Study Questions for
Westen, Drew. 2007. The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. New York: Public Affiars.

No later than October 2 submit a five-page essay on a question to be provided on September 25. You should be able to write a good essay by synthesizing your knowledge gained from reading Westen and studying the following questions.

General

1. What are the neural bases of religion and politics?
2. To what extent are reason and emotion involved in religious and political affairs? What does Westen mean by "The Political Brain is an emotional brain"?
3. How do religious emotions affect politics?
4. How do voters' feelings affect their political choices?
5. How does Westen's view of the mind relate to political campaigns?
6. Should politicians try to change the structure of the brain or learn how to appeal to it?

   Introduction
   

7. Describe Westen's 2004 presidential election study. What were his hypotheses? What are his conclusions regarding how the brain worked to eliminate distress and conflict among political partisans' views of candidate actions?
8. What is the so-called "political junkie" effect?
9. What are the practical political implications of the Westen study?

   Chapter One

10. Explain the concept of a network of neural associations.
11. What is the difference between the Clinton and Kerry television ads?
12. What does Westen mean by "Political persuasion is about networks and narratives"?
13. Why did many voters support Reagan when they disagreed with his policy positions?
14. Why have Democratic campaign strategists clung to an irrational emotional attachment to rationality?
15. Make a list of human emotions.
16. Explain the significance of Professor John Zaller's conclusion that public opinion follows cues from party leaders and pundits.

    Chapter Two

17. Remember the discussion of the Age of Reason and democracy when we study Wills's Head and Heart.
18. Can citizens become more serious, more reasoning, and less passionate about public affairs?
19. Are people autonomous individuals or committed to "primordial sentiments" toward tribal or religious communities?
20. What is wrong with the dispassionate calculation of the Pennsylvania coal miner in the 2004 election?
21. What is the point of the exchange between Bush and Gore on Medicare in their first 2004 debate?
22. Why was Roosevelt's May 7, 1933 Fireside Chat so effective?
23. What was Clinton's political strength?

    Chapter Three

24. Why has the brain maintained the emotional response?
25. What was the "Daisy" ad?
26. What is the amygdala?
27. How did the subliminal flash of RATS in the Weinberger-Westen experiment work?
28. Where is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and what does it do?
29. Where is the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and what does it do?
30. How do reason and emotion work together?
31. What is the significance of the 1992 Willie Horton ad?

    Chapter Four

32. How are Darwin, Skinner, and Freud related to the political brain?
33. How would you have responded to Bernard Shaw's question in the 1992 Presidential Debate?
34. What is the significance of Reagan's "It's Morning Again in America" Ad in 1984?
35. What "drives" people?
36. How does priming a network affect a response?
37. What are the political implications of these findings?

    Chapter Five

38. What are "spreading activation," "spreading inhibition," and "constraint satisfaction," and what are their political implications, especially in regard to stealth attacks?
39. When is one most susceptible to political imprinting?
40. Is there such a thing as an impartial political decision?
41. How do both information and feelings constrain political decisions? What is self-serving reasoning? What is the effect of the best informed persons also being those with the strongest feelings?
42. Why do folks often prefer "truthiness" to "truth"?
43. How did Westen predict people's judgments on Clinton's impeachment, the election of 2000, and Abu Ghraib 80 to 85 percent of the time?
44. Why do viewers of Fox News still believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in 2003?

    Chapter Six

45. What's wrong with trickle-up politics?
46. What changes voters' minds?
47. What does Westen mean by "feelings trump beliefs" and ""policies matter to the extent that they influence voters' emotions"?
48. How does anxiety affect religion and politics?
49. How do election campaigns activate latent emotions in voters' interests and values?
50. Why do values tend to trump self-interest at the polls?
51. How is Marx's "false consciousness" related to emotion and reason?
52. If religion induces some of the most intense feelings, how can violence be avoided by a nation that allows religious freedom?
53. Explain the results of the Massachusetts study conducted by Ted Brader.
54. Why don't Democrats run emotionally compelling campaigns?
55. What is the hierarchy of goals that Westen says should guide every political campaign? Why?

    Chapter Seven

56. What are the elements of a compelling political narrative? How does religion help provide them?
57. How does Westen use The Little Engine that Could?
58. What are political ideologies and how are they organized?
59. What was Reagan's clear, coherent, compelling narrative? What did he mean when he said he believed in states' rights?
60. What do media frames do?

    Chapter Eight

61. What is wrong with one-dimensional thinking about public opinion polls?
62. What happens if a party cedes contentious issues?
63. Too what degree are religious difference ambiguous?
64. Does abortion represent a genuine moral conflict or an absolute individual right?
65. What is Popkin's "low-information rationality"?

    Chapter Nine

66. Is there a rational or emotional connection between gun control and terrorism?

    Chapter Ten

67. Why is it important to distinguish motives at different levels of consciousness?
68. How are different "primes" activated in "Sweet Home Alabama" and "The Ballad of Curtis Loew"?
69. Why do Manichean political narratives resonate with fundamentalist Christians?
70. How is the assumption of a just world related to religious beliefs?
71. What does it mean that unconscious racism is related to an active amygdala?
72. How did the 2006 ad against Harold Ford subliminally trigger racism?

    Chapter Eleven

73. What does Westen mean by you can't win a campaign with half a brain? How do you appeal to the whole brain?
74. How do political campaigns use religion to evoke emotion?
75. What is the neural network effect of obscuring hierarchical levels of a concept such as religion?
76. What is Westen's idea of a "principaled stand"?

    Chapter Twelve

77. Do you agree or disagree that those qualities required to win elections are the same as those necesary to govern?
78. What are the elements of political intelligence?
79. What was the result of Westen's study during the 2003 recall election in California?

    Chapter Thirteen

80. Is negative campaigning unethical?
81. How does stimulating multimodal networks increase the activation of emotions?
82. How was Cahill's use of focus groups a failure to understand how the mind works?
83. Did Gore ever say he invented the internet?
84. What is the central psychological principle in shaping voters networks?
85. Why is counterpunching so important?
86. What does Westen mean by sometimes the meta-message is the message?

    Chapter Fourteen

87. What is the principle for countering hate appeals dressed up in religious garb?
88. How does fear of death increase religious intolerance and extreme defensive measures? How does one combat the manipulation of fear? Explain the Solomon studies.

    Chapter Fifteen

89. What does Westen mean by "the Schiavo case was a battle between two value systems, two moralities, and two visions of faith"?
90. Has Christianity been conflated with an extreme authoritarianism?
91. What is sacred, holy, and moral? Who decides?
92. How did God become a Republican? What should Democrats do? Are tax cuts and shock and awe part of the Christian message?
93. What is the difference between evangelical and fundamentalist Christians? Does it matter?
94. How has Bush's "religious" position affected the FDA and HHS?
95. How do the two major parties differ on church-state relations?