Neuropolitics and international relations: An interdisciplinary study to explore micro-origins of international cooperation

Hakemuksen tiivistelmä

The field of international studies has long been interested in understanding individual drivers of political attitudes. A large and growing body of work shed light on individual preferences towards issues such as global governance, human rights and climate change cooperation. Individual-level research in this tradition has increased in the wake of globalization and the growing popular opposition to international cooperative arrangements. Researchers have long been relying on surveys and interviews to collect data on attitudes and attempt to unpack the complex dynamics of individual preferences that ultimately inform the development of policies and interventions to promote cooperation, understanding, and peace among nations. In a novel interdisciplinary study, we propose a new approach to examine individual-level drivers of political preferences by relying on insights from neuroscience and aim to answer the following questions; Under what conditions do individuals maintain their political preferences on international cooperation when presented with counter-evidence? How do they process such conflicting information? We will investigate the neural correlates of maintaining political preferences on international cooperation – in casu, support or opposition to the Paris Climate Agreement – in an EEG laboratory (Study 1; 60 participants) and in a live voting setting (Study 2; 60 participants). We aim to address the knowledge gap on the neuropsychological processes behind individual’s attitudes towards issues involving climate operation and go one step further by focusing on attitude change, and introducing neuroscience to the study of international relations. Our study will contribute to our understanding of how political information about international affairs is processed in the brain, including the cognitive mechanisms involved in decision-making and attitude change.