In this fascinating new study, “Remembering and Voting: Theory and Evidence from Amnesic Patients”, a team of scholars study memory, emotions, and voting behavior among a small group of amnesic patients.
The scholars seek to find a critical test between different and competing information processing systems–conventionally understood as “emotional” and “cognitive” but actually quite a bit more complex than this simple dichotomy. Interested readers can dive into the article to learn more.
Settling on amnesic patients as a group to test competing models of rationality in voting is a fascinating choice. Past research has used tried and true methods such as “distractor” tasks or surveys separated in time, but have never been quite able to “clear” memory. Among amnesic patients, who lack the ability to retain short term information, there is no doubt that cognitive processing did not occur.
The takeaway from the piece is that respondents were able to select the “right” candidate, meaning the candidate who was closer to their previously expressed policy views, even when they were not able to “remember” candidate policy positions. The authors speculate that “non declarative” learning occurs (candidates are sorted into categories such as “similar” or “not similar” to me, and this information is successfully stored as emotional attachments, even when cognitive retrieval is not possible.