Neither Democrats or Republicans Listen to Reason

Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without 
letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows.

And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to 
their point of view.

Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate 
information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 
Presidential election. The subjects' brains were monitored while they 
pondered.

The results were announced today.

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain 
normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical 
psychology at Emory University. "What we saw instead was a network of 
emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be 
involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in 
resolving conflicts."

Bias on both sides

POINTER
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/060124_political_decisions.html