ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2021
Toward a neuropsychology of political orientation: exploring ideology in patients with frontal and midbrain lesions.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Amygdala and Politics.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- Effects of focal brain damage on political behaviour across different political ideologies.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2025Article
- Travelling beyond time: shared brain system for self-projection in the temporal, political and moral domains.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Article
- Functional connectivity signatures of political ideology.PNAS nexus · 2022Article
- The cognitive and perceptual correlates of ideological attitudes: a data-driven approach.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Computational and neurocognitive approaches to the political brain: key insights and future avenues for political neuroscience.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Political ideology, cooperation and national parochialism across 42 nations.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Protect Others to Protect Myself: A Weakness of Western Countries in the Face of Current and Future Pandemics? Psychological and Neuroscientific Perspectives.Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · 2021Article
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4 authors.
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Abstract
How do people form their political beliefs? In an effort to address this question, we adopt a neuropsychological approach. In a natural experiment, we explored links between neuroanatomy and ideological preferences in two samples of brain lesion patients in New York City. Specifically, we compared the political orientations of patients with frontal lobe lesions, patients with amygdala lesions and healthy control subjects. Lesion type classification analyses revealed that people with frontal lesions held more conservative (or less liberal) beliefs than those with anterior temporal lobe lesions or no lesions. Additional analyses predicting ideology by extent of damage provided convergent evidence that greater damage in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex-but not the amygdala-was associated with greater conservatism. These findings were robust to model specifications that adjusted for demographic, mood, and affect-related variables. Although measures of executive function failed to mediate the relationship between frontal lesions and ideology, our findings suggest that the prefrontal cortex may play a role in promoting the development of liberal ideology. Our approach suggests useful directions for future work to address the issue of whether biological developments precede political attitudes or
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