Narrative Engagement and Polarized Neural Responses to Political Videos

Prior work has shown that neural activity diverges between conservatives and liberals while viewing political messages. Understanding what psychological factors contribute to these divergent responses informs our understanding of how people make political decisions. In this work, we examined the relationship between narrative engagement (i.e. the extent to which someone is both attending and emotionally involved while listening to or watching a narrative) and divergent neural responses to political videos. We measured narrative engagement by applying a predictive model that has been previously shown to predict moment-by-moment fluctuations in narrative engagement from connectivity patterns in the brain. We then examined if and how the neural measure of narrative engagement is associated with divergent neural responses between conservatives and liberals while watching political videos. The result shows a negative relationship between narrative engagement and political polarization.