Trump's Victory and the Neuroscience of Rage

Posted on November 11, 2016

Emotions are powerful motivators of behavior. For most animals, emotion, not rational thought is what drives behavior, and this remains true for our esteemed species, self-christened as Homo sapiens—“the wise one.” But our decisions are not made solely by reasoning. In fact, in the most complex and momentous decisions we make we rely on emotion—gut feelings. Whom to marry, where to live, or even what entrée to select from a dinner menu, are decisions we make not by reason, but rather by how we “feel.”

We have emotions because we need them. They arise from an astonishing neural network that performs an extremely complex, instantaneous analysis of our situation and sets us upon a definitive course of action. To accomplish this, input from all of our senses streams into the brain’s limbic system to assess our internal and external state, constantly sifting the data stream on the lookout for danger. All of this information processing operates below the level of consciousness and rational thinking, because the enormous amount of information processing involved would overwhelm our conscious mind.

Many in this country feel angry, fearful, and threatened. These feelings arise from perceptions of personal risk, social disruption and alienation, imminent threats of terrorism, and a chronically dysfunctional government. The pollsters got it wrong because the act of asking the question carries the implicit assumption of a rational explanation. But rage is not a reason. And emotions are not always accessible by self-assessment.

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Source material from Scientific American