We can only speculate, but it’s highly probable that never as much research (utilizing neurotechniques such as EEG, fMRI) as during the last presidential campaign in the USA has been conducted. Some of it was focused solely on scientific problems but some was also engaged in gaining an advantage in political battle. Some was very controversial (and did not meet scientific standards) but some also shed new light on very important issues of forming political preferences. I think it’s good that we don’t rely on almost 19th and 20th century models of political behaviour and try to enrich them with some unknown aspects. Georg Lakoff, a linguist and cognitive scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, has tried to succeed in such a way of thinking.
His latest book, “The Political Mind,” (2008) grounds his critique and his agenda in neuroscience. According to his own statement he put all his effort to make “the political unconscious as conscious as possible” i.e. understand and explain it in scientific terms. Lakoff blames “neoliberals” and their “Old Enlightenment” mentality for the American Democratic Party's weaknesses. They think they can win elections by citing facts and offering programs that serve voters’ interests. When they lose, they conclude that they need to move further to the right, where the voters are. But the basis of Lakoff’s theory is simple (even a bit simplistic): the mind is the brain and this explains why conservatives win elections. They possess the knowledge to manipulate our brains more effectively. They’ve been “preparing the seedbed of our brains with their high-level general principles, so that when ‘tax relief’ was planted, their framing could take root and sprout.” And “as a result, progressive messages don’t take root.”
As one of the reviewer wrote “In place of neoliberalism, Lakoff offers neuroliberalism”. Since voters’ opinions are neither logical nor self-made, they should be altered, not obeyed. Politicians should “not follow polls but use them to see how they can change public opinion to their moral worldview.” And since persuasion is mechanical, progressives should rely less on facts and more on images and drama, “casting progressives as heroes, and by implication, conservatives as villains.” The key is to “say things not once, but over and over". Brains change when ideas are repeatedly activated.
But the fact that the brain structure materializes the mind structure doesn’t simplify their relationship. And neuroscience itself can’t explain all aspects of political preferences and decisions. At its best it offers some insight how behaviour at the ballot-box is partly rooted in some neurobiologically derivated characteristics of our brain. Some scientists go even further by linking voting behaviour with our genetic “equipment” e.g. polymorphisms of MAO-B or 5HTTP genes but it seems at least controversial if not impossible to fully elucidate such a connection.
In my opinion, the realistic approach of transforming “neuropolitics” into serious domain of research is twofold. Firstly, it presumes to perform intensive search for basic neuroprocesses related to political decision-making and/or human proneness to manipulation by means of political rhetoric or behaviour (actually, Lakoff’s book is about it). But this research cannot explain all aspects of our political mind on its own. It has to be enriched by non-neuro research and methodologies and/or theories from sociology, social psychology and cognitive science. Only such wide approach of integrating scientific data can offer preliminary insights about political (neuro)decisions and its real-life consequences. Not only by giving information “what structures are lighting up” in our brain (e.g. if we see a picture with politicians) but also offering an answer to the question “why are they lighting up” and making some casual relationships between human behaviour and cognitive processes behind it.
In fact the political mind is something more than the political brain even we can assume the former is completely based on the latter.
