"So, rather than engaging voters in a discussion of ideas, political campaigns reaffirm their existing ideological biases and attempt to persuade them to vote."

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Democracy, Politics and Lizard Brains
By Randall Mayes, October 11, 2014

Modern democracy was built on the idea that citizens are rational and autonomous, said David Moscrop, a Ph.D., political science student at the University of British Columbia.

However, Moscrop's thesis suggests that our brains may not be cut out for the political system we've created, reports CBC News.

When we elect a political candidate "we're motivated by our so-called lizard brains," said Moscrop. "Voters across the political spectrum are more likely to vote with instinct than reason."

The lizard brain refers to a theory that the areas of our brain that were developed hundreds of millions of years ago and are responsible for instinct and emotion which influence our decisions.

Ideally, we would make political decisions with our neocortex, the area of our brain responsible for more highly evolved skills including reason, language, abstract thought and consciousness. Scientists believe this area of the brain formed roughly two or three million years ago.

"The voting public isn't encouraged to wade through political platforms to make informed decisions," according to Moscrop. "It's about messaging and name familiarity. And it reflects our own vulnerability to being manipulated -- which is why attack ads work and sound bites work."

?"It is flawed to think that we're fully in control," said Tanya Chartrand, professor of neuroscience and psychology at Duke University. "We don't have the mental capacity to process everything in our environment with conscious awareness. But in the background, we're non-consciously processing much, much more. And non-conscious processing later influences the decisions we make."

"You would think that for high-involvement situations, like deciding on who to vote for, we should be creating spreadsheets of pros and cons and deliberately considering the pros and cons of candidates' platforms," Chartrand said. "But the truth is most of us don't."

"Election campaigns are run on a presumption that voter's political preferences are already formed," noted Moscrop.

So, rather than engaging voters in a discussion of ideas, political campaigns reaffirm their existing ideological biases and attempt to persuade them to vote.

"If we acknowledge our mental limitations, we can design a democracy that takes into account our cognitive flaws," Moscrop said. "Such a practice would build civic engagement better than the current game of party politics, with its narrow focus on the ballot box."

The research was featured in the documentary Too Dumb for Democracy on CBC Radio-Canada.
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