"Get ready for a quick test: You have a pile of paper clips in front of you. What uses do you spontaneously think of for them? If all you can do with them is clip a few sheets of paper together, then you're not only very uncreative, but probably also quite ideologically entrenched. Perhaps you're even a right-wing extremist or a religious fanatic. If, on the other hand, you use the paper clips to make idiosyncratic hair accessories or a ladder for your dwarf hamster—congratulations! Chances are good that you're a relatively liberal, cosmopolitan person."
At least, that's the conclusion Leor Zmigrod comes to in her book "The Ideological Brain." How political beliefs really emerge." At 29, the Cambridge scholar is considered the founder of "political neurobiology" – a field of research that uses cognitive psychology and neurological methods to explore why some people are particularly susceptible to ideology and fundamentalism, while others seem immune. With this "new and radically scientific approach," Zmigrod aims to broaden the view beyond sociological, philosophical, political science, historical, and cultural perspectives. In her opinion, the extent to which political views are a neuronal-somatic matter has been neglected. It's high time to show "how ideological beliefs emerge from biology."
Right at the beginning of the book, however, she demonstrates one thing above all: a remarkably crude reductionism. One doesn't have to be a proponent of the idea of the immortal soul to find the statement that consciousness and the brain are "one and the same" absurd. "For there is no scientific evidence that the mind exists without the brain," writes Zmigrod. Zmigrod and fails to recognize that the necessary material basis for the existence of consciousness is far from identical with consciousness itself. However, consciousness as a subjective experience cannot be as easily captured through imaging techniques as certain neuronal activities.
Zmigrod's main finding, that "cognitive rigidity becomes ideological rigidity," seems trivial at first glance. Were all the surveys, tests, and complex brain scans really necessary to arrive at the insight that people prone to intellectual rigidity also have a tendency to become ideologically entrenched? But the more persistently Zmigrod attempts to illustrate her central finding empirically, the more dubious it appears. This is partly due to the relatively thin, chaotically presented study data. The exact number of test participants is rarely disclosed; often, small samples seem to serve Zmigrod as the basis for generalizing statements about the brain physiology of ideologically prone individuals. Sometimes studies are conducted with supposedly sensational results that subsequently proved to be irreplicable. Second, the author seems insufficiently aware that the interpretation of research data is highly susceptible to prejudice and arbitrary patterns of interpretation. This becomes particularly clear when she sets out to examine the brains of religious people, equating religion with ideology in a blanket manner.
Zmigrod's shifting positions on biological determinism are also symptomatic of the argumentative and conceptual confusion of this book. In one passage, she examines the motto of an English girls' school, which reads: "Let us treat the brain like a muscle, not a sponge." The slogan echoes the hope that every child can excel with appropriate support and diligence. Zmigrod, however, considers this pedagogically humanistic appeal to be fundamentally wrong and even suspects behind it an "instrument of domination," a dangerous ideology of equality that denies "natural differences and predispositions."
A few pages later, she suddenly strikes She strikes a completely different tone and emphatically distances herself from an overly simplistic determinism. Her history of the ideological brain is a history of potentialities that can, but do not have to, develop. Of course, there is no extremism gene that automatically turns a person into a Nazi, Stalinist, or eco-terrorist; of course, individual experiences, resources, and social environment play a decisive role. Suddenly, she's back in line with the English girls' school.
Zmigrod elaborately presents her proposal for extremism prevention: To curb potential authoritarian tendencies, the flexible, creative, non-regular thinking should be encouraged even in children. How exactly this is supposed to happen remains unclear. Zmigrod's empty, minimal definition of ideology as "rigid thinking" also backfires here. Is it really so unimportant what we think as long as we think "flexibly"? Isn't it sometimes even necessary to rigidly adhere to principles of morality or law? And can't the ability of flexible, adaptable thinking, which Zmigrod glorifies as a panacea, also turn into the virtue of the ruthless careerist and opportunist? "Political neurobiology" still has a great deal of work to do, especially on itself.
Leor Zmigrod: "The Ideological Brain." How Political Beliefs Really Arise.
Translated from English by Matthias Strobel. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2025. 302 pp., hardcover, €24. [1]
1. An Neuronen hängt doch alles: Leor Zmigrod führt vor, was sich von der Neurobiologie so alles nicht erwarten lässt. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; Frankfurt. 25 July 2025: 10. MARIANNA LIEDER
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