The biological roots of political division: mapping the neural architecture of ideology and social influence

For a long time, political thought was shaped by the image of the “rational voter,” someone who calmly evaluates policies and candidates before making a choice. Research in political psychology has steadily challenged that picture. Even so, the biological and cognitive processes that shape political identities, susceptibility to misinformation, and emotional reactions to leaders are only now coming into sharper focus. This Collection brings together recent work that goes beyond self-report and draws on neuroimaging, computational modelling, and behavioral interventions to examine the architecture of the political mind. Across these studies, political behavior appears closely linked to basic sensory, affective, and cognitive processes. Here, we synthesize those contributions and argue that future progress in political neuroscience will depend on stronger predictive computational models. Rather than treating ideology as either fully rational or simply irrational, this perspective suggests that political beliefs often emerge from ordinary neural systems trying to cope with complexity, uncertainty, and threat.