People Who Share Ideology Have Similar 'Neural Fingerprints'

People who share a political ideology have more similar “neural fingerprints” of political words and process new information in similar ways, according to a new analysis. Individuals who share an ideology have more similar neural fingerprints of political words, experience greater neural synchrony when engaging with political content, and their brains sequentially segment new information into the same units of meaning. That neurosynchrony, FeldmanHall explains, is considered evidence that the brains are processing the information in a similar way. The researchers note that individuals who shared an ideology had more similar neural representations of political words and experienced greater neural synchrony while watching the political videos, and segmented real-world information into the same meaningful units. “Our work showed that these polarized beliefs are very entrenched, and go all the way down to the way people experience a political word.