When it comes to understanding the rise and fall of liberal democracy, traditional research focuses on driving forces such as economics, emotion and education. But another area is equally important: neuroscience.
After all, liberal democracy challenges our brains in a way that other political systems do not. Where dictatorships offer certainty about the future – just think of Adolf Hitler's 1,000-year time horizon – liberal democracies offer almost nothing, except for certain election dates. He envisions the future as an open space that will be shaped by us and our choices, nothing more, nothing less.
Politically, this is an achievement. From a cognitive perspective, this can be terrifying. Before the advent of liberal democracy, the future was in the hands of a select few. The status quo was preservation, not progress. From a neurological perspective, the ambiguity and flexibility of the future that comes with liberal democracy can be problematic because it brings with it uncertainty – something that human minds hate. Research show that uncertainty is a state of neurological tension, more unpleasant than the certainty of receiving an electric shock, and history is replete with attempts to reduce uncertainty to more tolerable levels, from insurance to weather forecasting.
Where you fall on the tolerance for uncertainty spectrum depends on a number of factors, such as: culture, age and gender – but it also has to do with how your brain is wired. Political neuroscience shows that the brains of people with conservative views prefer safety and avoid open-ended solutions without a clear conclusion. They tend to have an increased volume of the amygdala, the area responsible for transmitting threat signals. This means they feel more discomfort in the face of novelty and surprise.
Liberal brainsin turn, have a higher tolerance for uncertainty and conflict because they have more gray matter volume in a region of the brain involved in processing ambiguity called the anterior cingulate cortex. A liberal democracy can accommodate both in less stressful circumstances because, although conservatives and liberals may have different neural signatures regarding their preferences for the future, evolutionarily, every person can still mentally travel through time and imagine a different future.
But when the level of uncertainty rises—say, because some future trajectories are unclear, from the environment to technology to social norms—some brains can push themselves too far out of their comfort zone. To fix this voltage statesuch people will be susceptible to illusions of confidence created by populist, authoritarian politicians who promise determination and black-and-white views of the world. Confidence, or its mirages, can come from rejecting something new—medicines, technology—or foreign people, cultures, and religions. It reduces uncertainty by closing the future, erasing ambiguity and anxiety. This can calm an anxious brain.
It doesn't mean we're stuck illiberal brains. Rather, liberal democracies need to communicate more honestly to their electorates that embracing liberalism may not be natural. The strategies we need to adopt in education, public discourse and civil society must be based on an understanding of how to overcome illiberal mechanisms at a neurological level.
We need to signal to our brain what can be achieved through collaboration between personality and interest groups, and how, ultimately, the big global challenges of our time can only be overcome by working together to overcome the vulnerabilities of our brains.
Florence Gaub – author Future: Leadership (Hurst, 2026). Leah Yu – author Vulnerable Minds: The Neuropolitics of Divided Societies (Columbia UP).
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