Our brains are “wired” to learn more from people we like and less from people we don't like. This has been demonstrated by cognitive neuroscience researchers in a series of experiments.
Memory plays a vital role, as it allows us to learn from new experiences and update existing knowledge. We learn both from individual experiences and from connecting them to draw new conclusions about the world. In this way, we can make inferences about things that we don't necessarily have direct experience of. This is called memory integration and makes learning fast and flexible.
Inês Bramão, associate professor of psychology at Lund University, offers an example of memory integration: Let's say you're walking in a park. You see a man with a dog. A few hours later, you see the dog in town with a woman. Your brain quickly makes the connection that the man and woman are a couple even though you have never seen them together.
“Making these types of inferences is adaptive and useful. But, of course, there is a risk that our brain draws incorrect conclusions or remembers selectively,” says Inês Bramão.
It is important who provides the information.
To examine what affects our ability to learn and make inferences, Inês Bramão, together with her colleagues Marius Boeltzig and Mikael Johansson, set up experiments in which participants were tasked with remembering and connecting different objects. It could be a bowl, ball, spoon, scissors, or other everyday objects. It turned out that memory integration, that is, the ability to remember and connect information across learning events, was influenced by who presented it. If it was a person the participant liked, connecting the information was easier compared to when the information came from someone the participant did not like. Participants provided individual definitions of likes and dislikes based on things like political opinions, major, eating habits, favorite sports, hobbies, and music.
It can be translated into politics.
According to the researchers, the findings can be applied in real life. Inês Bramão takes a hypothetical example from politics:
“A political party advocates raising taxes to benefit health care. Later, you visit a health care facility and notice that improvements have been made. If you sympathize with the party that wanted to improve health care through higher taxes, it is “I am likely to attribute the improvements to the tax increase, although the improvements could have had an entirely different cause.”
About the fundamental mechanisms
There is already extensive research describing that people learn information differently depending on the source and how that characterizes polarization and resistance to knowledge.
“What our research shows is how these important phenomena can be traced back in part to fundamental principles that govern the functioning of our memory,” says Mikael Johansson, professor of psychology at Lund University. “
We are more inclined to form new connections and update knowledge from information presented by the groups we prefer. “These preferred groups often provide information that aligns with our pre-existing beliefs and ideas, potentially reinforcing polarized views.”
Innate way of handling information.
Researchers argue that understanding the roots of polarization, resistance to new knowledge, and related phenomena from basic brain functions offers deeper insight into these complex behaviors. So, it's not just filter bubbles on social media, but also an innate way of assimilating information.
“What is striking is that we integrate information differently depending on who is saying something, even when the information is completely neutral. In real life, where information often triggers stronger reactions, these effects could be even more prominent. “says Mikael Johansson.