ABSTRACT
Political animals and animal spirits clearly engage with the same animus, simply because physiology and evolutionary factors remains such a defining and foundational driver of economic and political behaviour. Orthodox political scientists and economists subscribe to the theory of rational expectations, where it is assumed that individuals use all information available to them in an efficient way when making political or economic decisions. Voters, particularly in a populist context, also deviate significantly from predicted norms, a practice spurred on in no small part by the biologically seductive effect of populist political advertising campaigns on a voter’s brain, and via the effects of political hubris and sentiment on the primal instincts that drive to vote. In political scenarios, a similar pattern emerges, where populist propaganda disempowers voters to lay themselves open to a less knowledgeable view of world affairs which heightens the populists’ sway over their political choices.
