History in the making, for realsies

And yet, there will still be some undecided voters who will make their choice on the way to the voting booth. I’m willing to bet that some of these people, especially those who will cast those critical swing-state votes, will enter their preferred candidate’s name with seemingly no sense of the democratic responsibility and power their vote yields, as evidenced by this political cartoon.

Undecided voters, rejoice! I am here to help you explore the depths of all the questions weighing down your weary mind:

• Were the ancient inventors of democracy wrong?
• Are Barack Obama and Mitt Romney all that different?
• Is my liberal or conservative philosphy determined by genes?
• How does the Electoral College work?
• What is human nature anyway?
• What are the moral and epistemological implications of indecision?
• Does my vote truly matter?

Well maybe not all your questions...

But the most befuddling question in every conversation before, during, and after the Election is this: how and why do people vote?

To answer this question, we might need some ideas from an unexpected source. Let’s investigate some recent research in neuroscience to figure out how people vote.

The act of decision-making is central to the voting process. Whether you make a snap, “gut-reaction” judgment between the Republican and Democratic candidates or take the time to consider their policies rationally, many of the same brain regions are active in decision-making. One of these regions is the amygdala, principal in the functions of memory and emotion. Whether we realize it or not, part of our relation to the candidates in this year’s election is dependent on emotion; while most of us have not met either candidate, we have developed a bias for the political party they represent. According to research published in Political Psychology, we may grow to identify with a certain party based on our parents’ moral leanings, social environment, and socioeconomic class, all the same way we develop our own personal identities. In painful contrast to what we once believed as teenagers, we still inherit much of our parents’ moral and political beliefs.

Moreover, negative emotion seems to play a larger part in our decision-making and motivation than does “positive” emotion. In a 1991 study (Quarterly Journal of Economics), people were more motivated by avoiding pain than by seeking pleasure. Do we unconsciously pretend to like the more popular candidate to avoid potential embarrassment in our social circle?

Thus, are the reasons we vote for one political party versus another based solely on our upbringing and emotional responses?

This view does little to provide optimism for the freethinking, voting populace we believe ourselves to be. Indeed, according to a 2012 Science study, our decisions are quite frequently based on automatic associations instead of the conscious consideration we believe them to be. In a paradigm implicating undecided decision-makers (read: undecided voters), subjects were given photos of two women and asked which they preferred and to state the reasons why. Sounds simple enough, but the twist was that the pictures were sometimes switched, and the subjects were actually given the picture of the woman they did not like initially. Subjects still provided an answer for the photograph, even if it wasn’t the one they chose! Once made to give a choice between the two women (read: candidates), the initially undecided voters found a way to unconsciously derive a reason for their choice.

The typical undecided voter

So, we may have an answer to the almost-Sartrean question poised in the title: how should a person vote? The answer is completely up to you. In a matter of hours, you will (hopefully) cast your vote for the next President of the United States. Maybe you chose your candidate according to what your friends or parents told you about their beliefs. Maybe you made your decision based on fear of losing, even if it is by proxy of your political party.

My advice is this: as we have seen in the studies cited in this article, your unconscious, emotional side plays a large factor in your decision-making ability. If you are still undecided, please sit down and think about what is at stake in this election. Take the time to think for yourself, and you will know how a person should vote.

References:

Automatic Mental Associations Predict Future Choices of Undecided Decision-Makers - Science

Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model – The Quarterly Journal of Economics

Dominance, Politics, and Physiology: Voters’ Testosterone Changes on the Night of the 2008 United States Presidential Election -PLoS ONE

Rational Constraint in Mass Belief Systems: The Role of Developmental Moral Stages in the Structure of Political Beliefs - International Society of Political Psychology

Tanning is just one of those things, like chain smoking or base-jumping, that I’ve never cared to try; I am nowhere near athletic enough to attempt jumping off of a mountain face. I am also too, well, white to bask in the natural sun without SPF 50 sunscreen; like most people with skin of Fitzpatrick Scale type of I or II, I burn to a crisp and spend the next half-week smoothing aloe on my skin and crying in regret.

Could this woman be an addict?

