Browsing the book exhibit room at any major political science
conference these days, one notices what seems to be a bonanza of new
edited volumes that examine political psychology as a discipline within
political science or provide a variety of research essays aimed at
introducing the reader to the subfield.1
Although psychology has always been
an important component of political analysis, the prevalence of these books
suggests a growing, or renewed, interest among political scientists in using
insights from social and cognitive psychology to understand political
phenomena—an interest that spurs these scholarly attempts to demarcate
the conceptual and methodological structure of political psychology as a
subfield. As Wendy Rahn, John Sullivan, and Thomas Rudolph have noted,
this interest has emerged over the years partly in response to the rise
of rational choice theory in political science.
2 Regardless of the specific topic at hand,
political psychology research often challenges the assumptions of
rational choice models and adds nuance to the insights of rational
choice theory. It offers rigorous empirical demonstrations of how
systematic and predictable psychological processes affect whether
traditional assumptions of rationality do or do not hold and,
conversely, how the structure of political institutions affects
psychological processes. These empirical critiques and modifications of
rational choice theory make political psychology a compelling line of
inquiry to scholars from a variety of methodological and substantive
backgrounds.
Accompanying these attempts to locate the subfield's identity is
what seems to be a rise in the number of political psychology course
offerings at the graduate and, especially, undergraduate levels.3
In this essay, I examine a set of these syllabi
in order to assess the state of the subfield. I considered a total of
27 syllabi (from 21 institutions—14 public, 7 private), nearly
all of which were sent to me by the staff at
Perspectives.
4 Several of these syllabi are available at the
Web site of the International Society of Political Psychology
(http://ispp.org).
Twenty-two were undergraduate
courses, and five were graduate courses, all aimed at providing a
general overview of the field. In the following discussion, I do not
analyze the graduate and undergraduate courses separately. For the most
part, there were few differences between the two, save for the volume
of reading and scope of assignments.
5 The
staff at Perspectives also sent syllabi that emphasize
particular aspects of political psychology rather than general
overviews of the field. For instance, some centered on methodological
issues, one dealt primarily with leadership, another with persuasion
and propaganda, and still another with group conflict. For the sake of
the overall coherence of this essay, I chose not to include the more
specialized syllabi in this discussion.
The time constraints of a semester (or quarter) and limited technical
training of many students (especially undergraduates) will always lead
to some disjuncture between the material we assign and the full breadth
and depth of research developments within the field. Nonetheless, this
set of syllabi serves as a useful entry point for evaluating the state
of the field and how we teach it. In general, the syllabi are unified
by a central concern for understanding the relationship between human
nature and political phenomena. This age-old preoccupation is studied
in an impressive variety of ways, which presents challenges of
substantive coherence and syllabus design. The challenge of coherence
also presents itself when assessing the extent to which political
psychology “simply” borrows insights from psychology and
applies them to political contexts. The content in the syllabi reveals
some tension between the parent disciplines, but as I argue below, it
does not necessarily have serious pedagogical consequences. What does
have pedagogical consequences, however, is whether departments treat
political psychology as a distinct subfield. Most institutions do not,
and the result is a heavy U.S. focus in the classroom. Whether this
U.S.-centric slant is a problem and, if so, how we might address it is
something those of us who teach political psychology courses should
consider, and I offer some suggestions in this regard. Despite these
challenges, the syllabi I examined suggest that there is a pretty good
match between what political psychologists do and what they teach.
After examining these syllabi, one appreciates most of all the dynamism
and energy of a subfield in a sophisticated and productive stage of its
development.6
The Challenge of Scope
Political psychology, as a formal subfield, is a relative newcomer to
political science. But the questions political psychologists explore
have been around for centuries, if not millennia. As George Marcus
notes, “[E]ngaging this field is a challenge as it can
be claimed that every variant of politics has at least some political
psychological dimension.”7
David Sears, Leonie
Huddy, and Robert Jervis maintain that nearly all politics and
political science theories are psychological at root because they
“rest on assumptions, usually implicit, about how people think
and feel.”
8 Nearly every syllabus in political psychology begins by commenting on
the vastness of the field. Because the questions political
psychologists explore touch on practically every aspect of politics,
the “bewildering diversity” of alternatives available when
it comes to choosing topics and readings is daunting.9
As Marcus notes, “[T]he challenge
of constructing a first course in political psychology is made
difficult with so many choices as to the theoretical approach, method,
and substantive areas of application.”
10
Likewise, Margaret Hermann observes, “[I]t has been
difficult to arrive at a consensus about the nature of the field and
how to train its future professionals.”
11
Consequently, most attempts at creating a textbook for survey courses
have failed to produce volumes that garner widespread acceptance. The
closest thing to a textbook political psychologists seem to have had in
recent years is
Explorations in Political Psychology, edited
by Shanto Iyengar and William McGuire.
12 But only 4 of the 27 courses I examined assigned
most of it.
13 Other textlike books
included Fiske and Taylor's Social Cognition (1991) and Kressel's Political Psychology:
Classic and Contemporary Readings (1993),
but these books were assigned (whole or in part) in even fewer syllabi than
Iyengar and McGuire.
