The Ideological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking

by Leor Zmigrod

Overview

Named a best book of the year by The Guardian and The Telegraph

Why do some people become radicalized?

How do ideologies shape the human brain?

And how can we unchain our minds from toxic dogmas?

In The Ideological Brain, Leor Zmigrod reveals the deep connections between political beliefs and the biology of the brain. Drawing on her cutting-edge research, she exposes the complex interplay between cognition and environment that predisposes some individuals to inflexible ways of thinking. The human brain faces a set of dilemmas every day: how to achieve coherence from fragmented sensory inpsuts and how to attain connection with other people in an increasingly atomized and isolating world. Ideologies offer a shortcut, providing easy answers, scripts to follow, and a sense of shared identity. But ideologies also come at a cost: demanding conformity and suppressing individuality through rigid rules, repetitive rituals, and intolerance. Once ideologies grip our minds, they fundamentally transform the way we think, act, and interact with others, making us less sensitive and adaptable.

Guiding readers through her innovative experiments, Zmigrod unovers the hidden mechanisms driving our beliefs and behaviors and argues that our politics are not superficial but rather woven into the fabric of our minds. Her results show that ideologues across the political spectrum struggle to change their thought patterns when faced with new information. While some individuals are more susceptible to dogmatic thinking than others, all of us can strive to be more flexible, and Zmigrod ultimately explains how we can keep our minds open in the face of extreme ideologies. Eye-opening, provocative, and unforgettable, The Ideological Brain is a groundbreaking book that challenges us to resist black-and-white thinking and reassess our closest convictions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250344595
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/25/2025
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Dr. Leor Zmigrod is a prizewinning scientist and pioneer in the field of political neuroscience. She studied at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar and has held visiting fellowships at Stanford, Harvard, and both the Berlin and Paris Institutes for Advanced Study. She was listed on Forbes’s 30 Under 30 in Science and has won numerous prizes, including the Women of the Future Science Award and the Glushko Prize. Her research has been featured widely in the media, including in the New York Times, the Guardian, Financial Times, and New Scientist.

Editorial Reviews

04/07/2025

“Your brain comes to mirror your politics and prejudices in... astonishing ways,” according to this bracing debut report. Neuroscientist Zmigrod argues that “mental rigidity” is a key marker of susceptibility to extreme worldviews. She recounts conducting an experiment that asked participants to match cards, but changed the rules for what counted as a match partway through the task, finding that subjects who struggled to adapt to the new rules were less willing to shift political views in light of contrary evidence. Contending that “there are parallels between how individuals form a perceptual judgment and how they make ideological judgments,” Zmigrod describes administering a study that compared survey responses with the results of a speed test that asked participants to hit designated computer keys in response to visual cues, discovering that subjects who sacrificed speed for accuracy tended to be more conservative politically. She also notes that conservatives tend to have larger amygdalae (the part of the brain “that governs the processing of emotions, especially negatively tinged emotions such as fear”) than liberals. Because it remains unclear whether cognitive quirks drive people to dogmatism or whether dogmatism shapes how people process the world, the full implications of Zmigrod’s provocative findings are up in the air. Nonetheless, they raise surprising questions about the nature of radicalism. This is sure to spark discussion. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Named a best book of the year by The Guardian and The Telegraph

“A lively new book… Zmigrod is such an appealing writer.”

—Jennifer Szalai, New York Times

"Filled with insightful findings, this book shows that ideological extremism and polarization are not just problems to fret about but puzzles that can be studied and understood."

—Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and author of Rationality

"A compelling look at the biological and environmental factors that foster dogma and intolerance.. Zmigrod’s thesis is fascinating and likely to form the basis of further enlightenment."

—Financial Times

“The notion that political phenomena would somehow exist in a realm separate from that of human life regulation is pure fiction as Leor Zmigrod demonstrates so clearly. Her book is a must read.”

—Antonio Damasio, David Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience at USC, author of Feeling and Knowing

“This remarkable book tells us something fascinating and heartening about the neuroscience of our inflexibilities and our dogmatisms. Lucid and eloquent, The Ideological Brain couldn't be more timely.”

—Adam Phillips, author of Missing Out

"Fascinating, insightful, lucidly and entertainingly written, Zmigrod’s account illuminates the debate about the nature of ideology and the power it exerts, by bringing cognitive neuroscience–in fact, an intriguing development of it: ‘political neuroscience’–to bear on both. An educative, rewarding, troubling, but ultimately hopeful, book."

—A. C. Grayling, author of The History of Philosophy

"An extraordinary, eye-opening, and startlingly original book, showing what ideology does to the human brain, and casting a bright new light on the sources and nature of dogmatism, ideology, and open-mindedness. Packed with insights, this is a remarkable achievement."

—Cass R. Sunstein, Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard University and author of Decisions About Decisions

"If I had to pick one, Zmigrod’s would be my book to watch out for in 2025."

—Simon Ings, New Scientist

"Leor Zmigrod’s hotly awaited debut. . . uses new research to show that polarized thinking isn’t something that just floats through the mind: it changes our entire neural architecture."

—The Telegraph

"Zmigrod reveals the science behind dogma and shows us how to nurture cognitive flexibility instead."

—The Guardian

"A fascinating and important exploration of why and how some people are drawn to authoritarian thinking while others are able to question and resist dominant ideologies."

— Nigel Warburton, author of A Little History of Philosophy

From the Publisher