Don’t know who to vote for in upcoming presidential primaries? Feeling lost and confused by the vast array of information? Perhaps a brain-scan could help.
Penn’s (or should I say Annenberg’s?) very own Kathleen Hall Jameson was one of several authors of yesterday’s New York Times editorial enticingly titled, This Is Your Brain on Politics. Basically, the team of researchers took brain scans of several independent voters as they saw images of presidential candidates or watched stump speeches.
Jameson threw voters’ deepest, darkest feelings about each candidate into the limelight.
Funny picture of Hillary after the jump!
When viewing images of [Senator Clinton], these voters exhibited significant activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, an emotional center of the brain that is aroused when a person feels compelled to act in two different ways but must choose one. It looked as if they were battling unacknowledged impulses to like Mrs. Clinton.
My question: what images of Hillary did they show? If it was anything like this one, I wouldn’t know where to start looking for my “unacknowledged impulses to like Mrs. Clinton.”
And apparently, Obama has, O, so much work to do. The brain was, o, so quiet while watching Obama’s pictures. I think the voters were just thinking, “O, he has big ears.”
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