It seems that the rich variety of potential
readings inclines us to find existing texts inadequate and leads to
frustration for teachers. Our embarrassment of riches has also, I presume,
contributed to the recent wave of edited volumes. As more and more
undergraduate courses are taught, the desire for the perfect text grows
stronger.
The main questions in the field, whether they focus on elites or
masses, attitudes or behavior, emotion or reason, all come back to a
central concern with understanding human nature and the relationship
between human nature and political processes. Specifically, the
dominant research agendas include: determining what factors and
conditions (including the media, candidate messages, memory,
information flows, perceptions of risk, emotions, and personality)
affect decision making for both leaders and citizens; identifying and
seeking means to reduce stereotypes and prejudice; uncovering the roots
of, and aiming to lessen, group conflict; understanding how attitudes
and environment affect behavior, especially with regard to mass-scale
violence and genocide; studying the effect of personality types on
attitudes and behavior; and understanding how where we come from (i.e.,
culture and family) affects who we are, and how we can alter the way
our personal histories affect our behavior. In layperson's terms,
much of political psychology asks, “Why do people think such
horrible things about one another, why do they do such horrible things
to one another, and what can political actors and institutions do to
ameliorate these horrible thoughts and actions and make them less
common?” Otherwise, the field also concerns itself with
evaluating citizen competence and understanding how people make more
mundane decisions about politics. All of the syllabi I examined are
concerned with these general themes to varying degrees.
“Merely” Applied Psychology?
The first sentence of The Oxford Handbook of Political
Psychology, one of the new edited volumes, defines political
psychology as “an application of what is known about human
psychology to the study of politics.”14
The editors who penned this definition make no apologies
for characterizing the subfield as an application of another
discipline's theories to political science, yet the question of
whether political psychology is merely applied psychology is one that
political psychologists have debated for some time. Defenders of the
subfield tend to offer two responses to the applied psychology
critique. First, a significant amount of political psychology research
addresses topics that truly require us to
blend insights from
psychology and political science. Second, even when the
characterization is apt, merely applying psychological theories to
political contexts is still a valuable endeavor for political
science.
15 The validity of both
responses is evident when surveying the scholarship and topics covered
in the syllabi.
The first response: Psychology is necessary but
insufficient
Certain phenomena with psychological dimensions are inherently
political and simply cannot be examined fully outside their political
context. Mass violence is one such phenomenon. Many political
psychologists attempt to understand how and why leaders, institutions,
and individual citizens develop practices that result in violence on a
massive scale and seek to determine the kinds of political structures
that might decrease the likelihood of genocide and violence. No such
attempt can succeed if it does not address the complex interactions
between human nature and political struggles over power and
resources.
The transition from stereotyped beliefs and prejudice to group
violence can be disturbingly swift. Indeed, the relative ease with
which seemingly normal, well-adjusted people participate in heinous
acts of violence motivates many political psychologists' research
agendas. Accordingly, the study of “extreme politics,”
“destructive obedience,” and “good versus evil”
garners substantial attention in our courses, appearing in 17 (63
percent) of the syllabi I examined. Several of these courses teach
classic studies of obedience, including Stanley Milgram's famously
disturbing experiments in which subjects administer electric shocks to
other subjects despite their cries of pain. As is well known,
Milgram's own motivation was to understand how the atrocities of
the Holocaust could have happened. Many courses also examine the role
personality plays in shaping whether people have a psychological need
to defer to authority and simultaneously to dominate others. Several
readings on this “authoritarian personality” are used,
though Bob Altemeyer's work on right-wing authoritarianism is the
most common.16
Not surprisingly, case studies serve as a primary
means for analyzing the psychology of mass violence. Common case
studies include the Holocaust, mass rape in Bosnia, the Rwandan
genocide, disappearances in Argentina, the Cambodian genocide, and the
My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
17 These
studies examine how difficult life conditions, political culture,
personality dimensions, institutional design, particular leaders, and
other psychological, political, and economic factors combine to create
the conditions under which mass violence may occur.
In addition to examining this “continuum of
destruction”—the psychological and contextual conditions
that lead people down the path of mass violence—instructors also
use case studies to examine two other sets of actors during violent
times: bystanders and altruists.18
Ervin Staub, in particular,
highlights the importance of individual (e.g., rescuers) and
institutional (e.g., the United Nations) bystanders in affecting the
scope of atrocities, noting that only a few bystanders need to act in
order to disrupt the continuum of destruction. Once they act in ways
that challenge the legitimacy of the perpetrators' actions, they
are no longer bystanders, of course. In standing up to injustice,
individual bystanders can transform into heroes. As such, the study of
altruistic behavior often accompanies the study of destructive
behavior. In our courses, human nature at its worst is often paired
with human nature at its best. Half of the courses that examine group
violence also examine altruism, primarily with Kristen Monroe's
exploration of human nature through interviews with rescuers during the
Holocaust, heroes, and philanthropists.
