What’s the News: Researchers have found that whether people stick with advice they were given, even when their own experience contradicts it, is linked to their genes, according to a new study published online in the Journal of Neuroscience. These findings suggest a possible genetic component of confirmation bias, the tendency to focus on new information that agrees with what you already know, and ignore information that contradicts your views.

How the Heck:

The researchers gathered saliva samples from more than 70 participants. They then analyzed each person’s genotype, focusing on two genes that impact the activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine, known to play an important role in learning, in one of two regions of the brain: the prefrontal cortex or the striatum. The prefrontal cortex stores and processes explicit instructions (e.g., “Always wear sunscreen”), while the striatum helps us glean lessons from our experience (e.g., “When I forget my sunscreen, I often get burned”).
Each participant then played a game in which they would see two symbols (taken from the Japanese hiragana alphabet, unfamiliar to most English speakers) on a screen and have to choose the “correct” symbol; they’d then get feedback so they could learn to ...