Friday, July 25, 2008

The Frontal Cortex : Rational Voters?

The Frontal Cortex : Rational Voters?: "they assume that my political preferences reflect some mixture of ideology and selfish calculation. I'll vote for the guy who best matches my geopolitics and tax bracket.

The problem, as political scientist Larry Bartels notes, is that people aren't rational: we're rationalizers. Our brain prefers a certain candidate or party for a really complicated set of subterranean reasons and then, after the preference has been unconsciously established, we invent rational sounding reasons to justify our preferences."

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