Political Leanings to Hidden Biases By Shankar Vedantam
When presented with negative information about the candidates they
liked, partisans of all stripes found ways to discount it, Westen said. When the unpalatable information was rejected,
furthermore, the brain scans showed that volunteers gave themselves feel-good pats — the scans showed that “reward centers” in
volunteers’ brains were activated. The psychologist observed that the way these subjects dealt with unwelcome information had
curious parallels with drug addiction as addicts also reward themselves for wrong-headed behavior.