Health

Ideology May Not Be What You Think but How You’re Wired

Published

8 months ago

April 13, 2025

Ideology May Not Be What You Think but How You’re Wired

So sharp are partisan divisions these days that it can seem as if people are experiencing entirely different realities. Maybe they actually are, according to Leor Zmigrod, a neuroscientist and political psychologist at Cambridge University. In a new book, “The Ideological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking,” Dr. Zmigrod explores the emerging evidence that brain physiology and biology help explain not just why people are prone to ideology but how they perceive and share information.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

What is ideology?

It’s a narrative about how the world works and how it should work. This potentially could be the social world or the natural world. But it’s not just a story: It has really rigid prescriptions for how we should think, how we should act, how we should interact with other people. An ideology condemns any deviation from its prescribed rules.

You write that rigid thinking can be tempting. Why is that?

Ideologies satisfy the need to try to understand the world, to explain it. And they satisfy our need for connection, for community, for just a sense that we belong to something.

There’s also a resource question. Exploring the world is really cognitively expensive, and just exploiting known patterns and rules can seem to be the most efficient strategy. Also, many people argue — and many ideologies will try to tell you — that adhering to rules is the only good way to live and to live morally.

I actually come at it from a different perspective: Ideologies numb our direct experience of the world. They narrow our capacity to adapt to the world, to understand evidence, to distinguish between credible evidence and not credible evidence. Ideologies are rarely, if ever, good.

Q: In the book, you describe research showing that ideological thinkers can be less reliable narrators. Can you explain?

Remarkably, we can observe this effect in children. In the 1940s, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, interviewed hundreds of children and tested their levels of prejudice and authoritarianism, like whether they championed conformity and obedience or play and imagination. When children were told a story about new pupils at a fictional school and asked to recount the story later, there were significant differences in what the most prejudiced children remembered, as opposed to the most liberal children.

Liberal children tended to recall more accurately the ratio of desirable and undesirable traits in the characters of the story; their memories possessed greater fidelity to the story as it was originally told. In contrast, children who scored highly on prejudice strayed from the story; they highlighted or invented undesirable traits for the characters from ethnic minority backgrounds.

So, the memories of the most ideologically-minded children incorporated fictions that confirmed their pre-existing biases. At the same time, there was also a tendency to occasionally parrot single phrases and details, rigidly mimicking the storyteller.

So by “liberal” you mean flexible in thought rather than politically liberal, yes?

Right. The work with children is about prejudice rather than conservatism. Ideologues are strong partisans either to the left or right. Psychological rigidity is linked to ideological extremity regardless of the mission of the ideology.

Are people who are prone to ideology taking in less information? Are they processing it differently?

The people most prone to ideological thinking tend to resist change or nuance of any kind. We can test this with visual and linguistic puzzles. For instance, in one test, we ask them to sort playing cards by various rules, like suit or color. But suddenly they apply the rule and it doesn’t work. That’s because, unbeknownst to them, we changed the rule.

The people who tend to resist ideological thinking are adaptable, and so when there’s evidence the rules have changed, they change their behavior. Ideological thinkers, when they encounter the change, they resist it. They try to apply the old rule even though it doesn’t work anymore.

In one study you conducted, you found that ideologues and nonideologues appear to have fundamental differences in their brains’ reward circuitry. Can you describe your findings?

In my experiments I’ve found that the most rigid thinkers have genetic dispositions related to how dopamine is distributed in their brains.

Rigid thinkers tend to have lower levels of dopamine in their prefrontal cortex and higher levels of dopamine in their striatum, a key midbrain structure in our reward system that controls our rapid instincts. So our psychological vulnerabilities to rigid ideologies may be grounded in biological differences.

In fact, we find that people with different ideologies have differences in the physical structure and function of their brains. This is especially pronounced in brain networks responsible for reward, emotion processing, and monitoring when we make errors.

For instance, the size of our amygdala — the almond-shaped structure that governs the processing of emotions, especially negatively tinged emotions such as fear, anger, disgust, danger and threat — is linked to whether we hold more conservative ideologies that justify traditions and the status quo.

What do you make of this?

Some scientists have interpreted these findings as reflecting a natural affinity between the function of the amygdala and the function of conservative ideologies. Both revolve around vigilant reactions to threats and the fear of being overpowered.

