Volume 57, June 2024, 101385Author links open overlay panel, , , , Highlights•

Economic crises increase susceptibility to oversimplified political messages.

•

Our Threat-based Neural Switch theory offers insight into this phenomenon.

•

Threats shift neural networks, increasing receptivity to simplified messages.

History illustrates that economic crises and other sociopolitical threats often lead to a rise of polarization and radicalism, whereby people become more susceptible to intolerant political messages, including propaganda and ideological rhetoric. Political science, sociology, economics, and psychology have explored many dimensions of this phenomenon, yet a critical piece of the puzzle is still missing: what cognitive and neural mechanisms in the brain mediate between these threats and responsiveness to political messages? To answer this question, here, we present a theory that combines cognitive neuroscience theories, namely stress-induced memory shift and competitive cognitive processes, with political science. Our Threat-based Neural Switch Theory posits that the processing of political information, similarly to other information processing, is shaped by the competitive interaction between goal-directed and habitual processes. Threats, including resource overload or scarcity, can shift neural networks toward receptiveness to oversimplified political messages. This theory sets out a research program aimed at discovering the cognitive and neural underpinning of how situational factors alter brain functions and modify political information processing.

Section snippetsTheoretical background

The brain continuously extracts patterns and regularities from the information stream originating from our physical and social environments. It constructs models to utilize this knowledge for predicting and anticipating future events 34, 35, 36. The processes of acquisition and model-building, along with the complexity of the models, play a crucial role in our adaptation to the environment and our understanding of the world around us. These brain models are also integral to information

Implication of the Threat-based Neural Switch Theory

The main goal of this theoretical framework is to help understand responsiveness to dogmatic political messages, including its behavioral, cognitive, and neural components.

1)

This theory can help to identify the relationship between learning, memory systems, and responsiveness to oversimplified political messages. We suppose that this responsiveness correlates not only with executive functions and goal-directed memory processes [12] but also with habit-like learning processes, such as statistical

Conclusion

The Threat-based Neural Switch Theory and the resulting empirical research can facilitate a deeper understanding of ideological intolerance and evidence-resistant beliefs. Rather than describing these as a malfunction of singular cognitive systems or brain networks, we aim to consider the susceptibility to ideological messages from a situation-based neuroscientific perspective as reflecting an interactive imbalance between cognitive systems, such as habitual and goal-directed behavior. The

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgements

The research was supported by the ANR grant awarded within the framework of the Inserm CPJ (N° ANR-22-CPJ1–0042-01) (to D.N.); the National Brain Research Program by Hungarian Academy of Sciences (project NAP2022-I-1/2022) (to D.N.).

References and recommended reading (70)View full text

© 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.