POLITICAL DISPATCHES

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These days, the most-quoted experts on campaigns and elections, such as UVa's Larry Sabato, come from political science departments. One day -- perhaps sooner than we think -- they might come from neuroscience departments. Recent research has offered fascinating insights into why politically inclined people act the way they do.

Ever wondered why your neighbor, who speaks seven languages and graduated magna cum laude from law school, could still be so woefully wrong about contemporary issues? Why can't a smart guy like him see the truth?

Drew Westen, a psychologist at Emory University, has a partial explanation. Using brain scans, he found that the reward centers of our brains light up like Christmas trees when we reject information that does not square with our preconceived ideas.

So when you tell your neighbor something he doesn't want to hear about climate change or tax policy, rather than review the new information objectively, he will think up a reason to explain why you're wrong -- then unconsciously pat himself on the back for having done so. If he is very smart, the reason he comes up with might be very clever. But his brain chemistry still looks a lot like the brain chemistry of a drug addict who has just gotten his fix. Ahhh!

Jonas Kaplan, a psychologist at the University of California, has found that politically active people also process displeasure differently. Most of us instinctively minimize it, like the fox in the fable who decided the grapes it couldn't reach were sour anyway. But partisans do just the opposite -- they instinctively guard against anything that might lower their antagonism.

Now David Pizarro at Cornell has added another element: disgust. In a study reported in the journal Cognition & Emotion, he finds that people who are easily disgusted tend to hold more conservative views on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion. There may be an evolutionary aspect involved: Disgust prevents you from eating feces or rotten food, thereby increasing the odds of perpetuating your genetic code -- something neither homosexuality nor abortion is likely to do. At the other end of the scale from disgust is what UVa moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls "elevation" -- that feeling of being inspired and uplifted that people get from watching a movie about someone triumphing over adversity . . . or from listening to a powerful orator, such as Barack Obama.

University of Pennsylvania psychologist Paul Rozin says disgust is "probably the most powerful emotion that separates your group from other groups."

That might help explain why partisans tend to focus on those in the opposite party whom they find most obnoxious. Dwelling on the revolting personas of Rush Limbaugh or Nancy Pelosi is the surest way to reassure yourself that you made the right decision when you chose to become a Democrat or a Republican in the first place. Ahhh!

What does all this prove? Perhaps not much, beyond the fact that people who hold strong political views tend to be fairly set in their ways -- so the best means of building a political party is to get people hooked while they're young. Sabato, whose classes on politics remain wildly popular among undergraduates, knew that all along.

-- A. Barton Hinkle