ABSTRACT
What we know (or think we know) about political behavior is changing rapidly, mostly because our understanding of how the brain itself works and how the mind and body affect one another is being transformed. Our popular conception of the supposed “rationality” of human beings—in which our actions are the outcome of conscious thought and deliberation, and where such rational thought trumps (or ought to take precedence over) “wayward” emotions—has been popular at least since the eighteenth century. It has long had an instinctive appeal with philosophers and the person in the street alike. But it is increasingly being challenged by advances in neurobiology and neuroscience, building in a more and more radical way on a critique which began in earnest with the birth of psychology as a field in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
