How God Changes Your Brain - Andrew Newberg, M. D_ [69]
When you listen to angry speech—in a congregation or political forum—specific parts of your brain begin to mirror the angry content of the speaker.54 All you have to do is see a harsh, angry, or contemptuous face in a picture, and the same neural reaction will be triggered55 because the circuits involving the human amygdala are particularly responsive to the emotional expressions on other people's faces.56 And the stronger the expression, the stronger your emotional reaction will be.57
Even watching violence on the news, or taking in a violent movie, will make you feel more angry, aggressive, negative, and powerless.58 And the same thing happens in your brain when you listen to songs with hostile lyrics,59 even if they are presented in a humorous way.60 Furthermore, a meta-analytic review of video-game research found that “violent video games increase aggressive behavior in children and young adults.”61 According to University of Iowa researcher Craig Anderson, “the deleterious effects on behavior, cognition, and affect” are directly linked to “serious, real-world types of aggression.”62 No matter how you look at it, exposure to, or expression of, any form of anger is hazardous, not only to the health of the individual, but to society as well.
Unfortunately, as far as the brain is concerned, negative speech has a stronger effect than positive speech.63 Negative remarks and memories are more strongly encoded in the brain, and they are the most difficult memories to eradicate. In fact, simply being around negative people will make you more prejudiced, because listening to negative opinions can easily undermine your positive opinions about virtually anything.64
In essence, our brains are designed to mimic the emotional expressions of others.65 Not only does this allow us to feel what others feel, but it causes what is known as “emotional contagion,” a universal neurological process whereby subjective feelings are transferred to other people and spread through social groups.66 So how fast does it take the brain to react to another person's emotion? When you see an angry expression, it takes less than one second for your brain to respond with fear.67
RESPONDING TO ANGER WITH COMPASSION
So how do we deal with someone who persistently uses angry rhetoric to try to change our beliefs? One solution is to walk away, the other is to try compassion. The closest I came to being in such a situation was when I was dating a girl in high school whose family were strong fundamentalists. The family believed in the literal interpretation of the Bible, and since I did not follow their doctrines, I was going to end up in hell. They continuously bombarded me with statements and arguments about why they were right and I was wrong. Sometimes the exchanges became quite heated, and even though we strongly disagreed with each other, we did try to keep the dialogue going.
As an impressionable teenager, I found this experience fascinating, but disturbing. I tried to challenge their beliefs—to no avail—but I was always respectful, and in the process, I learned a great deal about my own personal values and beliefs. I once asked them how they would respond if an alien family from another world came to visit Earth. “If they looked at every religion,” I said, “they would find that each one had its own sacred books, sacred songs, and sacred truths. How would they know what religion to choose?” My girlfriend's family acknowledged that the alien would have a very tough time—that it was ultimately a leap of faith. And perhaps that is something we all need to remember. No matter what our beliefs are, our brain is making a leap of faith.
Because I showed an openness to their ideas, they treated me with respect, and I came away from the experience knowing that this was an essential element when dealing with people who hold fundamentally different beliefs. I also wondered whether it was ever possible to easily alter someone's way of thinking, especially if he or