Abstract

People’s wanting and liking reactions reflect not only high-level beliefs, but also the operation of rudimentary biopsychological processes. Previous studies suggest that the following wanting and liking processes may be relevant to political behavior: irrational wanting (where wanting is triggered by activation of the brain dopamine system and becomes dissociated from liking); unconscious liking and wanting (where evaluative judgments and behavior are modified without awareness of the eliciting affective stimuli or of the underlying affective response); and fluency-based liking (where preferences are influenced by the ease of stimulus processing). This review suggests how conceptual and methodological tools from affective neuroscience and psychophysiology can refine our understanding of basic affective and motivational processes that shape political attitudes and choices. KEY WORDS: affect, choice, emotion, preference, neuroscience Citizens participate in the political process not only with their heads, but also their hearts. They are either enthusiastic about candidates or disgusted by them, engaged in or indifferent to elected officials ’ decisions, trusting or afraid of the government, passionate about social justice or hateful toward certain groups, hopeful or scared about the future, “mad as hell ” or confident about the economy. Social scientists who appreciate these observations have long been interested in understanding the functions of emotion and motivation in political behavior

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