19 Research on stereotyping, prejudice, and group conflict—key
precursors to mass violence—provides another example of how
blending insights from both psychology and political science is
necessary in order to understand certain political phenomena, and it
too accounts for a substantial portion of the material covered in many
political psychology courses. Twenty-three (85 percent) of the syllabi
cover topics related to stereotypes and identity in some form, with
racial and ethnic concerns topping the agenda. Most instructors jump
right in to racial and ethnic stereotypes (a handful also include
gender), without examining the more general phenomenon of stereotype
formation and the various psychological needs that stereotyping
fulfills. A few do consider the instinctual and cognitive economizing
aspects of stereotype formation absent the complications of real-world
racial and ethnic politics. But in general, students seem to be
learning about the psychological mechanisms involved in stereotyping as
a byproduct of studying the dynamics of stereotypes in the realm of
race and ethnicity. I suspect this conflation of process and context
derives largely from the centrality of the context to our academic
interest in stereotyping in the first place and from the realization
that in order to reduce the role that harmful stereotypes play in
everyday politics, we need to understand both the basic apolitical
cognitive function of stereotyping and the ways in which stereotypes
are used by political elites, the media, and other institutions.
The debate about symbolic racism in the United States is by far the
most common topic covered in the area of stereotype formation and
change and the effects of stereotypes on policy preferences. The
symbolic racism argument maintains that prejudicial beliefs today are
no longer grounded in beliefs about biological inferiority but rather
in the belief that minorities, specifically blacks, violate cherished
American norms, such as the work ethic and self-reliance. The
“symbolic racist” feels that structural barriers to
equality in the United States have been removed, and that enduring gaps
between blacks and whites in achieving “the good life” must
therefore be the fault of blacks themselves. Such perceptions lead to
resentment toward blacks and to opposition to government policies aimed
at reducing racial inequalities.20
The symbolic racism argument has been critiqued
from multiple angles. Some scholars contend that conflict over
resources and status drives racial attitudes. Others charge that racism
today is the same as racism of old, and that symbolic racism scholars
unjustifiably conflate old-fashioned racism with ideological
conservatism. Still others argue that humans, by nature, inevitably
form group-based hierarchies that result in institutions and cultural
practices perpetuating domination and oppression—a theory known
as social dominance.
21 Various aspects of this debate are covered in 12 (44
percent) of the syllabi.
22 Racial and ethnic stereotypes involve assessing groups rather than
individuals. The process of forming a sense of one's own self
vis-à-vis salient groups in society and the effects of that
self-identification on beliefs constitutes another core component of
some courses. The main theories covered include social dominance,
realistic group conflict theory, the minimal group paradigm, and social
identity theory. No single set of readings, however, dominates.23
The central debates in
these units are whether group identities are a cause or consequence of
group conflict and the extent to which group identities are malleable.
Ten courses (37 percent) cover the chicken-and-egg problem we encounter
when trying to untangle the relationship between group identity
formation and group conflict.
In this area, unlike with stereotyping, we often teach the
psychological phenomena distinct from racial and ethnic contexts and
then consider particular case studies. In fact, many of the insights
into group identity and group conflict that are taught in the courses
come from experiments involving artificial, arbitrary, and apolitical
groups rather than from actual events. Transitioning from the lab to
the real world is especially tricky in this area because, as an
increasing amount of research illustrates, actual settings condition
and complicate the psychological processes that unfold in the lab. Not
all groups are created equal. Though arbitrary at root, group
identities have real and enduring consequences once they come into
existence, a fact that is nearly impossible to recreate in a short
laboratory experiment. As the social dominance research illustrates,
the ways in which people's group identities affect their attitudes
and behavior depend on where in the social hierarchy they are located.
For example, Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto demonstrate, using data
from a variety of countries, that members of socially dominant groups
are more likely than members of socially subordinate groups to display
the classic in-group favoritism that is often portrayed as a rather
universal psychological tendency. Likewise, they document how the
priming of stereotypes can induce stereotype-confirming behavior among
members of subordinate groups, which can then legitimize and perpetuate
the social hierarchy.24
In short, the group
dynamics on display in laboratories with apolitical and arbitrary groups
differ in important ways from the dynamics that exist when social groupings
are entrenched and hierarchically ordered. The implication, of course, is that
what it takes to overcome such entrenched inequality and prejudice might be
different from what it takes to overcome lab-based group conflict.
If paying attention to such real-world complexities is important, so
too is avoiding the tendency to just throw up our hands and lament that
people have always formed—and always will form—groups
arbitrarily and discriminate accordingly. Rather, we should do more
than we seem to be doing to encourage our students to appreciate the
coexistence of malleability and stability in group-based identities and
hierarchies, and to consider how such malleability and stability
interact with political institutions. Only by doing so can they move
beyond the defeatist view that we're simply hard-wired to treat
one another so poorly (a conclusion that's difficult to avoid in
many group-conflict readings) and begin to consider realistic forms of
institutional design that could make our world a more harmonious place.
In other words, our course material should devote more attention to
research on what public policy can do to mitigate group conflict.
Articles by Leonie Huddy and Myron Rothbart and Oliver John are good
examples of scholarship that forces us to contemplate the role of
public policy in shaping group dynamics, yet they appear in only a
handful of the syllabi.25
Works such as these should be assigned more
widely. Recent work by H. D. Forbes, which exhaustively assesses the
conditions under which increased contact between groups helps or
hinders the development of peaceful intergroup relations, would also be
an appropriate addition to syllabi.
