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为什么我们的大脑不是为民主而生的
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/why-our-brains-aren-t-built-for-democracy-1.2784220
我们的“蜥蜴脑”在决定我们如何投票方面的作用
Nicola Luksic 和 Tom Howell · CBC 新闻 · 发布时间：2014 年 10 月 1 日 8:09 PM EDT | 最后更新时间：2014 年 10 月 2 日
不列颠哥伦比亚大学 (UBC) 的一项颇具争议性的新论文表明，我们的大脑可能并不适合我们所创建的政治体系。 事实上，对于民主来说，我们可能太愚蠢了。 （拉塞尔·切恩/路透社）
虽然选举市长或总理往往是一个令人头疼的过程，但不列颠哥伦比亚大学的一篇具有争议性的新论文表明，我们的大脑可能并不适合我们所创建的政治体系。
事实上，对于民主来说，我们可能太愚蠢了。
不列颠哥伦比亚大学政治学博士生戴维·莫斯克罗普 (David Moscrop) 指出，现代民主建立在公民理性和自主的理念之上。
但他表示，各个政治派别的选民更有可能凭本能而不是理性投票。
“我们的动力来自所谓的‘蜥蜴大脑’，”莫斯克罗普说。
他说，不鼓励投票公众通过政治平台做出明智的决定。
“这与消息传递和名字熟悉程度有关。 它反映了我们自己容易被操纵的脆弱性——这就是攻击性广告和原声摘要有效的原因。”
精神限制
是媒体还是我们的“蜥蜴脑”对我们的投票影响更大？ （布利特·马克斯/美联社）
“蜥蜴脑”是我们大脑中5亿至1.5亿年前发展起来的区域的总称，主要负责本能、情感和记录记忆，以及影响甚至指导我们的本能感觉。 决定。
另一方面，新皮质是我们大脑中负责推理、语言、想象力、抽象思维和意识的区域。 科学家表示，新皮质仅存在了两三百万年。
在了解人脑的工作原理时，值得记住的是，我们活跃的大脑中只有一小部分是有意识的。
虽然无法量化，但科学家表示，我们的大脑活动大约 95% 是潜意识或无意识的。
杜克大学神经科学和心理学教授坦尼娅·查特兰德 (Tanya Chartrand) 表示：“认为我们完全掌控一切的想法是错误的。”
“我们没有足够的心理能力以有意识的意识和意图来处理环境中的所有事物，因此我们在任何特定时间都会关注环境中的一小部分。 但在后台，我们无意识地处理了很多很多的事情。 无意识的处理随后会影响我们做出的决定。”
Chartrand 提到了 1996 年发表的一项著名研究，其中纽约大学的心理学家 John Bargh 和他的团队给研究对象分配了修改句子的任务。
使用与老年人相关的单词（例如“退休”和“佛罗里达”）的受试者离开研究实验室的速度比使用中性单词的受试者走得更慢。
心理学家将这种效应称为“启动”，而这个实验只是证明我们对暗示敏感的众多实验之一。
政治偏好是预先形成的
神经科学家塔尼娅·查特兰德 (Tanya Chartrand) 表示，许多实验已经证明了我们对暗示的敏感性。 （比尔·班伯格，杜克大学）
查特兰德说：“你可能会认为，对于高度参与的情况，比如决定投票给谁，我们应该创建利弊电子表格，并刻意考虑候选人平台的利弊。”
但事实是，我们大多数人都没有。
莫斯克罗普表示，竞选活动的前提是选民的政治偏好已经形成。
因此，一场运动实际上并不是让公民参与严格的变革性思想交流，而是重申人们现有的意识形态偏见，并动员公民投票支持各自的阵营。
多伦多大学哲学教授约瑟夫·希思表示，如果民主的目标是进行严格的思想交流，为所有公民带来更大的利益，那么首先要做的事情之一就是淡化电视广告在竞选期间的作用。 。
“理性在于语言，以及我们在争论中如何从 A 点转向 B 点的能力。”Heath 说道。
哲学家约瑟夫·希思 (Joseph Heath) 表示，电视上的选举广告鼓励的是本能反应，而不是理性。 （奥斯卡·希思）
“如果你试图通过视觉刺激进行交流，它不会鼓励对事物的理性欣赏，这会产生很多影响。 理性非常非常慢。 速度会促进本能反应。”
希思还认为取消下议院的摄像头是个好主意。
“我们在加拿大组织提问期的方式很荒谬，”他说。 例如，他认为在质询期之前向国会议员提出问题将促进合理的意见交流。
现在，他说，“这是一个棘手的时刻——问题不会提前提供。 目的是让部长措手不及。 这降低了加拿大的政治话语。”
设计“用户友好”的民主制度
希思在他的新书《启蒙 2.0：恢复我们的政治、经济和生活的理智》中主张重新思考我们对公民个人以及我们所处的民主结构的期望。
“我们倾向于认为人类理性是位于我们大脑深处的东西。 而新的心理学研究表明，理性是通过群体和特定环境中的人的合作来实现的，”希思说。
希思说，政治体系的构建应该考虑到我们的认知局限性。 他非常重视设计。 例如，两岁的孩子就能学会如何操作 iPad，因为它的设计方式符合人类本能。
“我很乐意看到关于可以建立更好地适应我们运作方式的社会机构的讨论，”他说。
正在 UBC 攻读政治学博士学位的戴维·莫斯克罗普 (David Moscrop) 表示，如果我们承认自己的心理局限性，我们就可以设计一种考虑到我们认知缺陷的民主制度。 （德鲁·高夫）
