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.

Ch. 1. Coming to Rational Choice
Ch. 2. Human Affect in the Western Tradition
Ch. 3. Drawing from the Neurosciences
Ch. 4. Dual Affective Subsystems: Disposition and Surveillance
Ch. 5. Emotion and Political Behavior
Ch. 6. Emotion and Political Judgment
Ch. 7. Affective Politics
App. A Affective Intelligence and the Dual Model of Emotional Systems
App. B Toward a Measurement Theory of Political Affect
App. C: Suggestions for Further Reading
References
Index