It combines work from a variety of scientific fields which includes neuroscience, political science, psychology, behavioral genetics, primatology, and ethology.
Philosophers, including Plato and John Locke, have long theorized about the nature of human thought and used these theories as a basis for their political philosophy.
In Locke's view, humans entered the world with a mind that was a blank slate and formed governments as a result of the necessities imposed by the state of nature.
The advent of functional magnetic resonance imaging gave a new set of tools to neuroscience that could be used to investigate questions that were difficult or impossible to address previously.
In 2011, Ryota Kanai's group at University College London found differences in the size of particular brain regions corresponded with whether the participants were more liberal or more conservative.
The greater complexity of the political dynamics among the spotted hyena appears to require a larger neocortex than in related species with simpler social structures.