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Political Psychology (political + psychology)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

Blinded by the Light: Aspiration and Inspiration in Political Psychology

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 3 2008
George E. Marcus
First page of article [source]

Space, Place, and Identity: Issues for Political Psychology

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2006
Nick Hopkins
First page of article [source]

Political Psychology and Social Neuroscience: Strange Bedfellows or Comrades in Arms?

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2003
John T. Cacioppo
First page of article [source]

The Authoritarian Personality, 50 Years Later: What Questions Are There for Political Psychology?

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2001
John Levi Martin
Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford's The Authoritarian Personality is probably the most deeply flawed work of prominence in political psychology. The methodological, procedural, and substantive errors of this study are well known, but they are frequently simply attributed to poor methodological judgments, issues of scaling (such as response set), or Freudian theories that legitimated circular interpretations. But a more fundamental bias arose from the attempt to empirically verify the existence of a "type" of person whom the researchers thought dangerous and with whom they did not empathize. This attempt involved two dangerous procedures: (1) the fusion of nominalist research procedures (in which empirical results were used to type respondents) with a realist interpretation of types (in which some people "just were" authoritarians and others not), and (2) a theoretically rich critique of the authoritarians and a lack of interest in the psychodynamics of liberals. This combination led to an intrinsically biased interpretive project that could not help but accumulate damning evidence about authoritarians. These subtler problems have haunted contemporary work in political psychology that avoids the methodological problems of Adorno et al.; Altemeyer's work on authoritarianism, which not only is free from the defects of the Adorno et al. study but also involves some methodologically exemplary experiments, is similarly distorted by asymmetries. The same fundamental problems seem to be at the heart of the weaknesses of the theory of symbolic racism to which critics have pointed. Political psychologists should regard The Authoritarian Personality as a cautionary example of bias arising from the choice of methodological assumptions. [source]

Leadership Style and International Norm Violation: The Case of the Iraq War

FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 1 2007
VAUGHN P. SHANNON
We examine the topic of decision making and norm violation in international politics. While constructivists emphasize norm conformity due to global social pressures, and realists emphasize the ease of norm violation due to self-interest and the lack of a world enforcer, we argue that these approaches fail to explain variation in normative behavior in foreign policy. We suggest that normative behavior is mitigated importantly by leaders' beliefs and decision-making styles. Leaders who view the international environment in state-centric, Hobbesian terms and are less sensitive to the political context are more likely to violate international norms than leaders who view world politics in more benign terms and are more sensitive to contextual pressures. We test these expectations by correlating key leadership traits of Bush Administration officials with their positions regarding the normatively suspect invasion of Iraq in 2003. The findings suggest that need for power, belief in ability to control events, ingroup bias, and especially distrust may be important predictors of one's willingness to violate international norms. We discuss the implications of our results for the prospect for international society to regulate force, and call for a third wave of constructivism wedded to its ideational ally of political psychology. [source]

Contested Nations: Iraq and the Assyrians

NATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 3 2000
Sami Zubaida
The formation of nation-states from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East after World War I, under colonial auspices, proceeded with negotiations in some instances and hostilities in others from previously autonomous communities, some of them formally designated as millets. Iraq comprised a diversity of religious and ethnic communities. The Assyrians, Christian mountain tribes, mostly refugees from Turkish Kurdistan under British protection, were one community which actively resisted integration into the new nation-state and, as a result, were subject to violent attacks by the nascent Iraqi army in 1933. This episode and the way it was perceived and interpreted by the different parties is an interesting illustration of the political psychology of communitarianism in interaction with nationalism, complicated by religious identifications, all in a colonial context. Subsequent histories and commentaries on the episode are also interesting in illuminating ideological readings. [source]

Building Communities, Bridging Gaps: Alexander George's Contributions to Research Methods