26 A final example of how both psychology and political context are
required to understand political phenomena is the study of political
leadership, which appears in 17 of the syllabi (63 percent). Examples
of questions explored in this line of scholarship are: What if FDR
hadn't been president during the Depression? What if Hitler had
not come to power? What made these and other men such effective
leaders? What psychological factors got in the way of their achieving
even greater success? What conditions lead political elites to make the
decisions they do? Some readings focus on just one leader, while others
study personality and leadership in general or analyze the
psychobiographies of several leaders.27
Political scientists must
consider the role of individuals in determining outcomes because so
much of what we do is devoted to explaining and predicting political
events. The people at the helm matter. At the same time, we cannot
understand the actions of individual leaders without properly
understanding contextual matters, including the leader's immediate
circle, domestic politics, and world events. Irving Janis's work
on groupthink is the most common work assigned for studying how
psychological factors (group-level and individual-level) and political
factors interact in policy making and decision making, appearing in
nine (37 percent) of the courses.
28The second response: Context is key
Often, research in political psychology does entail applying theories
developed in rather apolitical contexts to the world of politics, and
much of our course content includes this kind of material. In response
to the concern that borrowing tools developed in another discipline
renders their subfield a lesser academic endeavor than other forms of
political science inquiry, political psychologists maintain that if
their goal is to arrive at complex and generalizable explanations of
political phenomena, then the source of their methodology is
irrelevant. As Rahn, Sullivan, and Rudolph argue, since political
science aims to deepen our understanding of power, conflict, and
governance (the essence of politics), research that contributes to such
understanding is of value, even if it mainly consists of applying
derivative theories to political settings.29
Likewise, Jon Krosnick, and Kathleen McGraw note
that applying psychological theories to a political context—in
their terminology, “psychological political
science”—improves our understanding of the context, which
is a worthwhile end because it advances the main goal of political
science as a discipline, that is, “to understand how and why the
processes of politics unfold as they do.”
30 Indeed, many
of us are driven, to put it bluntly, by a desire to make the world a
better place. If applying psychological theories to political contexts
aids us in this effort, then we welcome this approach.
A fair amount of research on information processing, which accounts
for much of the contemporary political psychology research agenda,
could be characterized as “applied.” Information processing
is concerned with the cognitive and affective factors that shape how
people interpret information. Inquiries in this field examine topics
such as how information stored in long-term memory influences the
weight and affective tags people assign to new information, how long
new information remains accessible before it is forgotten, and the
conditions that determine which kinds of information are
remembered.31
In other words, the information processing
approach examines how contextual factors interact with individual-level
predispositions to shape new evaluations.
32 The effort
required to assess new information is taxing, which leads people to use
shortcuts (a.k.a., heuristics). Determining what those shortcuts are,
what conditions influence when people are likely to use different types
of shortcuts, and whether those shortcuts lead to faulty or biased
decision making are major concerns of research in information
processing. These concerns are prominent in many political psychology
courses: twenty-three (85 percent) of the syllabi address topics in
information processing.
Some of the readings included in information processing sessions are
those one would expect to find in a public opinion class; they
emphasize vote choice, attitude stability and change, challenges to the
“citizens are incompetent” paradigm, and the effects of the
media and mass communication on individuals.33
Many of
the information processing readings, however, examine complex cognitive
mechanisms through intricate experiments—material that goes far
beyond the traditional public opinion syllabus.
34 Many courses feature recent and intriguing research on information
processing—work exploring the intersection of affect and
cognition and the motivational goals that determine the type of
information processing people use. Even though these lines of inquiry
can sometimes lead to contradictory predictions, they are similar in
that they challenge assumptions about what constitutes rational
behavior, and they show how systematic factors lead to predictable (and
reasonable) deviations from standard interpretations of rationality.
Herbert Simon's classic article on bounded rationality and Amos
Tversky and colleagues' work on prospect theory are common
introductions to challenges of the rational actor model. They are
typically supplemented by more recent information processing
analyses.35
Fifteen of the courses I examined (56 percent) allot time to studying
the relationship between affect and cognition, nine of them emphasizing
the work of Marcus and colleagues on affective intelligence.36
This work
demonstrates that anxiety promotes sophisticated political judgments because
it dislodges people from their cognitive-economizing habits and forces them to
pay attention to, rather than ignore, new information. Though some
psychologists might not consider this insight to be especially new or
noteworthy, political psychologists have found it compelling because it
challenges the prevailing conventional wisdom in political science—not
to mention centuries of political theorizing—that insists that
emotions wreak havoc on reasoned decision making.
Work on motivated reasoning is equally compelling in its challenge to
the rational actor model. According to the theory of motivated
reasoning, there are conditions under which people are motivated to
seek out and evaluate all available information before making political
judgments and other conditions under which people are motivated to
maintain prior beliefs. In other words, our goal is sometimes to be
accurate and other times to arrive a predetermined answer.37
In the latter case, we engage in “belief
preserving distortions,” and we either disbelieve new information
that contradicts our existing beliefs, or we discount the weight placed
on that new information when making political judgments.
38 The latest research on motivated reasoning aims
to flesh out the exact nature of the relationships among motivations,
individual-level characteristics, and attitude stability and change.
