A belief in alien abduction is an emotional belief, but so is a belief that Iran intends to build nuclear weapons, that one's country is good, that a sales tax is unjust, or that French decision makers are irresolute. Revolutionary research in the brain sciences has overturned conventional views of the relationship between emotion, rationality, and beliefs. Because rationality depends on emotion, and because cognition and emotion are nearly indistinguishable in the brain, one can view emotion as constituting and strengthening beliefs such as trust, nationalism, justice or credibility. For example, a belief that another's commitment is credible depends on one's selection (and interpretation) of evidence and one's assessment of risk, both of which rely on emotion. Observing that emotion and cognition co-produce beliefs has policy implications: how one fights terrorism changes if one views credibility as an emotional belief.

▪ Abstract  Prospect theory is the most influential behavioral theory of choice in the social sciences. Its creators won a Nobel Prize in economics, and it is largely responsible for the booming field of behavioral economics. Although international relations theorists who study security have used prospect theory extensively, Americanists, comparativists, and political economists have shown little interest in it. The dominant explanation for political scientists' tepid response focuses on the theoretical problems with extending a theory devised in the lab to explain political decisions in the field. This essay focuses on these problems and reviews suggested solutions. It suggests that prospect theory's failure to ignite the imagination of more political scientists probably results from their aversion to behavioral assumptions and not from problems unique to prospect theory.

The ubiquitous yet inaccurate belief in international relations scholarship that cognitive biases and emotion cause only mistakes distorts the field's understanding of the relationship between rationality and psychology in three ways+ If psychology explains only mistakes~or deviations from rationality!, then~1! rationality must be free of psychology;~2! psychological explanations require rational baselines; and~3! psychology cannot explain accurate judgments+ This view of the relationship between rationality and psychology is coherent and logical, but wrong+ Although undermining one of these three beliefs is sufficient to undermine the others, I address each belief-or myth-in turn+ The point is not that psychological models should replace rational models, but that no single approach has a lock on understanding rationality+ In some important contexts~such as in strategic choice! or when using certain concepts~such as trust, identity, justice, or reputation!, an explicitly psychological approach to rationality may beat a rationalist one+

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Can one use emotion at anything other than the individual level of analysis? Emotion happens in biological bodies, not in the space between them, and this implies that group emotion is nothing but a collection of individuals experiencing the same emotion. This article contends that group-level emotion is powerful, pervasive, and irreducible to individuals. People do not merely associate with groups (or states), they can become those groups through shared culture, interaction, contagion, and common group interest. Bodies produce emotion that identities experience: grouplevel emotion can be stronger than, and different from, emotion experienced as an individual; group members share, validate, and police each others' feelings; and these feelings structure relations within and between groups in international politics. Emotion goes with identity.