Co-researchers from the University of York and the University of California released the news today that they were able to use a technique to temporarily shut down parts of the brain and subsequently alter the beliefs of their subjects, all by using a coiled magnet and waving it around the subjects’ brains. The following is an illustration of the technique, called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation:
According to the study, the researchers were able to significantly reduce their subjects’ beliefs in God (“religiosity”) and reduce their fear of immigrants (“ethnocentrism”)! Thirty eight self-described hard core conservatives allowed researchers to use a magnet coil positioned over their brains to simply wave away their beliefs. Amazing.
What is even more amazing is that this was only half of the success. With the wave of a magnetic coiled wand, the researchers were able to not only confirm what many on the Left have known all along–that conservatism is certainly a mental sickness–but also, that there’s a cure for it!
Woot, woot!
All sarcasm aside, this was a real study with the specific goal of “adjusting behavior” with respect to what the researchers are calling “religiosity and ethnocentrism”. They achieved at least a moderate success in doing so: The belief in God was reduced an average of nearly 33% and there was an average of 28.5% increase in positive feelings about “immigrants who have criticized their country”, i.e., “ethnocentrism”.
It is curious that these very specific and seemingly unrelated topics—what people without a political bias would call the belief in God and a belief in their nation’s sovereignty–were part of the initial research study. Why? It seems to me that the choice of what and who were tested reveals more about the political positioning of the researchers than the results of the experiment reveal about how the brain works. Just the opening paragraph of the study’s abstract alone reveals more than the researchers would probably care to admit about themselves:
“People cleave to ideological convictions with greater intensity in the aftermath of threat.”
So, people “cleaving to ideological convictions” for any reason–not just after they have been threatened–is something that should be adjusted? Methinks the researchers are cleaving to some pretty serious ideological convictions themselves.
It is also interesting that the researchers didn’t try to alter any other human characteristics–such as helping a subject forget a traumatic memory of a horrible event–especially when stated pretense is that humans have “strong reactions to threatening events”.
Overall, I think we conservatives have a pretty good idea as to why these two issues were tested. Now comes the real question–how will the results of this study be used? They certainly can’t let a good study go to waste, not with results like this.
H/T Rush Limbaugh for mentioning on the radio today; photo credit: NIMH.gov