Political Psychology and Social Neuroscience: Strange Bedfellows or Comrades in Arms?

Abstract

A special issue on neuroscientific contributions to political psychology may strike some as an odd choice. Neuroscientists, or so the stereotype goes, are concerned about the basic building blocks of life and behavior, whereas political psychologists are more likely to be concerned about voter sophistication, international conflict, and Armageddon. Neuroscientists are reductionistic, dismissive of behavioral scientists and ecological contexts, and prefer invertebrates to primates as subjects of investigation. Political psychologists, on the other hand, study everyday events in complex human societies to understand political choices, actions, and consequences in the real world. Despite these stereotypes, neuroscientists and behavioral scientists are more similar than dissimilar on core questions, epistemology, and values. Neuroscientists are increasingly appreciative of the powerful role that social, political, and cultural factors can play in the development, selection, or maintenance of basic neurobehavioral mechanisms, whereas social scientists are discovering that neuroscientific principles and techniques can contribute to more realistic models of the diversity of mechanisms underlying social behaviors, empirical tests of conflicting theoretical accounts of social behavior, and more comprehensive understanding of social and political behavior (Cacioppo, in press). If neuroscientists and political psychologists are not strange bedfellows, neither are they comrades in arms. The purpose of this special issue is to move ever so slightly toward the latter endpoint. Research in behavioral, cognitive, and social neuroscience has advanced our understanding of what and how people perceive, feel, and remember, and it is illuminating what and how people think, decide, and act. Together, this work and the theory and methods behind it have provocative if not yet important implications for theory and research on political behavior. The contributors to this special issue review relevant developments in the neurosciences, discuss representative research that features multilevel integrative analyses, and examine some of the challenges, perils, and opportunities