THE POLITICAL BRAIN:
WHAT TURNS GRAY MATTER INTO RED OR BLUE?
WHY WE VOTE THE WAY WE DO --

The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation

A multimedia lecture

Drew Westen, renowned psychologist and neuroscientist, and author of the widely acclaimed The Political Brain, proves that we vote with our hearts, not our minds. In a groundbreaking investigation into voter behavior, The Political Brain provides a virtual roadmap for the type of messaging that gets candidates elected at all levels of government.   

In his fascinating multimedia lecture, Westen uses video clips from presidential debates, campaign ads and speeches to illustrate the way the mind of the voter works, and how elections are won and lost by understanding or misunderstanding the passionate political brain. In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins.  The marketplace that matters most of the time in American politics is the marketplace of emotion, filled with values, images, analogies, moral sentiments, and moving oratory.  

Westen argues that the two parties have fared very differently in national elections over the last 30 years-with Democrats only winning election and re-election to the Presidency once since FDR and only one Republican having failed a re-election bid-because they hold two radically different models of the mind. Democrats view voters as dispassionate calculators of candidates' policies and programs, whereas Republicans, with their background in marketing, have a better understanding of what pulls voters' levers in the polling booth.  

Westen received his B.A. at Harvard, an M.A. in Social and Political Thought at the University of Sussex (England), and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of Michigan, where he subsequently taught for six years. For several years he was Chief Psychologist at Cambridge Hospital and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. He is currently a guest Blogger on the Huffington Post, a commentator on NPR's "All Things Considered" and the founder of Westen Strategies, a political and corporate consulting firm.