14 DAY TRIAL // In a new set of studies conducted by experts at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and the universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht, a new type of brain behavior was discovered. Basically, it refers to the way people perceive opinion questions, even before they become aware of the answers that are normally associated with them, AlphaGalileo reports. The scientists found that moral-ethical and political beliefs “colored” our understanding of such questions, and also that this “coloring” took place long before people became aware of their answers to the questions.
A paper detailing the finds is published online in the July 27th issue of the journal Psychological Science. For their experiments, the investigators compiled a list of questions from political programs of various parties, which related to issues such as abortion, euthanasia, legal-marijuana selling initiatives, same-gender marriages, as well as women's emancipation. Each of the participants in the research was then asked to read out sentences such as, “I find euthanasia an acceptable practice,” or “I think the growing emancipation of women is a negative trend.”
Using precise brain measurements, the scientists detected the fact that reading such a sentence almost immediately triggered a reaction in the cortex, depending on the actual opinion that the specific individual had on the matter. The results of the study essentially showed that humans formed an opinion on a fragment of text they read within just 200 milliseconds from going through a passage, and that the cortex did not wait for a larger batch of information to be taken in, before forming an opinion.
The find could be of significant importance for studying language patterns, the team believes. Additionally, the experts say, this investigation could provide analysts with a new way of understanding how ethical and political ideas influence our though patterns. The research was conducted using an electroencephalogram (EEG) device, which analyzes the activity of brain waves in real time. Because of the reliability of the data, the scientists believe that the answers they collected could be also used for devising more accurate questionnaires and a better method of studying belief systems.