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2008
Andrew Bennett
This article assesses Alexander L. George's seminal contributions in six areas of political psychology and qualitative case study methods. These include George's work on psychological inputs in political processes, the intersection of history and political science, methods of within-case analysis such as process tracing, the use of structured, focused case comparisons (SFCC), the development of typological theories, and the connections among theory, empirical research, teaching, and policy. The article concludes with an analysis of four ongoing dimensions of George's research agenda: the need to integrate theories on purposive, cognitive, social, and motivational dynamics of decision making; the importance of methodological safeguards against our own cognitive biases as researchers; ways of integrating qualitative, quantitative, formal, and experimental research methods; and ways of modeling and testing theories on causal complexity. [source]

Integrative Complexity of 41 U.S. Presidents

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2007
Felix J. Thoemmes
Although U.S. presidents are one of the most studied groups of political figures and integrative complexity is one of the most widely used constructs in political psychology, no study to date has fully examined the integrative complexity of all U.S. presidents. The present study helps fill in that gap by scoring 41 U.S. presidents' first four State of the Union speeches for integrative complexity and then comparing these scores with a large range of available situational and personality variables. Results suggest a tendency for presidents' integrative complexity to be higher at the beginning of their first term and drop at the end. This pattern was pronounced for presidents who eventually won reelection to a second term and was markedly different for presidents who tried to gain reelection but lost. Additional analyses suggested that presidents' overall integrative complexity scores were in part accounted for by chronic differences between presidents' complexity levels. Further analyses revealed that this overall integrative complexity score was positively correlated to a set of interpersonal traits (friendliness, affiliation motive, extraversion, and wittiness) and negatively correlated with inflexibility. Discussion centers upon the causes and consequences of presidential complexity. [source]

The Authoritarian Personality, 50 Years Later: What Questions Are There for Political Psychology?

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2001
John Levi Martin
Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford's The Authoritarian Personality is probably the most deeply flawed work of prominence in political psychology. The methodological, procedural, and substantive errors of this study are well known, but they are frequently simply attributed to poor methodological judgments, issues of scaling (such as response set), or Freudian theories that legitimated circular interpretations. But a more fundamental bias arose from the attempt to empirically verify the existence of a "type" of person whom the researchers thought dangerous and with whom they did not empathize. This attempt involved two dangerous procedures: (1) the fusion of nominalist research procedures (in which empirical results were used to type respondents) with a realist interpretation of types (in which some people "just were" authoritarians and others not), and (2) a theoretically rich critique of the authoritarians and a lack of interest in the psychodynamics of liberals. This combination led to an intrinsically biased interpretive project that could not help but accumulate damning evidence about authoritarians. These subtler problems have haunted contemporary work in political psychology that avoids the methodological problems of Adorno et al.; Altemeyer's work on authoritarianism, which not only is free from the defects of the Adorno et al. study but also involves some methodologically exemplary experiments, is similarly distorted by asymmetries. The same fundamental problems seem to be at the heart of the weaknesses of the theory of symbolic racism to which critics have pointed. Political psychologists should regard The Authoritarian Personality as a cautionary example of bias arising from the choice of methodological assumptions. [source]

On the Prospects for Democratic Deliberation: Values Analysis Applied to AustralianPolitics

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2000
John S. Dryzek
Democratic theorists increasingly stress that democratic legitimacy rests primarily on authentic deliberation. Critics of deliberative democracy believe that this hope is unrealistic,that deliberation either will prove intractable across political differences or will exacerbate instability. This paper deploys some tools of political psychology, notably Q methodology and values analysis, to investigate the conditions under which effective deliberation is likely to occur. These tools are applied to contemporary political debates in Australia, concerned with how the Australian polity should be constituted in light of a reform agenda underpinned by a discourse we term "Inclusive Republicanism." An investigation of the character of the basic value commitments associated with discursive positions in these debates shows that some differences will yield to deliberation, but others will not. When two discourses subscribe to different value bases, deliberation will induce reflection and facilitate positive-sum outcomes. When a discourse has a value base but finds its specific goals opposed by a competitor that otherwise has no value base of its own, deliberation will be ineffective. When one discourse subscribes to a value base that another questions, but without providing an alternative, deliberation can help to bridge idealism and cynicism. [source]