But why is the amygdala larger in conservatives? Do people with a larger amygdala gravitate toward more conservative ideologies because their amygdala is already structured in a way that is more receptive to the negative emotions that conservatism elicits? Or can immersion in a certain ideology alter our emotional biochemistry in a way that leads to structural brain changes?

The ambiguity around these results reflects a chicken-and-egg problem: Do our brains determine our politics, or can ideologies change our brains?

If we’re wired a certain way, can we change?

You have agency to choose how passionately you adopt these ideologies or what you reject or what you don’t.

I think we all can shift in terms of our flexibility. It’s obviously harder for people who have genetic or biological vulnerabilities toward rigid thinking, but that doesn’t mean that it’s predetermined or impossible to change.

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Health

Judge rules West Virginia parents can use religious beliefs to opt out of school vaccine requirements

Published

6 hours ago

November 26, 2025

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Judge rules West Virginia parents can use religious beliefs to opt out of school vaccine requirements

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A West Virginia judge ruled on Wednesday that parents can use religious beliefs to opt out of school vaccine requirements for their children.

Raleigh County Circuit Judge Michael Froble on Wednesday issued a permanent injunction, saying children of families who object to the state’s compulsory vaccination law on religious grounds will be permitted to attend school and participate in extracurricular sports.

Froble found that a state policy prohibiting parents from seeking religious exemptions violates the Equal Protection for Religion Act signed into law in 2023 by then-Gov. Jim Justice.

West Virginia was among just a handful of states to offer only medical exemptions from school vaccinations when Gov. Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order earlier this year allowing religious exemptions.

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West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey said that the ruling “is a win for every family forced from school over their faith.” (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

However, the state Board of Education voted in June to instruct public schools to ignore the governor’s order and follow long-standing school vaccine requirements outlined in state law.

The board said following Wednesday’s ruling that it “hereby suspends the policy on compulsory vaccination requirements” pending an appeal before the state Supreme Court.

Morrisey said in a statement that the ruling “is a win for every family forced from school over their faith.”

Two groups had sued to stop Morrisey’s order, arguing that the legislature has the authority to make these decisions instead of the governor.

Legislation that would have allowed the religious exemptions was approved by the state Senate and rejected by the House of Delegates earlier this year.

The judge found that a state policy prohibiting parents from seeking religious exemptions violates the Equal Protection for Religion Act signed into law in 2023. (Julian Stratenschulte/dpa (Photo by Julian Stratenschulte/picture alliance via Getty Images))

The judge ruled that the failure to pass the legislation did not determine the application of the 2023 law. He rejected the defendants’ argument that religious exemptions can only be established by legislative moves.

“Legislative intent is not absolute nor controlling in interpreting a statute or determining its application; at most, it is a factor,” Froble said.

A group of parents had sued the state and local boards of education and the Raleigh County schools superintendent. One parent had obtained a religious exemption to the vaccine mandate from the state health department and enrolled her child in elementary school for the current school year before receiving an email in June from the local school superintendent rescinding the certificate, according to the lawsuit.

In July, Froble issued a preliminary injunction allowing the children of the three plaintiffs’ families in Raleigh County to attend school this year.

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State law requires children to receive vaccines for chickenpox, hepatitis B, measles, meningitis, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus and whooping cough before attending school. (iStock)

Last month, Froble certified the case as a class action involving 570 families who had received religious exemptions in other parts of the state. He said the class action also applies to parents who seek religious exemptions in the future.

Froble said the total number of exemptions so far involved a small portion of the statewide student population and “would not meaningfully reduce vaccination rates or increase health risks.”

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State law requires children to receive vaccines for chickenpox, hepatitis B, measles, meningitis, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus and whooping cough before attending school.

At least 30 states have religious freedom laws. The laws are modeled after the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was signed into law in 1993 by then-President Bill Clinton, allowing federal regulations that interfere with religious beliefs to be challenged.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Health

12 High-Fiber Foods That Burn Belly Fat Fast for Women Over 50

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24 hours ago

November 26, 2025

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12 High-Fiber Foods That Burn Belly Fat Fast for Women Over 50

12 High-Fiber Foods for Belly Fat That Make Weight Loss Easier Over 50 | Woman’s World

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Health

The deadly cancer hiding in plain sight — and why most patients never get screened

Published

1 day ago

November 26, 2025

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The deadly cancer hiding in plain sight — and why most patients never get screened

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A new study from Northwestern Medicine suggests that current lung cancer screening guidelines may be missing most Americans who develop the disease — and researchers say it’s time for a major change.