莫斯克罗普是“协商”民主理念的坚定支持者，为来自各个政治派别的公民提供资源和激励，以便他们能够聚集在一起讨论政策并提出建议，利用结果来影响政客并教育其他公民。
莫斯克罗普希望，这种做法能够比目前狭隘地关注投票箱的政党政治游戏更好地建立公民参与。
他认为，如果我们承认我们的心理局限性，我们就可以设计一种考虑到我们认知缺陷的民主制度。
“你改变了结构，事物的运作方式就会改变。 但目前，所有的激励措施都是为了在基层做事。”
10 月 2 日星期四晚上 9:05 收听 Ideas 纪录片《Too Dumb for Democracy》 ET 在 CBC 广播一号台播出。?
Why our brains aren't built for democracy
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/why-our-brains-aren-t-built-for-democracy-1.2784220
The role of our 'lizard brain' in determining how we vote
While electing a mayor or prime minister can often be a head-scratching process, a provocative new thesis from the University of British Columbia suggests our brains may not be cut out for the political system we’ve created.
We may, in fact, be too dumb for democracy.
David Moscrop, a Ph.D political science candidate at UBC, points out that modern democracy was built on the idea that citizens are rational and autonomous.
But he says voters across the political spectrum are more likely to vote with instinct than reason.
“We’re motivated by our so-called 'lizard brains,'” says Moscrop.
He says the voting public isn't encouraged to wade through political platforms to make informed decisions.
“It’s about messaging and name familiarity. And it reflects our own vulnerability to being manipulated -- which is why attack ads work and sound bites work.”
Mental limitations
Is it the media or our 'lizard brain' that has more impact in how we vote? (Bullit Marquez/Associated Press)
The “lizard brain” is a catch-all term for the areas of our brain that developed between 500 million and 150 million years ago and are primarily responsible for instinct, emotion and recording memories, as well as visceral feelings that influence or even direct our decisions.
The neocortex, on the other hand, is the area of our brain responsible for reason, language, imagination, abstract thought and consciousness. Scientists say the neocortex has only been around for two or three million years.
When it comes to understanding the workings of the human brain, it's worth remembering that only a small percentage of our active brain is conscious.
It is impossible to quantify, but scientists say roughly 95 per cent of our brain activity is subconscious or unconscious.
