2025/05/27 by Andrew Barker · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #European and International Law Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.31234/osf.io/srt3k_v1
openalex publication_date 2025/05/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/14
This paper proposes that the MAGA movement operates as a "pooled interpreter", a collective narrative engine that offloads emotional regulation and coherence maintenance from the individual brain to a shared ideological system. Drawing from Gazzaniga's interpreter module, the Safe State Hypothesis, and recent findings on belief network interdependence, the paper argues that MAGA functions less as a political ideology and more as a distributed emotional homeostasis system. It emerges from the intersection of threat-sensitive conservative neuropsychology and a media environment optimized for destabilization. This model offers a unifying explanation for MAGA's resilience, radicalization dynamics, and resistance to factual persuasion, reframing political behavior through the lens of affective neuroscience and cognitive coherence.