Then there are those tanning beds with controllable light and a lack of sand in your hair. Maybe they just seem too cumbersome a process for me, but they do work; lightbulbs bathe you in ultraviolet rays, the “good stuff” that causes tanning. First, I must say that sunlight, natural or artificial, can be important to produce Vitamin D. However, too much or too frequent exposure to sunlight is known to cause skin cancer. Incredibly, the World Health Organization has ranked tanning beds alongside smoking and asbestos as the greatest cancer threats to humans. This is relatively common knowledge, and yet thousands of young people rush to tanning salons every week. A 2010 NHIS study showed that 11.3% of 18-29 year old interviewees had gone to a tanning salon in the past 12 months.

It is possible that many of those people interviewed had only gone once or twice to tanning booths, for a big outing or out of sheer curiosity (which sounds auspiciously like something I would do). But, you could speculate that at least some of the 11.3% of those college-aged tanners go often. Very often. A common rule of thumb in economics, the 80/20 rule, indicates that 80% of many activities are performed by only 20% of participants. Effectively, the Pareto Principle would argue that 80% of all artificial tanning is done by 20% of clients, a stark minority.

One really good mom

Recent research has shown a reinforcing quality in tanning. Using a modified version of the substance use disorders criteria (e.g. drug addictions/dependencies) found in the DSM-IV-TR (the so-called bible of psychiatry), surveyors discovered that an incredible 53% of beachgoers met criteria for sun tanning dependence. That is, 53% of those interviewed would meet substance use-related disorder requirements had their “substance” been a drug.

Exposure to UV light may have an addictive quality for frequent tanners

Interestingly enough, UV light and tanning may have the reinforcing properties of many drugs. In a sample of frequent tanners, researchers used naltrexone, the same anti-drug that EMT services use to bring heroin overdosers “back from the dead,” to test whether salon frequenters receive a drug-like high from tanning. Naltrexone works by blocking opioid receptors; a common analogue is the “runner’s high,” a release of the body’s own painkillers, better known as endorphins. The body’s own high would be blocked by naltrexone and would cause withdrawal symptoms in opioid (heroin, morphine, Oxycontin) addicts. In the study, frequent tanning was defined as tanning 8-15 times a month, more than is necessary to keep a tan, while infrequent tanners had not used UV tanning beds more than 12 times in any given year. Also notable, the randomized study tested for placebo effects and for preference to an heightened amount of UV light. With an increasing dosage of the endorphin-blocking naltrexone, half frequent tanners reported adverse, withdrawal-like symptoms (i.e. nausea, shaking, jitteriness), even causing 2 participants to remove themselves from the study. Also shown was the fact that placebo-treated infrequent tanners displayed less interest in ultraviolet light than the more frequent tanners. The discovery that 4 of 8 frequent tanners showed withdrawal-like symptoms when treated with naltrexone supports the researchers’ hypothesis that UV exposure, especially in high quantities like in use of a tanning booth, has reinforcing properties like drugs; moreover, exposure to UV light may have an addictive quality for frequent tanners.

With research showing that frequent tanning can foster an addictive quality in UV-overexposure, tanning often is playing with fire

Given the relatively common knowledge that overexposure to the sun is known to be a cause of skin cancer, one would think that deliberate overexposure to ultraviolet light would be uncommon. However, as studies have shown, this is not the case, and you would only need to walk on a college campus to notice dozens of adverts for tanning salons. I actually pass by a tanning spot every day on the way to class, and I’m sure there are many more in and around Boston. With research showing that frequent tanning can foster an addictive quality in UV-overexposure, tanning often is playing with fire. My advice is this: If you do visit tanning salons, don’t go more often than you really need to. Like any other addiction, signs of possible dependence are common, including:

• Lying or feeling guilty about how much you tan
• Rationalizing about the health benefits of sun exposure
• Ignoring the proven facts of skin cancer
• Putting tanning before people, appointments, or other important things
• Feeling insecure or sickly if you do not have a “decent” tan
• Feeling depressed if you cannot tan

The health risks of tanning are dire, especially in the long-term development of skin cancer. Along with the fact that tanning has a reinforcing quality alike that of drugs like heroin and Oxycontin, tanning could very well be the great health risk of our generation.

References:

Induction of withdrawal-like symptoms in a small randomized, control trial of opioid blockade in frequent tanners. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology – Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology

UV Light Tanning as a Type of Substance-Related Disorder – Archives of Dermatology