Citation

Van Berkum JJA, Holleman B, Nieuwland M, Otten M, Murre J. Psychol. Sci. 2009; 20(9): 1092-1099.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02411.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

ABSTRACT— How does the brain respond to statements that clash with a person's value system? We recorded event‐related brain potentials while respondents from contrasting political‐ethical backgrounds completed an attitude survey on drugs, medical ethics, social conduct, and other issues. Our results show that value‐based disagreement is unlocked by language extremely rapidly, within 200 to 250 ms after the first word that indicates a clash with the reader's value system (e.g., "I think euthanasia is an acceptable/unacceptable…"). Furthermore, strong disagreement rapidly influences the ongoing analysis of meaning, which indicates that even very early processes in language comprehension are sensitive to a person's value system. Our results testify to rapid reciprocal links between neural systems for language and for valuation.