The impact of heuristics on political behavior*Egypt’s Morsi as a case study

Abstract

This paper aims to answer to what extent do heuristics impact political behavior, using Egypt’s Morsi as a case study, in the context of the democratic 2012 Egyptian presidential elections, this thesis was selected as it proves how cognitive shortcuts determine many of the political decisions and behaviors an individual makes without an actual pertinent thought process as opposed to a more typical optimal thought process, as for the context, it was chosen, as the multitude of pledges, ideological affiliation and personal character of Morsi makes the impact of heuristics visible and helps put this impact in picture, this research is significant in that, it explores the underlying cognitive inner workings of the individual and to what extent that impacts political behavior, as established: according to Stlowijk and Vis (2021) “heuristics are cognitive shortcuts that facilitate judgments and decision making”, current literature has not explored presidential figures in depth, especially as case studies, which will be a power of this research, such that it makes an applicable model out of this specificity, with its strength lying in its capacity for historical analysis, Finally, there will be a focus on representativeness, deservingness and partisanship heuristic .