Cognitive politics is the effect of psychological factors on partisan identity. This is in contrast to economic, social or religious reasons. For example, someone could be a social-conservative, fiscal-liberal, or cognitive-conservative. It is a subset of the broader field of “political psychology,” but specifically related to partisan identity.
To the extent you can determine someone’s politics from their income and job, that is economic politics. If you can put someone in an MRI machine and ask non-political questions, and from their answers determine their politics, that indicates cognitive politics.
Cognitive politics (like political psychology) may be bi-directional, with psychology and partisan identity influencing each other.
From Cognitive Politics.