Motivated reasoning is not as common in the syllabi as affective
intelligence, appearing in some form in only six syllabi (22 percent),
but given the pace at which new insights into motivated reasoning are
appearing and the centrality of information processing to political
psychology overall, I expect that its role in our courses will increase
in the coming years.
Unlike the studies of mass violence and group conflict described
earlier, information processing research in political science does more
borrowing from psychology than interdisciplinary blending. It would be
hard to deny, however, that our understanding of the relationships
between political actors, institutions, and citizens is improved by
incorporating heuristics, emotions, motivations, and memory into our
models. As Krosnick and McGraw point out, such incorporation challenges
“reigning presumptions,” requires political scientists to
reconsider their prior beliefs about the way political processes
operate (causing anxiety for some and belief-preserving distortions for
others), and leads to future research that can clarify and extend our
understanding of political phenomena.39
Political psychologists have spent a lot of time defending their
subfield as political science. Though it is useful for scholars in any
area to ponder their field's strengths and weaknesses, I am not
convinced that this debate is particularly worthwhile as far as our
courses are concerned, especially our undergraduate courses. Few
students care about which parent discipline plays a greater role in
theory development, nor should we expect or want them to. They are
interested in studying how human nature and politics interact. Whether
course content blends or borrows, studying that interaction is exactly
what they get. Exposing them to both the blending and borrowing
scholarship described thus far ensures that they leave our classes more
sophisticated and thoughtful observers of politics than when they
entered.
Sometimes You Feel like a Subfield;
Sometimes You Don't
Even though looking to psychology to illuminate political phenomena
is not new, designating courses as belonging to the particular subfield
of political psychology is still rare. Political psychologists have
their own journal (Political Psychology), professional
association with annual meetings (International Society of Political
Psychology), summer training program (Summer Institute in Political
Psychology), and organized section within the American Political
Science Association, yet few departments formally recognize political
psychology as a distinct area of specialization. Space constraints
preclude my addressing the question of whether gaining formal subfield
status within political science departments should be a goal for
political psychologists. It is important to acknowledge, however, that
the way in which institutions incorporate political psychology into
their curricula has pedagogical consequences.
At one institution where I have taught, for example, my undergraduate
political psychology seminar was listed as a course offering in
American politics. With good reason, my students often asked,
“Why American politics?” My answer was not necessarily
satisfying: That's where my main research and interests lie. My
syllabus includes the requisite disclaimer: “Most of the readings
emphasize politics in the United States, though the field itself speaks
to every aspect of political science.” And I allow students to
select international or comparative topics for their final project if
they wish. Other syllabi make similar references to a focus on American
politics. Even in those syllabi without such references, many subjects
and readings reflect a U.S.-centric slant, especially for the sessions
on racial stereotyping and prejudice, the media, socialization, and
candidate evaluation. When studying stereotypes and prejudice, for
example, most assigned readings deal with black/white relations in
the United States and concentrate especially on the debate about
symbolic racism. Some of these studies speak to universal phenomena
that just happen to be examined using data from the United States.
Whether their expected outcomes are indeed universal can certainly be
tested in other locales. But students' exposure to political
psychology research conducted on these topics in other countries
remains minimal. And although stereotyping is a universal human
phenomenon, symbolic racism is distinctly American; the perceived
violation of “cherished American values” (such as
individualism, the work ethic, and self-reliance) is central to its
existence.40
Noticing this U.S.-centric trend, I began to wonder whether other
institutions likewise “count” political psychology as
American politics. I turned to departmental Web pages to gather some
data on this question. As table 1 indicates,
10 of the 27 courses (37 percent)—a plurality—come from
institutions that consider their introduction to political psychology
as part of the American politics subfield, and this figure actually
understates the proportion of the syllabi that are largely focused on
the United States. One course is considered part of international
relations. Two are from psychology departments, not political science
(though both of them focus heavily on American politics).41
Including psychology syllabi in this review
might strike some as problematic. The content of those two syllabi,
however, is more or less indistinguishable from the content of the
political science syllabi.
Three are what I call
“homeless.” In these cases, departments consider political
psychology to be within the department of political science as a whole,
but refrain from classifying it within one of their formally
established subfields. Two syllabi are from the University of Iowa,
where political psychology courses belong to a distinct subfield called
“Political Communication and Political Processes.” Of the
21 institutions that provided the syllabi, only two—the
University of Minnesota and SUNY Stonybrook—have a distinct
political psychology subfield. Together, these two institutions account
for all 6 of the 27 courses (22 percent) that are counted
administratively within a political psychology subfield.
How political psychology courses are “counted” by their
departments
I suspect that a plurality, if not a majority, of people who teach
political psychology in the United States were trained primarily as
Americanists and have come to specialize in political psychology. Many
groundbreaking studies have been conducted in the United States because
that is where the interests of many scholars lie and/or because
that is where many scholars collect their data (especially when they
rely on undergraduates to participate in experiments). The prevailing
preoccupation with American politics thus constrains literature
searches when designing syllabi. Good comparative work in political
psychology exists, but our familiarity with that work remains thin.
