an emotionally negative, harsh critic of the participants' national groups. This shows that the findings were not driven by a general shift in responses to positive or negative emotional stimuli. Whether we're trying to clamber over a fallen tree that we find in our path, find solace in religion, or resolve issues related to immigration, our brains are using the same basic mental machinery,” he said.
Photo Credits: World Religion News
