Kog, M., Moons, J., & Depondt, L. (1997). A box full of feelings. A playset for children from 3 to 8. Leuven: CEGO. Read the excerpt from the book below, watch the report and interview with Drew Westen on Newsnight, Wednesday 15 August and let us know your thoughts. And don't forget there's plenty of other titles in the Newsnight Book Club.

Relying on psychophysiological approaches to embodiment and brain functions, Tsakiris et al. [ 14] examine the theoretical and empirical basis for a study of politics that puts visceral processes at its heart. Tsakiris et al. [ 14] discuss the intersection of interoceptive inference, emotions and politics, and argue that physiological signals may influence political behaviour. Through a proof-of-concept study, the researchers suggest that inducing physiological arousal can impact individuals' inclinations towards less authoritarian leaders, illuminating the potential mechanisms governing visceral politics. As Tsakiris et al. [ 14] conclude, understanding how biological anxiety translates into ideological behaviour can shed light on both historical events as well as humans' reactions to future existential threats. Yet what prompts an individual to behave ideologically? What neurocognitive processes are underway when a person evaluates socio-political information and comes to dogmatic conclusions? Why do some people fall into the traps of polarization more easily than others? These are some of the pertinent questions that a science of the political brain aims to elucidate and critically evaluate.Although the study of political behaviour has been traditionally restricted to the social sciences, new advances in political neuroscience and computational cognitive science highlight that the biological sciences can offer crucial insights into the roots of ideological thought and action. Echoing the dazzling diversity of human ideologies, this theme issue seeks to reflect the multiplicity of theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding the nature of the political brain. Cutting-edge research along three thematic strands is presented, including (i) computational approaches that zoom in on fine-grained mechanisms underlying political behaviour, (ii) neurocognitive perspectives that harness neuroimaging and psychophysiological techniques to study ideological processes, and (iii) behavioural studies and policy-minded analyses of such understandings across cultures and across ideological domains. Synthesizing these findings together, the issue elucidates core questions regarding the nature of uncertainty in political cognition, the mechanisms of social influence and the cognitive structure of ideological beliefs. This offers key directions for future biologically grounded research as well as a guiding map for citizens, psychologists and policymakers traversing the uneven landscape of modern polarization, misinformation, intolerance and dogmatism. This article is part of the theme issue 'The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms'. The inherent challenge—and exciting promise—of political psychology and neuroscience is the task of investigating an endlessly intricate organ (the brain) in wildly diverse social contexts (the arena of ideologies). These complexities naturally compound each other, rendering a robust psychological science of ideologies and political behaviour both challenging and crucial. The rapid spread of misinformation propagated by digital media as well as pronounced tribalistic polarization within and between national entities has provoked a global sense that our understanding of the origins of voting behaviour and ideological worldviews is dangerously insufficient. While the study of political attitudes and behaviour has been traditionally confined to the social sciences, new advances in political neuroscience and computational cognitive science highlight that the biological sciences may offer crucial insights about political and ideological behaviour. Ideological behaviour can be defined as behaviour that is epistemically dogmatic and interpersonally intolerant towards non-adherents or non-members [ 1]. In other words, a person thinking or behaving ‘ideologically' is rigidly adhering to a doctrine, resisting credible evidence when forming opinions, and selectively antagonistic to individuals who do not follow their ideological group or cause. Ideological behaviour can therefore occur in the realm of politics, religion, gender, race, class, social media or any other area of life where social conditions are described and accordingly actions are narrowly prescribed, resulting in ingroups and outgroups. Important for the present purposes, it has also been shown that the LPPs in the oddball paradigm are modulated by motivational relevance. For example, Schupp et al. (2000) reported greater inconsistency effects for pictures depicting threat, violent, death and erotica, which are assumed to strongly activate motivational processes. Along similar lines, Schupp et al. (2004) reported greater LPPs for affective pictures of high arousal than for less affectively intense pictures. The present study

Yet—as any good philosopher of science will observe—improved methodologies have a limited impact without inventive and thoughtful theoretical approaches that can take the field forward and build knowledge across disciplines. It is this marriage between cutting-edge methods and original, well-reasoned hypotheses that this special issue wishes to highlight. This collection of state-of-the-art research in political neuroscience, psychology and political science seeks to illustrate that a robust science of political behaviour is possible and productive, illuminating critical insights about the nature of ideology, the human brain and the societies we live in. In Australia, Kevin Rudd is likely to win by a landslide this year if his Federal Labor Party continues to seize the opportunities presented by the New Politics.Consider, in this respect, the similar critique of Ruth Leys: “manipulations operating below the level of ideology and consciousness can only be countered by manipulations of a similar kind” (Leys, 2011, p. 461, n. 48).

What matters most in politics - facts and logic, or stories and feelings? Drew Westen says it's emotion that counts - and shows how Bill Clinton and George W Bush understood this, while John Kerry and Al Gore never got it. Here we print extracts from his new book, The Political Brain - which is essential summer reading from Washington to Westminster The investigators hypothesize that emotionally biased reasoning leads to the "stamping in" or reinforcement of a defensive belief, associating the participant's "revisionist" account of the data with positive emotion or relief and elimination of distress. "The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data," Westen says. Freud, S. ([1915]1957). The unconscious (S. I., Trans.). In J. Strachey (Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud: Vol. XIV (pp. 166–204). London: Hogarth Press. The investigators used functional neuroimaging (fMRI) to study a sample of committed Democrats and Republicans during the three months prior to the U.S. Presidential election of 2004. The Democrats and Republicans were given a reasoning task in which they had to evaluate threatening information about their own candidate. During the task, the subjects underwent fMRI to see what parts of their brain were active. What the researchers found was striking. We have politics on our mind—or, rather, we have politics in different parts of our brains. In this path-breaking study, Matt Qvortrup takes the reader on a whistle stop tour through the fascinating, and sometimes frightening, world of neuropolitics; the discipline that combines neuroscience and politics, and is even being used to win elections.

Third, we expected to see a brain in conflict—conflict between what a reasonable person could believe and what a partisan would want to believe. Thus, we predicted activations in a region known to be involved in monitoring and resolving conflicts. The Political Brain is a groundbreaking investigation into the role of emotion in determining the political life of the nation. For two decades Drew Westen, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, has explored a theory of the mind that differs substantially from the more "dispassionate" notions held by most cognitive psychologists, political scientists, and economists—and Democratic campaign strategists. The idea of the mind as a cool calculator that makes decisions by weighing the evidence bears no relation to how the brain actually works. When political candidates assume voters dispassionately make decisions based on "the issues," they lose. That's why only one Democrat has been re-elected to the presidency since Franklin Roosevelt—and only one Republican has failed in that quest. The two ads seem very similar in their "surface structure". But looks can be deceiving. A clinical dissection of these ads makes clear that they couldn't have been more different in the networks they activated and the emotions they elicited. Sentiment is the deciding force in political affairs. Despots have know this since human societies first were ever formed!