People Refuse to Learn From Political Rivals, Even When It Would Help Them
In a brain-scan experiment, Democrats and Republicans watched the other side succeed and fail, then did not use what they had seen.
Stuff You Should Know · Social Identity Theory: Your Group Rules, Others DroolPeople will ignore a useful lesson when it comes from a political rival, even when copying it would help them.
In a 2021 study in the Journal of Neuroscience, 34 volunteers watched video of another person trying a hands-on task, such as carrying a tray of full beer steins, and then tried it themselves. When researchers told the watchers that the person in the video was from the other political party, Democrat or Republican, the watchers did not use what they had just seen. They did not copy a grip that worked, and they did not avoid a grip that made the tray fall over, even when using the lesson would have helped them.
That is 34 people in a brain scanner doing a low-stakes lab task, and the criticism raised in the source is that such results may not hold where the stakes are higher, such as expressing bias in public and facing pushback.
Questions people ask
What did the brain scans add?
In the cited discussion, the only detail given is that 34 people were scanned to see which parts of the brain were active while they watched and then tried the task. The discussion does not name a specific brain region in these segments. The takeaway presented is behavioral, that watchers did not use the rival's success or failure.