From: "Paul Weith" <weith_paul(a)ceu-budapest.edu> Date: 23 November 2009 12:42:48 pm GMT+01:00 To: "Gergely Csibra" <CsibraG(a)ceu.hu> Subject: PolBeRG event today: This is Your Brain in Politics Dear All, The Political Behavior Research Group cordially invites you to a fascinating talk about human nature, genetics, neuroscience and political behavior today, at 5:45 p.m. in FT 309. Darren Schreiber from the University of California San Diego, Department of Political Science, is one of the very few political scientists working with neuroscience and trying to reveal the biological roots of our political engagement and actions. Today, he will be presenting the paper outlined below: This is Your Brain on Politics by Darren Schreiber In political science, we have long had low levels of explanatory power with conventional models. Accounting for just a quarter of the variance is usually a tremendous accomplishment and often requires many independent variables and sophisticated statistical techniques. Two dogmas of the discipline, the behaviorist approach and rational choice theory, preclude biological explanations. In this talk, however, I will review a variety of results that show how some of the central phenomena of interest in the field can be accounted for using work based in genetics and neuroscience. I'll discuss work on race, political sophistication, voter turnout, and partisanship. And, I will show how we can use fMRI to predict your political party affiliation with shocking accuracy and some preliminary evidence of the neural substrates of egalitarianism. The Political Behavior Research Group (POLBERG) is a research- facilitating and learning environment for the study of political behavior and political communication. It organizes regular seminars with paper presentations, replication seminars, and more informal talks on research methods and emerging research agendas (seehttp://www.personal.ceu.hu/staff/voting_behavior/POLBERG). The events are open to students and faculty from any CEU department as well as interested scholars at other academic institutions, and offer them the opportunity to discuss their own research with a specialist audience. If you liked to learn more about upcoming POLBERG events, present your own work at the seminar or propose a guest speaker (e.g. a notable scholar whom you happen to know is going to visit Budapest), please email Paul Weith at paul_weith(a)ceu-budapest.edu . You are all welcome. Best wishes, The PolBeRG team.