Additionally, I have found that students are particularly engaged by
course material when they can personally relate to the issues being
studied. If I have a choice between two readings that examine online
versus memory-based candidate evaluation, one involving the U.S.
political system and the other involving the internal politics of a
European country, I'm more likely to select the reading on
American politics in large part because I think my students will get
more out of it. I do not, in other words, exempt myself from this
critique.
But people in other countries watch television news, vote in
elections, harbor prejudiced views, and make political decisions, too.
We tend to assume that the way the media affects public opinion in the
United States is the way the media affects public opinion elsewhere or
that the conditions that reduce the stereotypes whites have for blacks
in the United States are the conditions that will reduce the
stereotypes dominant groups have for oppressed groups elsewhere. This
projection of U.S. findings to other countries probably is valid in
many cases. But it might be problematic as well, and exploring the
extent to which our findings are extensible is one area where the
courses are particularly weak.
Some readers might argue that the goal of political psychology is to
show how insights from psychology add to our understanding of political
phenomena and that there is nothing wrong with domestic American
politics providing the main vehicle for achieving that end. Others will
point out that there is indeed a fair amount of course content already
that addresses comparative and international politics. This is
particularly true for units on group violence, genocide, terrorism,
altruism, the personality of political leaders, and social
dominance.42
Two social dominance
readings appear in the syllabi: a chapter in the Iyengar and McGuire
volume (Sidanius 1993), and a book-length
version (Sidanius and Pratto, 1999). The chapter
is more U.S.-centric than the book, which analyzes data from all parts of
the globe.
These are the units most likely to involve
international inquiry in part because of their inherent characteristics
(e.g., most modern cases of mass violence have occurred beyond American
borders) and because our students are already likely to possess some
level of familiarity with the particular case studies (e.g., Adolph
Hitler or Saddam Hussein). Both claims—that our courses do cover
politics elsewhere and that a U.S.-centric slant is not
problematic—have merit. Still, I urge instructors to at least
consider whether their pedagogical aims dictate that more comparative
work be included.
Political Psychology has done an admirable job of exposing
American scholars to cross-cultural examinations of the relationship
between human nature and politics. For example, a recent special issue
of the journal was devoted to the study of patriotism and national
identity in Europe. One article in particular tested the adequacy of
different measures of nationalism in the Netherlands, Slovakia, and the
Basque region of Spain—each a location at a different stage of
its formal development as a nation-state.43
This study attempts to develop measures that can
be used in various settings, to identify the psychological needs that
motivate nationalism, to distinguish neutral love of country from more
malevolent manifestations, to examine the relationship between
regional, national, and international attachments,
and to test
the nature of these relationships in different countries. Love of
country is a universal phenomenon, but it might not operate the same
way in all places. Contextual and cultural factors matter, something
that only comparative work such as this can really address. Little of
this kind of work, however, has made it into political psychology
syllabi at American colleges and universities.
Instructors interested in expanding the reach of their courses both
geographically and substantively might want to consider the body of
research on political tolerance, which has done an admirable job of
analyzing how individual-level psychology, domestic political context,
and political culture affect support for civil liberties in a variety
of countries. It has also effectively combined substantive inquiry with
creative experiments and productive debates about measurement. Yet only
five of the courses I examined (19 percent) cover tolerance explicitly,
relying heavily on the work of John Sullivan.44
In
addition to Sullivan's seminal work, instructors might also
include the work of Marcus and colleagues and of Jim Gibson and Amanda
Gouws.
45
Marcus and colleagues test their model of how tolerance judgments are made
with data from the United States, but their model could easily be applied
to other locales. Gibson and Gouws essentially do just that, demonstrating
the limited yet nontrivial utility of Marcus's insights in
analyzing political tolerance in South Africa. In doing so, they make a
compelling argument for the need to compare findings from tolerance
studies in the United States with findings from tolerance studies
elsewhere by demonstrating that the degree to which perceived threats
are real—a factor that can vary greatly across time and
space—can affect tolerance levels more than the specific details
of situations in which civil liberties are at stake. Adding this line
of work to our courses would provide students with the opportunity to
learn about complex theories of attitude-formation, to contemplate how
domestic political contexts condition such attitude-formation, to learn
about contemporary political struggles outside of the United States,
and to engage in important debates about how political institutions
might help to resolve conflicts over civil liberties and foster greater
tolerance.
46 Professors can also turn to
some of the new edited volumes, such as The Oxford Handbook of
Political Psychology (Sears, Huddy, and Jervis
2003) for good descriptions of some very interesting comparative
work being done in the field.
Until more institutions have distinct political psychology programs,
faculty and students will probably continue to examine political
psychology largely from within primary training as Americanists, which
will perpetuate the U.S.-centric nature of introductory courses.
Currently, there does not seem to be a consensus within political
science or across institutions about whether political psychology is a
subset of some other aspect of political science (such as American
politics) or whether it is a distinct subfield in its own right.
Whether more political science departments come to treat political
psychology as a distinct subfield is something that only time will
tell. In the meantime, we should at least recognize that the
institutional design of our departments has consequences for what we do
in the classroom and contemplate whether those consequences require
attention.47
Several other topics appear
in the courses, but not often enough to warrant a distinct discussion.
