ArticleScientific reports2016
Neural correlates of maintaining one's political beliefs in the face of counterevidence.
Article in Scientific reports, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed.
- Investigation of brain activation and functional connectivity characteristics following tennis-induced acute fatigue: evidence from fNIRS.European journal of applied physiology · 2026Article
- Prestige, Pride, and Belief: A Hypothesized Neural Integration Framework for Status, Identity, and Modern Polarization.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- Off-Label Medications and Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation (NIBS) in the Treatment of Internet Gaming Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Addictive behaviors reports · 2026Review
- Resting-state brain network alterations in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis using functional near-infrared spectroscopy.Biomedical engineering online · 2026Article
- Threat and blame frames in political rhetoric about societal issues lead to neural and political polarization.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Changes in political attitudes are associated with changes in neural responses to political content.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Neural correlates of belief change in political and non-political domains among left-wing individuals confronted with counterarguments.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Who's Interested in Global Warming?Scandinavian journal of psychology · 2025Article
- The Dark Side of Moral Conviction-Integrating Political Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Neuroscience.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- Neural correlates of conspiracy beliefs during information evaluation.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Article
- Self-referential belief shares common neural correlates with general belief.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Unlocking the power of antimicrobial peptides: advances in production, optimization, and therapeutics.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2025Review
- Placebo Effects: Neurological Mechanisms Inducing Physiological, Organic, and Belief Responses-A Prospective Analysis.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Deciphering the neural responses to a naturalistic persuasive message.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Tracking politically motivated reasoning in the brain: the role of mentalizing, value-encoding, and error detection networks.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Article
- Overcoming resistance to belief revision and correction of misinformation beliefs: psychophysiological and behavioral effects of a counterfactual mindset.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Thinking about Believing: Can Metacognitive Reflection Encourage Belief Updating?Journal of Intelligence · 2024Article
- Neurocomputational mechanisms of biased impression formation in lonely individuals.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Using lickometry to infer differential contributions of salience network regions during compulsion-like alcohol drinking.Addiction neuroscience · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
People often discount evidence that contradicts their firmly held beliefs. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms that govern this behavior. We used neuroimaging to investigate the neural systems involved in maintaining belief in the face of counterevidence, presenting 40 liberals with arguments that contradicted their strongly held political and non-political views. Challenges to political beliefs produced increased activity in the default mode network-a set of interconnected structures associated with self-representation and disengagement from the external world. Trials with greater belief resistance showed increased response in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and decreased activity in the orbitofrontal cortex. We also found that participants who changed their minds more showed less BOLD signal in the insula and the amygdala when evaluating counterevidence. These results highlight the role of emotion in belief-change resistance and offer insight into the neural systems involved in belief maintenance, motivated reasoning, and related phenomena.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.