Political ideology linked to subtle differences in our brains.

[Abolishinist]

10. A number of years ago I subscribed to MasterClass,

and one of the courses offered was on the art of negotiation. The instructor was Chris Voss, a former hostage negotiator for the FBI. I found his course to be utterly fascinating, and was able to use this in the real world as well. His focus centered on the activity of the amygdala, which is the nerve center of all emotions.

He talked about neuroscience experiments that were done where people were put in a fMRI scanner. They then showed them a photo that was selected to make them angry, sad, lonely, etc. This induced a negative emotion which increased activity on the scanner. They then asked them “what are you feeling”? After they responded by self-labeling their emotion the electrical activity in the amygdala decreased every time.

In his hostage negotiating work they referred to this as labeling, which they would use to calm a person down, obtain more information from them, and increase the level of trust they had in the negotiator. So they might say “you seem angry”, or “it sounds like you’re upset”, which made then reflect on how they were feeling and reduce the emotion.

A major take-away from the course was to be careful about using the word "why", which immediately puts someone on the defensive.