These topics include socialization, attribution, gender,
psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, social capital, political
trust, deliberation, and early contemplations on human nature, such as
Hobbes and Rousseau. Nearly every syllabus included one topic that I
considered to be “miscellaneous.” The range and frequency
of miscellaneous topics further points to our embarrassment of riches,
yet it also confirms Margaret Hermann's observation that scholars
in the field have yet to arrive at a consensus regarding what must be
covered in a survey political psychology course. As the field continues
to mature, greater consensus may indeed be achieved. We will have to
wait until Perspectives revisits these syllabi reviews in 20
years or so to find out for sure.
Methodology: A Plea for Attention
Thus far I have discussed two critiques of political psychology as it
is taught in our courses: the lack of attention to solutions to group
conflict and the heavy focus on American politics. To these, I add
another: more courses should devote further attention to methodology.
Only eight undergraduate syllabi and one graduate syllabus (33 percent
of the courses overall) address methodological issues. It could be that
students evaluate experiments as a methodology throughout the semester
as they discuss particular studies. If so, instructors do not indicate
that on their syllabi. With only the syllabi as a guide, I am left to
conclude that the methodological concerns that experiments raise,
including generalizability, external validity, samples of convenience,
and ethical issues, are not getting the attention they need.
Many of political psychology's contributions to political
science come from studies that use experiments. The very technical way
in which much of this research is described requires that students
understand experimentation, not to mention statistics, if they are to
comprehend the results. Unless our students are also taking psychology
courses, they are unlikely to be learning explicitly about the benefits
and limits of this useful methodology. My sense is that undergraduate
research methods courses in political science are still not especially
common, are rarely required, and when available, tend to concentrate on
statistical methods, such as regression, and ignore experiments and
qualitative methods. I open this can of worms only to note that
although it would be unfortunate if students came away from their
political psychology courses associating experiments only with
political psychology and not other subfields in the discipline or
thinking that political psychologists only use experimental
methods, I consider that a risk worth taking because for most students,
the alternative is to have no formal introduction to experimentation at
all.
Including a section on methodology need not detract unduly from time
devoted to more substantive issues. In my undergraduate course, for
example, I reserve only two hours of class time for experimentation.
The unit occurs a few weeks into the semester, once students have
become comfortable with political psychology as a line of inquiry. I
have them read Donald Kinder and Thomas Palfrey's article on the
pros and cons of using experiments in political science and
Milgram's experiments on obedience to authority, which offer
opportunities for methodological and ethical critiques.48
I then
have students come to class with a written description of their own
idea for a political psychology experiment. I ask them to articulate
the hypothesis to be tested by the experiment and its political
implications, explain how the control and treatment conditions will
enable the hypothesis to be tested, explain how their participants
would be recruited and how they would be assigned to the different
conditions, and discuss potential ethical or external validity problems
with their design. Once in class, the students then critique one
another's ideas. I have found that this approach results in a
solid foundation that students use throughout the remainder of the
semester as they encounter increasingly complex theories and research.
This limited amount of class time is sufficient to provide enough
familiarity so that students get more out of the substantive readings
and, consequently, out of the course overall. In order for students to
truly appreciate political psychology as a discipline, and to begin to
think about how they themselves might contribute to the field, they
must understand experimentation.
Conclusion
As many have noted, the subfield of political psychology is vast.
This vastness is at the root of its appeal. It also brings challenges
when teachers must choose what topics and readings to include in their
syllabi, which sometimes give the impression that the field lacks
coherence. Since nearly every aspect of politics is affected by how
people think and feel, nearly every aspect of political science can be,
and is, subject to analysis by political psychologists. Whether it is a
subfield or not and whether it is “merely” applied
psychology or not are important debates, and the content of our courses
illustrates these tensions even if they are not addressed explicitly.
From the daunting array of possibilities, some consensus does however
emerge with regard to the field's core topics and contributions.
Overall, various aspects of attitude formation dominate, from the
mundane (vote choice) to the intensely personal (self-identification)
to the oppressive (stereotypes and prejudice) to the horrific
(acceptance of, and participation in, mass violence). Unifying themes
include the human tendency to seek out cognitive economy and the role
that personality and perceptions of norm-violation and threat play in
motivating group identification and conflict. I argue that instructors
should consider including more units on methodology, on comparative
work, and on the conditions that minimize the extent to which people do
horrible things to each other (i.e., when the contact hypothesis works,
or when conformity and bystander passivity can be overcome).
The syllabi speak to the impressively rapid pace with which new
“instant classics” are emerging. Several works appearing in
many of the courses have been published within the last ten years.49
This outpouring of innovative research that makes
genuine strides in the study of human nature adds to the challenge of
designing a syllabus. After all, there are only so many weeks to a semester
and only so much we can expect our students to read. But this challenge
also makes it exciting to be a part of this field now.
Perhaps the most satisfying part of being a scholar in this field,
and of teaching it to others, comes from the field's ability to
help us understand salient political realities that emerge from
interactions among people and institutions. It is difficult to avoid
daily reminders of myriad ways human beings find to engage in conflict.
The constant parade of hatred and seemingly senseless decision making
underscores the timeliness of our course content. Studying contemporary
conflicts from a political psychological perspective provides endless
opportunities for our students to connect with the real world of
politics and power. Many of the issues we explore are driven by our own
normative concerns, such as how decisions should be made and how people
should act toward one another. Our courses challenge our students to
reconcile their own normative perspectives with the realties of context
and the human condition.
