We have politics on our mind—or, rather, we have politics in different parts of our brains. In this path-breaking study, Matt Qvortrup takes the reader on a whistle stop tour through the fascinating, and sometimes frightening, world of neuropolitics; the discipline that combines neuroscience and politics, and is even being used to win elections.

As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature. Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, The difference between the Clinton ad and the Kerry ad - like the difference between the Clinton campaign and virtually every other Democratic presidential campaign of the last three decades - reflects the difference between understanding and misunderstanding mind, brain and emotion in American politics. If you think the failure to tell a coherent story, or to illustrate your words with evocative images, is just the "window dressing" of a campaign and makes little difference in the success or failure of a candidacy, you're missing something very important about the political brain. Political persuasion is about networks and narratives. The brain registers the conflict between data and desire and begins to search for ways to turn off the spigot of unpleasant emotion. We know that the brain largely succeeded in this effort, as partisans largely denied that they had perceived any conflict between their candidate’s words and deeds. Ironically, it is the USA after the Congressional Elections of 7 November 2006 that is in the forefront of shaping the New Politics. 2008 may be the year of another Prague Spring if Drew Westen's political communication theories are taken seriously. 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."For example, in a UNICEF document on children’s participation we read that, “[f]ostering children’s social, emotional and behavioural skills in and out of school has benefits for: academic achievement, self-esteem, personal responsibility, tolerance of difference, workplace effectiveness, classroom behaviour, and mental health” ( Children as Active Citizens, 2008). Zerilli, L. M. G. (2013). Embodied knowing, judgment, and the limits of neurobiology. Perspectives on Politics, 11(02), 512–515. writes: “the problem that Dennett does not resolve is that of the very form of narrative—where does the subject’s capacity to organize its contingent experience into the form of narrative (or to recognize in a series of events the form of narrative) come from?” (Žižek, 1998, p. 255). Garza, G., & Smith, A. F. (2009). Beyond neurobiological reductionism. Theory & Psychology, 19(4), 519–544.

The critical role of uncertainty in the neural mechanisms underpinning ideological behaviour was innovatively explored by Haas et al. [ 11]. In an fMRI paradigm that presented participants with leaders' policy positions that were either congruent or incongruent with the political candidate's stated party, and which were marked by variable levels of certainty, Haas et al. [ 11] analysed the ways in which political evaluation is modulated by uncertainty and ideological congruence. Similarly to Krosch et al.s' [ 10] findings, the study implicated heightened activation of the insular cortex, as well as the anterior cingulate cortex, in response to policy positions that were certain but incongruent with the political candidate's party affiliation. By contrast, diminished activation in the bilateral insula was evident when the policy statement was certain and ideologically congruent. Consequently, uncertainty and congruency interact to shape neural and behavioural responses to leaders' policy stances, underscoring that the brain's sensitivity to uncertainty modulates its experience of the political world. As an objective measure of attitude extremity, the present study used the oddball paradigm, a paradigm that has been frequently applied in previous event-related brain potentials (ERP) studies (e.g. Cacioppo et al., 1993, 1994; Crites et al., 1995; Ito et al., 1998; Ito and Cacioppo, 2000). In the oddball paradigm, infrequently presented stimuli of one category are shown interspersed among frequently presented stimuli of another category, resulting in an enhanced positive component in the ERP waveform at roughly 300 ms after presentation of the rare stimulus (e.g. Donchin, 1981; Donchin and Coles, 1988), called the P300 component. To date, a number of studies have identified a similar enhancement of late positive potentials (LPPs), typically occurring in the interval starting at 300–400 ms and ending at 900 ms ( Cacioppo et al., 1993, 1994; Crites et al., 1995; Ito et al., 1998; Ito and Cacioppo, 2000). The enhancement of the LPPs has been typically ascribed to a person’s sensitivity to evaluative changes. In particular, a number of studies identified an enhancement of the LPPs when a single stimulus of one valence category (e.g. a positive ‘target’ stimulus) was presented interspersed in a short sequence of stimuli of another valence category (e.g. negative ‘context’ stimuli), relative to a target that has a similar valence as the context (e.g. a negative target within a negative context). This difference in LPP amplitude between evaluative inconsistent and evaluative consistent target stimuli is referred to as the evaluative inconsistency effect. Contradiction (Slide 2): Seven days later, Kerry wrote to a different constituent, “Thank you for expressing your support for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush’s response to the crisis.”The two ads seem very similar in their "surface structure". But looks can be deceiving. A clinical dissection of these ads makes clear that they couldn't have been more different in the networks they activated and the emotions they elicited. Next, partisans were asked to consider the discrepancy, and then to rate the extent to which the person's words and deeds were contradictory. Finally, they were presented with an exculpatory statement that might explain away the apparent contradiction, and asked to reconsider and again rate the extent to which the target's words and deeds were contradictory. But the political brain also did something we didn’t predict. Once partisans had found a way to reason to false conclusions, not only did neural circuits involved in negative emotions turn off, but circuits involved in positive emotions turned on. The partisan brain didn’t seem satisfied in just feeling better. It worked overtime to feel good, activating reward circuits that give partisans a jolt of positive reinforcement for their biased reasoning. These reward circuits overlap substantially with those activated when drug addicts get their “fix,” giving new meaning to the term political junkie.4

The vision of the mind that has captured the imagination of philosophers, cognitive scientists, economists and political scientists since the 18th century - a dispassionate mind that makes decisions by weighing the evidence and reasoning to the most valid conclusions - bears no relation to how the mind and brain actually work. 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:Just how important networks are in understanding why candidates win and lose can be seen by contrasting two political advertisements: the first from Bill Clinton's campaign for the presidency in 1992, and the second from John Kerry's in 2004. Both men were running against an increasingly unpopular incumbent named Bush. Both ads were, for each man, his chance to introduce himself to the general electorate following the Democratic primary campaign and to tell the story he wanted to tell about himself to the American people. And both were a microcosm of the entire campaign.