Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment

Although the rational choice approach toward political behavior has been severely criticized, its adherents claim that competing models have failed to offer a more scientific model of political decisionmaking. This measured but provocative book offers precisely that: an alternative way of understanding political behavior based on cognitive research. The authors draw on research in neuroscience, physiology, and experimental psychology to conceptualize habit and reason as two mental states that interact in a delicate, highly functional balance controlled by emotion. Applying this approach to more than fifteen years of election results, they shed light on a wide range of political behavior, including party identification, symbolic politics, and negative campaigning. Remarkably accessible, Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment urges social scientists to move beyond the idealistic notion of the purely rational citizen to form a more complete, realistic model that includes the emotional side of human judgment.

George E. Marcus is a professor of political science at Williams College.

W. Russell Neuman is a professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communication and director of the Information and Society Program, Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

Michael MacKuen is the Burton Craige professor of political science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.