“It is flawed to think that we’re fully in control,” says Tanya Chartrand, professor of neuroscience and psychology at Duke University.
“We don’t have the mental capacity to process everything in our environment with conscious awareness and intent, so we pay attention to a small percentage of the environment at any given time. But in the background, we’re non-consciously processing much, much more. And non-conscious processing later influences the decisions we make.”
Chartrand points to a famous study published in 1996, in which psychologist John Bargh and his team at New York University assigned research subjects the task of reworking sentences.
The subjects working with words associated with the elderly – words such as "retirement" and "Florida" – left the research lab walking more slowly than their counterparts who were given neutral words.
Psychologists refer to this effect as "priming," and this experiment is just one of many that demonstrates our susceptibility to suggestion.
Political preferences are pre-formed
Many experiments have demonstrated our susceptibility to suggestion, according to neuroscientist Tanya Chartrand. (Bill Bamberger, Duke University)
“You would think that for high-involvement situations, like deciding on who to vote for, we should be creating spreadsheets of pros and cons and deliberately considering the pros and cons of candidates’ platforms,” says Chartrand.
But the truth is, most of us don’t.
Moscrop says that election campaigns are run on a presumption that voters’ political preferences are already formed.
A campaign, then, isn’t really about engaging citizens in a rigorous exchange of transformative ideas, but rather reaffirming people’s existing ideological biases and mobilizing citizens to vote for their respective camp.
If the goal of democracy is to engage in a rigorous exchange of ideas that results in a greater good for all citizens, one of the first things to do is downplay the role of television ads during election campaigns, says University of Toronto philosophy professor Joseph Heath.
“Reason resides in language and our ability to explicitly articulate how we get from point A to point B in an argument,” says Heath.
Philosopher Joseph Heath say election ads on TV encourage gut reactions, rather than reason. (Oscar Heath)
“If you’re trying to communicate through visual stimulation, it won’t encourage a rational appreciation of things, and that has a bunch of implications. Reason is very, very slow. Speed encourages gut reactions.”
Heath also thinks it would be a good idea to get rid of cameras in the House of Commons.
“The way we organize Question Period in Canada is ridiculous,” he says. He believes providing MPs with questions in advance of Question Period, for example, would foster a reasoned exchange of ideas.
Right now, he says, “It’s gotcha moments -- questions are not provided in advance. The goal is to catch the minister unaware. And that degrades Canadian political discourse.”
Designing a ‘user-friendly’ democracy
In his recent book, Enlightenment 2.0: Restoring Sanity to Our Politics, Our Economy, and Our Lives, Heath argues for a re-think of the expectations we have of individual citizens as well as the democratic structures we operate in.
“We’ve tended to think of human rationality as something located deep inside our brains. Whereas new psychological research shows that rationality is achieved through collaboration with people in groups and in a particular environment,” says Heath.
Heath says that the political system should be conceived with our cognitive limitations in mind. He puts an emphasis on design. Two-year-olds can figure out how to operate an iPad, for example, because it is designed in a way that plays on human instinct.
“I would love to see a discussion about social institutions that could be built to better suit the way we operate,” he says.
David Moscrop, who's working on his PhD in political science at UBC, says that if we acknowledge our mental limitations, we can design a democracy that takes into account our cognitive flaws. (Drew Gough)
Moscrop is a strong supporter of the idea of “deliberative” democracy, providing resources and incentives to citizens from all political stripes so that they can gather to discuss and advise on policy, using the results to influence politicians and also educate other citizens.
Such a practice, Moscrop hopes, would build civic engagement better than the current game of party politics, with its narrow focus on the ballot box.
He believes that if we acknowledge our mental limitations, we can design a democracy that takes into account our cognitive flaws.
“You change the structure, and the way things operate is going to change. But at the moment, the incentives are all there to do things at a base level.”
Listen to the Ideas documentary Too Dumb for Democracy on Thursday, Oct. 2 at 9:05 p.m. ET on CBC Radio One.?
