In the last few years, neuroscience has been instrumental in helping the researchers to understand the nuances of human behavior. Its applications have helped companies to achieve immense success through successful marketing and leadership campaigns as they were able to better understand their consumers and employees and were therefore able to create products and strategies aligned to their needs and preferences. In the case of political thinking, however, and the expression of thoughts, preferences, and attitudes more generally, people often are unaware of how little insight they have into their own decision-making processes. In other words, they don’t know what they don’t know. It has been shown time and again that people confidently generate post-hoc narrative accounts of the thinking that supposedly went into a behavior, even when their behavior can be demonstrated to be driven by factors outside their conscious awareness. Thus, behavior is often driven by automatic mechanisms, which leads self-report of mental processes to be notoriously unreliable and susceptible to many forms of contamination.

1. Concept Note on Neuropolitics & its Applications in Indian Politics
By: Sharad Agarwal (IIM Ranchi)
In the last few years, neuroscience has been instrumental in helping the researchers to understand
the nuances of human behavior. Its applications have helped companies to achieve immense
success through successful marketing and leadership campaigns as they were able to better
understand their consumers and employees and were therefore able to create products and
strategies aligned to their needs and preferences.
In the case of political thinking, however, and the expression of thoughts, preferences, and
attitudes more generally, people often are unaware of how little insight they have into their own
decision-making processes. In other words, they don’t know what they don’t know. It has been
shown time and again that people confidently generate post-hoc narrative accounts of the
thinking that supposedly went into a behavior, even when their behavior can be demonstrated to
be driven by factors outside their conscious awareness. Thus, behavior is often driven by
automatic mechanisms, which leads self-report of mental processes to be notoriously unreliable
and susceptible to many forms of contamination.
Neuropolitics is a very recent scientific field of study and research. It deals with understanding
voters' behavior and their attitude and intentions towards various political candidates contesting
elections from different parties. Neuroscience has been able to predict the human behavior and
intentions with greater accuracy as it takes into account the subconscious motivations of the
human being which constitutes more than 90 % part in the human decision making as shown in
figure 1. The traditional methods used for research such as quantitative methods (questionnaire
surveys etc.) and qualitative methods (interviews, focus groups, etc.) are not able to delve into
the subconscious human mind as the respondent is required to consciously answer in these
traditionally used methods. While, the neuroscientific methods do not require the respondent to
make consious decison as it reads the data in real time from the brain through
Electrencephalography (EEG) as shown in figure 2. Studying political decision making during
elections can help illustrate some of the basic principles guiding how people perceive candidates
and how emotion and social attachments influence voting decisions

2. .
Figure 1: Subconscious mind of voters
Applications of neuroscience in Indian Politics
Two of the area where neuropolitics can help the Indian political parties to reach out to their
voters in an effective manner are:
 Choosing the best (emotionally connected) candidate for each constituency
This refers to understanding the emotional reactions of voters for each probable candidates from
a political party to predict voters' decision making for each of them. This will help the respective
political party to choose the best candidate who is emotionally near to the voters. Voter's
decision making is governed by subconscious mind, neuroscientific methods can tap into the
subconscious by directly recording data from brain rather than asking the voters of their
intentions (which is a conscious process)
 Effective Advertising
This refers to customizing all marketing communications of political parties to attract the voters'
attention. Attention is a scarce resource for the human brain. During the political environment,
numerous political parties market themselves and try to gain votes' attention for their
advertisements and publicity. Seeking greater voter's attention leads to imprinting of message in
the voter's short term and then long term memory which further play great role in their decision
making at the time of polling their votes during the election. Since human attention is mostly
autonomic with no conscious control of human being themselves, it is immensely important to
customize all marketing communications (advertisements, speeches, etc.) to gain voters'
autonomic attention to gain maximum mind share space among all competing political parties.

3. Most of the marketing communication including the storyline, level of the language, images,
music can be analyzed to find out if it may drive voters away or attract them.
Neuropolitics in other countries
Most of the political parties, globally, do not reveal their marketing strategies so much of the
information is not in public domain but there are evidences that in the last few years some
political parties in several countries have used neuroscience to get closer to their voters. Some of
the examples are as follows:
USA
USA is one of the prominent country where the political candidates have used neuroscience to
gain advantage over their competitors in the elections. The current election to white house is
using neuroscience in big way. One neuromarketing firm claims that it is working for Hillary
Rodham Clinton presidential campaign committee to help it improve its targeting and
messages.
Oregon Republican State Senator Brian Boquist also admits to having employed political
neuromarketing in his campaigns. "I don’t know how it works, all I know is that it works,".
Republicans appear to be using neuroscience more than Democrats, if this midterm is any
indication. They are appealing to the emotion of voters' "Red Brain" triggers. says the senator.
Mexico
In Mexico, President Enrique Peña Nieto’s campaign and his party, the Institutional
Revolutionary Party, or PRI, employed tools to measure voters’ brain waves, skin arousal, heart
rates and facial expressions during the 2012 presidential campaign. More recently, the party has
been using facial coding (other neuromarketing technique) to help pick its best candidates, one
consultant says. Some officials even speak openly about their embrace of neuropolitical
techniques, and not just for campaigning, but for governing as well
Poland
In Poland, Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz and her party, Civic Platform, worked closely with a
neuromarketing firm ahead of parliamentary elections.
Colombia
Colombia, President Juan Manuel Santos’s re-election team in 2014 tapped into the same
neuropolitical consultancy advising Mexico’s governing party (he won).

4. Turkey
In Turkey, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his Justice and Development Party hired a
Turkish neuromarketing company for the June 2015 election, according to the firm’s co-founder
and chief executive. Using a mix of techniques — like tracking the brain waves, eyes, faces, skin
and heart rates of volunteers in its laboratory in Istanbul — the company said that it warned that
Mr. Davutoglu was not emotionally engaging voters in his speeches.
Fig 2 : Emotiv EEG Headset (wireless & portable)
About the Author:
Sharad Agarwal is currently a doctoral student (5th Year) in the area of consumer neuroscience
at Indian Institute of Management Ranchi, India where he is about to submit his thesis in few
weeks time. He has been working in this area since last five years and is an expert in this area.
He has participated in neuroscience training programs and workshops across the globe. He has
been invited to present his research on applied neuroscience at top business schools across the
world including Yale school of management, Stanford graduate school of business, University of
Chicago Booth school of business among others. He has published his research in applied
neuroscience in some of the top global academic journals while other papers are in final stages of
acceptance at other top rated Journals. He has keen interest in the applications of neuroscience
for innovative applications including marketing, leadership and politics. He can be reached at
sharad.agarwal12fpm@iimranchi.ac.in/sharad2021@gmail.com or 07739980722

5. References
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/world/americas/neuropolitics-where-campaigns-try-to-
read-your-mind.html
http://www.fastcompany.com/1699985/how-neuromarketers-tapped-vote-button-your-brain-
help-gop-win-house