Dartmouth Events

Title: Behavioral and neural response to political rhetoric
Abstract: In recent years, the political climate has been distressing for many individuals, particularly those who identify as belonging to a historically marginalized group.   In a series of functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) studies we aimed to uncover neural responses to distressing political rhetoric and its relation to psychological well-being.   In the first section, I discuss two studies that examined whether mesolimbic circuitry and social support was associated with decreases in internalizing symptoms in individuals distressed by political climate following the 2016 U.S. presidential election.   Longitudinal examination of these individuals after one year revealed changes in reward sensitivity and striatal response as a function of distress, such that those who exhibited decreased accumbens activation to reward outcome were those who reported worsening distress.  In the second section, I introduce a novel “Tweet” task designed to test the hypothesis that tweets inclusive of negative, discriminatory content impact cognitive performance and associated neural correlates in prefrontal circuitry.  Participants in the negative tweet condition reported worsening affect and demonstrated performance interference on a spatial reasoning task compared to those in the neutral tweet condition; they also exhibited reductions in left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.  Together, this research illustrates the multi-faceted pathways through which political rhetoric influences psychological well-being and neural dynamics.