Can brain scans detect political attitudes?

Which factors have a particularly strong influence on political sentiment?

Studies show that childhood and family in particular have a major influence; whether you grew up in a more conservative, religious home; whether you had a strict or less strict upbringing; whether you grew up in the country or in the city; all this also leaves its mark on the brain and shapes political attitudes. The social environment outside the family, both in childhood and at work later on, also plays a major role, as does socioeconomic background. And we know from numerous studies in the U.S. that ethnicity and experiences of discrimination can have a formative effect on both the brain and political views.

But in the brain patterns can still be seen, despite the multi-faceted influencing factors.

It seems that there are certain archetypes, that is, biographies that are similar to each other, and possibly have a tendency to produce certain patterns over time. But political attitudes are only a small part of this, to which one should not attribute the patterns found. Otherwise, it would be as if we saw the silhouette of a person and said, "There is clearly a hand here." In this case, a hand is indeed also to be seen, but more accurately it is a whole human being. An observation based on this kind of conclusion is always prone to error.Here we are only dealing with tendencies, not with fixed characteristics such as hair color. And in any case, there are significantly more factors of variance in biography and neurobiology than there are colors or political sentiments.

How meaningful, then, can any conclusions at all be drawn from patterns found in the brain to political sentiments?

The patterns do not allow any conclusive statements to be made, but there are certain tendencies that can be found in the brain, even in the case of complex characteristics such as personality or political views. The colleagues from Ohio State University have, in a way, revealed a kind of indicator of political attitude in the brain through the correlation they found, except that this does not have to be specific to political attitude, but could represent many other factors. I think this is the way to treat results from brain scans in terms of complex traits in the medium-term future: They don't provide reliable results, but they do reveal directions. And that can have many uses in the future.

Where, for example?

Whenever it is necessary to get a better insight into the "inner characteristics" of a person. At the doctor's office, in court, or, for example, in benefit allowance applications due to chronic pain. But, importantly: The interpretations of the brain scans are just tendencies that can contribute towards a more complex evaluation. A judgment based solely on the results of the analysis of brain scans will not be possible in the foreseeable future.

Don't you also see dangers in imagining this instrument ending up a bit more sophisticated in the hands of an authoritarian state?

Well, the means to accurately interpret the findings of the scans are still far too elaborate and too imprecise to be used on a large scale. And if it's just a matter of taking certain people out of circulation, then authoritarian states don't really need such complex justification.