The Political Brain The Role Of Emotion In Deciding The Fate Of The Nation

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The inherent challenge—and exciting promise—of political psychology and neuroscience is the task of investigating an endlessly intricate organ (the brain) in wildly diverse social contexts (the arena of ideologies). These complexities naturally compound each other, rendering a robust psychological science of ideologies and political behaviour both challenging and crucial. The rapid spread of misinformation propagated by digital media as well as pronounced tribalistic polarization within and between national entities has provoked a global sense that our understanding of the origins of voting behaviour and ideological worldviews is dangerously insufficient. While the study of political attitudes and behaviour has been traditionally confined to the social sciences, new advances in political neuroscience and computational cognitive science highlight that the biological sciences may offer crucial insights about political and ideological behaviour. Ideological behaviour can be defined as behaviour that is epistemically dogmatic and interpersonally intolerant towards non-adherents or non-members [ 1]. In other words, a person thinking or behaving ‘ideologically' is rigidly adhering to a doctrine, resisting credible evidence when forming opinions, and selectively antagonistic to individuals who do not follow their ideological group or cause. Ideological behaviour can therefore occur in the realm of politics, religion, gender, race, class, social media or any other area of life where social conditions are described and accordingly actions are narrowly prescribed, resulting in ingroups and outgroups. As partisans lay in the scanner, they viewed a series of slides.3 The first slide in each set presented an initial statement, typically a quote from the candidate. The second slide provided a contradictory statement, also frequently taken from the candidate, which suggested a clear inconsistency that would be threatening to a partisan. Here is one of the contradictions we used to put the squeeze on the brains of partisan supporters of John Kerry:

Fantastic! It is rare to get a bird’s-eye view of a field and so the process of compiling the issue and identifying emerging thematic strands was a rewarding and intellectually stimulating experience. The process of commissioning and learning about cutting-edge research being conducted in the field during such a politically tumultuous moment in history felt important in many ways. It was a pleasure to work on this special collection with the expert and experienced editorial team at Phil Trans B and we are grateful for their flexibility, care, and rigor, as we are also indebted to the researchers’ efforts at a time of huge pandemic-related challenges to work and academic research. Tell us a bit about your own research. Hibbing, J. R. (2013). Ten misconceptions concerning neurobiology and politics. Perspectives on Politics, 11(02), 475–489. Announcer: "For more than 30 years, John Kerry has served America [photo of Kerry talking on the phone, with glasses hanging off his face]." In his first sentence, Clinton vividly conveyed where he was coming from, literally and metaphorically - from a place of Hope. But he was not content to do this just with words. The ad created in viewers a vivid, multisensory network of associations - associations not just with the word hope but to the image of Hope in small-town America in an era gone by, captured by the image of the train station, and the sound of hope, captured in his voice. Clinton told his own life story, but he told it as a parable of what anyone can accomplish if just given the chance.On the surface, the differences between this ad and Clinton's may be difficult to detect. Both begin with the candidate using his birthplace to drive home a central theme. For Kerry, the central theme was that he was born and bred in uniform, a theme central to a campaign trying to unseat an incumbent, George W Bush, widely seen as a strong leader in a perpetual "war on terror". Freud, S. ([1915]1957). The unconscious (S. I., Trans.). In J. Strachey (Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud: Vol. XIV (pp. 166–204). London: Hogarth Press.

The sequence began with Kennedy by himself, looking young, vibrant, serious and presidential - precisely the features the Clinton campaign wanted to associate with Clinton. Then came the video of a young Bill Clinton shaking hands with Kennedy, dramatically bringing the theme of the American dream to viewers' eyes - a poor boy from Arkansas without a father finding himself in the presence of his hero - while creating a sense of something uncanny, of "fate", of the chance meeting of once and future presidents that seemed too accidental not to be preordained. Then came a still photo of their hands tightly clasped, emphasising the connection between the two men. This image lasted far longer than any other in the ad and gradually expanded until the two hands panned out into an image of the two recognisable figures. Understanding the the Neo Con Strategies of setting political agendas through emotionally charged frames is a crucial factor in the return of a highly authoritarian political style in many developed countries in the late 1970s. After partisans read the first two slides, which presented them with a clear contradiction, the third slide simply gave them some time to stew on it, asking them to consider whether the two statements were inconsistent. The fourth slide then asked them to rate the extent to which they agreed that the candidate’s words and deeds were contradictory, from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). Bush supporters faced similar dilemmas, such as the following: Teresa Heinz-Kerry [Kerry's wife]: "John is the face of someone who's hopeful [photo of the two, possibly as newlyweds, with Kerry smiling broadly], who's generous of spirit and of heart."In the final, heated months of the 2004 U.S. presidential election, my colleagues Stephan Hamann, Clint Kilts, and I put together a research team to study what happens in the brain as political partisans—who constitute about 80 percent of the electorate—wrestle with new political information. We studied the brains of fifteen committed Democrats and fifteen confirmed Republicans.2 (We would have studied voters without commitments to one party or candidate as well, but by the fall of 2004, finding people with intact brains who were not already leaning one way or the other would have been a daunting task.)