Robert Lane writes that political psychology research is essential
for getting us closer to “answer[ing] the urgent
question: How can governments help people become more self-confident,
psychologically secure, humane, empathetic, responsible
citizens?”50
Indeed. In advancing that
cause, engaging with research in political psychology can have a
personal impact as well. When we learn about humans as a collective, we
also learn about ourselves. We begin to understand our own motivations,
thoughts, and behaviors, and we become more understanding of other
people. In my course, for example, when we read Staub's discussion
of bystanders, students always come to class telling stories of things
they have witnessed that illustrate the phenomena under investigation.
These observations sometimes concern trivial topics. For example, one
woman came to class on the day we were discussing bystanders and told
the class that she had been at a lecture the day before where no one
got up to close the door though a lot of distracting noise was coming
from the hallway. Before having done the reading for the class, she
said, she would have sat there just like everyone else hoping that
someone would get up and close the door. But because she had just read
about pluralistic ignorance (interpreting the inaction of others as an
indication that the status quo is acceptable), the diffusion of
responsibility (doing nothing because we assume that someone else will
act at some point), and the important role bystanders can play in
shaping outcomes, she got up and closed the door. Obviously, the
consequences of her action pale in comparison to the actions (and
inactions) of people we read about, but her thoughts and behavior had
been clearly altered by what she was learning in our class. Should she
ever find herself a bystander in a situation with more serious
consequences, she will be much less likely than everyone else to fall
victim to pluralistic ignorance and the diffusion of responsibility.
Similar examples occur regularly with nearly every topic we study;
students are continually sharing how their own experiences are both
explained and altered by the course material. When we strive to
understand the interaction between human nature and political
processes, our own behavior often changes. In other words, in studying
what makes for the responsible, empathetic, and humane citizenry that
Lane hopes for, we become more responsible, empathetic, and humane
ourselves.
Undergraduate Syllabi
Claibourn, Michele. University of Oklahoma: Spring 2003. Passion and
politics: The political psychology of reason, emotion, and conflict.
Graber, Doris. University of Illinois, Chicago: Spring 2002.
Political psychology.
Gray, Kenneth, and Christian Goergen. College of DuPage: Spring 2002.
Political psychology honors seminar.
Harsell, Dana Michael. Syracuse University: Summer 2001. Political
psychology.
http://student.maxwell.syr.edu/harsell/campbell/documents/PSC337_PoliticalPsychology.pdf.
Holmes, Justin. University of Minnesota: Spring 2003. Political
psychology.
Huddy, Leonie. State University of New York, Stonybrook: Spring 2000.
Political psychology.
http://ms.cc.sunysb.edu/∼lhuddy/POL346.html.
Hurwitz, Jon. University of Pittsburgh: Fall 2002. Political
psychology.
www.pitt.edu/∼politics/faculty/hurwitzsyllabus1233.html.
Isbell, Linda. University of Massachusetts, Amherst: Fall 2001.
Political psychology. www-unix.oit.umass.edu/∼lisbell/.
Levin, Shana. Claremont McKenna College: Fall 1998. Political
psychology. http://ispp.org/syllabi/shanasyl98.html.
Marcus, George. Williams College: Fall 2000. Political psychology.
http://ispp.org/syllabi/marcus00.html.
Miller, Arthur. University of Iowa: Fall 2002. Political psychology.
Nesbitt-Larking, Paul. Huron University College: 2002–3.
Political psychology.
Rahn, Wendy. University of Minnesota: Spring 1998. Introduction to
political psychology.
Redlawsk, David. University of Iowa: Spring 2001. Political psychology.
www.uiowa.edu/∼c030111/politicalpsychology/s01syl154.html.
Sanders, Lynn. University of Virginia: Fall 2002. Political psychology.
Sapiro, Virginia. University of Wisconisin: Fall 2000. Introduction
to political psychology.
http://ispp.org/syllabi/sapiro267.html.
Schildkraut, Debbie. Oberlin College: Fall 2002. Political
psychology.
http://ispp.org/syllabi/304%20syllabus%202002.pdf.
Sullivan, John. University of Minnesota: Spring 2002. Political
psychology.
Transue, John. University of Minnesota: Spring 1999. Political
psychology. ispp.org/syllabi/transuesyllabus.html.
Wagner, Joseph. Colgate University: Summer 2003. Political psychology.
Ward, Dana. Pitzer College: Fall 2001. Political psychology.
Wong, Cara. University of Michigan: Fall 2001. Political psychology.
Graduate Syllabi
Sapiro, Virginia. University of Wisconsin: Fall 1998. Political
psychology.
Lau, Richard. Rutgers University: Spring 2000. Psychology of
political behavior.
Mendelberg, Tali. Princeton University: Fall 2003. Political
psychology.
Sears, David. University of California, Los Angeles: Spring 1999.
Seminar in political psychology.
http://ispp.org/syllabi/searssyl.html.
Taber, Chuck. State University of New York, Stonybrook: Fall 2001.
Foundations, political psychology.
http://ispp.org/syllabi/pol608.pdf.
