Genetic and Neurocognitive Approaches for Comparative Politics: A Partnership Between Science and Culture

Understanding the complex interaction of neurobiology and social forces is critical in gaining a more complete understanding of cognition, perception, preferences, and ultimately similarities and differences in behaviors in complex environments.

Abstract

Over the last half century, theoretical and methodological advances in genetics and cognitive neuroscience have changed the way in which we understand human behavior. As the technology to identify neurological processes involved in decision making and preference formation has become widely available, cognitive, developmental, neuroscientific, and genetic approaches have emerged as the dominant paradigms in exploring behavior. Though humans are remarkably similar, we are all also unique. People’s genetic structure, genetic expression, and individual physiological response to stimuli differ; moreover, people’s minds are differently structured and function differently. As a result of either genes, hormones, epigenetic processes, neurology, or physiology, we are different from one another and such differences, in combination with what we experience in life are reflected in our different preferences and behaviors. Understanding the complex interaction of neurobiology and social forces is critical in gaining a more complete understanding of cognition, perception, preferences, and ultimately similarities and differences in behaviors in complex environments.