Published in JAMA Network Open, the study analyzed nearly 1,000 lung cancer patients who were treated at Northwestern Medicine between 2018 and 2023.

The goal was to see how many of those patients would have qualified for screening under existing guidance from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF).

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USPSTF currently recommends annual CT scans for adults ages 50 to 80 who have a 20 pack-year smoking history (the equivalent of one pack of cigarettes per day for 20 years) and either still smoke or quit within the last 15 years.

Only about 35% of those diagnosed with lung cancer met the current criteria to undergo screenings.

Current lung cancer screening guidelines may be missing most people who develop the disease, a new study shows. (iStock)

That means roughly two-thirds of patients would not have been flagged for testing before their diagnosis.

“Not only does that approach miss many patients who had quit smoking in the past or did not quite meet the high-risk criteria, it also misses other patients at risk of lung cancer, such as non-smokers,” Luis Herrera, M.D., a thoracic surgeon at Orlando Health, told Fox News Digital.

The study noted that these patients tended to have adenocarcinoma, the most common type of lung cancer among never-smokers.

Missed patients tended to have adenocarcinoma, the most common type of lung cancer among never-smokers. (iStock)

Those missed by the guidelines were more often women, people of Asian descent and individuals who had never smoked, the study found.

The research team also compared survival outcomes. Patients who didn’t meet the screening criteria had better survival, living a median of 9.5 years compared with 4.4 years for those who did qualify.

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While this difference partly reflects tumor biology and earlier detection, it also highlights how current screening rules fail to catch a broad range of cases that could be treated sooner, according to researchers.

“The current participation in lung cancer screening for patients who do qualify based on smoking history is quite low,” said Herrera, who was not involved in the study. This is likely due to the complexity of the risk-based criteria and stigma associated with smoking and lung cancer, he added.

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To test an alternative, the researchers modeled a different approach: screening everyone between the ages of 40 and 85, regardless of smoking history.

Under that universal, age-based model, about 94% of the cancers in their cohort would have been detected.

Universal screening procedures could save lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to the researchers. (iStock)

Such a change could prevent roughly 26,000 U.S. deaths each year, at a cost of about $101,000 per life saved, according to their estimates.

The study emphasized that this would be far more cost-effective than current screening programs for breast or colorectal cancer, which cost between $890,000 and $920,000 per life saved.

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Herrera noted the many challenges in the adoption of lung cancer screening, from lack of awareness to some providers not recommending the screening test.

However, he added, “The cost of screening is covered by most health insurance plans and many institutions also offer discounts for patients who don’t have insurance.”

“The current participation in lung cancer screening for patients who do qualify based on smoking history is quite low.”

Lung cancer remains the deadliest cancer in the country, killing more people each year than colon, prostate and breast cancer combined. But because of the narrow eligibility criteria based on smoking history, millions at risk never get screened.

Northwestern Medicine researchers argue that expanding screening to include all adults within an age range could help close those gaps, especially for groups often underdiagnosed.

Researchers argue that expanding screening to include all adults could help catch the missing cases. (iStock)

The study was conducted at a single academic center, which means the patient population may not represent the wider U.S. population. It also looked back at existing data, so it can’t prove how the new model would perform in real-world screening programs, the researchers acknowledged.

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The cost and mortality projections rely on assumptions that could shift depending on how screening is implemented.

The researchers also didn’t fully account for the potential downsides of broader screening, such as false positives or unnecessary follow-ups, they noted.

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For patients who don’t qualify for lung cancer screening, there are other opportunities for lung evaluations, including “heart calcium scores, CT scans and other imaging modalities that can at least evaluate the lungs for any suspicious nodules,” Herrera added.

Khloe Quill is a lifestyle production assistant with Fox News Digital. She and the lifestyle team cover a range of story topics including food and drink, travel, and health.