POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY

What is Political Psychology?

“Political psychology is an interdisciplinary academic field that emphasizes the psychological dimension of
political life.”
Political psychology explores the border that runs between the intellectual nations of political science and
psychology. It is a dynamic subfield that addresses the ways in which political institutions both affect and
are affected by human behavior. Our understanding of the reciprocal relationship between politics and
psychology has been steadily evolving in recent years, making it a compelling and exciting area of study. To
know everything there is to know about the world of politics in theory and in practice, one must be, among
other things, an expert in psychology. Political psychologists belong to a relatively young interdisciplinary
community that not only draws on theories and methods from psychology and political science, but is also
happy to borrow from neighbouring fields such as international relations, anthropology, sociology,
organizational behavior, economics, history, and philosophy.
One goal of political psychology is to establish general laws of behavior that can help explain and predict
events that occur in a number of different situations. The approach that political psychologists use to
understand and predict behavior is the scientific method. This approach relies on four cyclical steps that a
researcher repeatedly executes as he or she tries to understand and predict behavior.
The first step involves making observations. This step involves making systematic and unsystematic
observations of behavior and events. From these observations, a researcher begins to form hunches about the
likely factors, or variables that affect the behavior under observation.
Step two involves formulating tentative explanations, or a hypothesis. During this stage, a researcher
makes predictions about the nature of the relationship between variables.
Step three involves making further observations and experimenting. During this stage of the scientific
method, observations are made to test the validity of the hypothesis.
In step four, refining and retesting explanations, researchers reformulate their hypothesis on the basis of the
observations made in step three. This might involve exploring the limits of the phenomenon, exploring
causes of relationships, or expanding on the relationships discovered. Clearly, the scientific method requires
a great deal of time making careful observations.
Essentially, political psychology represents the merging of two disciplines, psychology and political
science, although other disciplines have contributed to the literature and growth of the field as well.
Political psychology involves explaining what people do, by adapting psychological concepts so that they
are useful and relevant to politics, then applying them to the analysis of a political problem or issue.

Why Study Political Psychology

So much of political behavior seems to defy explanation and seems incomprehensible when
looked at with hindsight: people start wars that are, in the end, thought of as pointless and
futile, such as World War I or the war in Vietnam; civil wars erupt among people who have
lived together harmoniously for years, but then commit hideous acts of barbaric violence
against one another, as in the former Yugoslavia, Liberia, or Sierra Leone; groups commit
acts of terrorism that kill numerous innocent civilians each year; and a scandal-plagued
president cannot resist tempting fate by engaging in an extra-marital affair when he knows
full well the extent of the scrutiny of those looking for more scandals. Unless one
understands the thoughts and feelings of the people who make the decisions to commit those
acts, one cannot fully understand why those things occurred. But an exploration of the
psychology—the personalities, thought processes, emotions, and motivations—of people
involved in political activity provides a unique and necessary basis for understanding that
activity.
Many people assume that psychology is common sense because they believe that behavior is
rational and predictable. But decades of research by psychologists reveal that behavior is
anything but common sense. Although psychologists recognize that much of human behavior
is not always rational, human beings, as social perceivers, often operate on the belief that
behavior is quite rational. The motivation to expect behavior to be rational is based on two
fundamental needs. First, people have a need to make sense of—to understand—their world.
Second, people have a need to predict the likely consequences of their own and others’
behavior. To the extent that behavior is perceived as rational, these two needs become easier
to fulfil.
A more accurate picture of human beings as political actors is one that acknowledges that
people are driven or motivated to act in accordance with personality characteristics, values,
beliefs, and attachments to groups. People are imperfect information processors, struggling
mightily to understand the complex world in which they live. People employ logical, but
often faulty, perceptions of others when deciding how to act, and they often are unaware of
the causes of their own behavior. People often do things that are seemingly contrary to their
own interests, values, and beliefs. Nevertheless, by understanding the complexities of
political psychology, we can explain behavior that often seems irrational.

Personality and Politics

Personality is a central concept in psychology. For this reason, personality is placed at the bottom of the
Political Being’s brain, representing its roots and, therefore, the most fundamental element. Personality not
only affects how people think and behave in the political arena; it is also affected by the life experiences of
individuals.
The study of personality and politics is the oldest tradition in political psychology. Personality as a concept
has been used to evaluate a wide variety of political behaviors, from the psychology of political leaders to
psychopathologies of people who have committed politically motivated atrocities (such as Hitler and the
Holocaust) to the average citizen and the role personality factors play in attitudes toward race and ethnicity,
interest in politics, and willingness to obey authority. However, most studies employing personality-based
frameworks focus on the impact of the characteristics of leaders on major decisions and policy-making
issues such as leader-adviser relations. In fact, the studies of political personality and political leadership
have developed conjointly in political psychology. As a result, it is problematic to seek to separate political
personality from political leadership research in any textbook on political psychology.
Despite the central role personality plays in psychology, political science, and political psychology,
coming to an acceptable definition of personality is problematic, with research in psychology and political
science tending to focus (and define) the concept quite differently. As Robert Ewen (1998) points out, within
the discipline of psychology “there is no one universally accepted definition of ‘personality,’” nor is there
any one recognized “theory of personality.” In the political psychology literature, in contrast, analysts
typically do not worry about arriving at a specific, comprehensive definition of personality. Instead, the
focus is upon how particular aspects of personality translate into political behavior. Indeed, the study of
personality in political psychology is best characterized as the study of individual differences. Rather than
seek the whole, researchers selectively focus upon any number of individual aspects of a person’s makeup
(i.e., cognition, motivation, affect, ego, attitudes, etc.) to explain behavior.

Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions and Attitudes in

Political Psychology
Reflects the thinking and feeling portions of the Political Being’s mind: cognition, emotion, social identity,
and attitudes and beliefs. Attitudes and cognitive processes are at the top of consciousness: these are things
we are well aware of, and they are important in information processing and everyday decision making.
Values and social identities are deeper. We have to think harder to figure out how they affect our behavior.
Emotions saturate the mind and influence the entire process of deciding how to act politically. In addition,
more detail is provided on the us and them portions of the Political Being’s environment.

1. COGNITION
People need to understand the world around them, and particularly the people in that world so that they
can understand and know what to expect. Perceivers need to explain and predict the behavior of others.
In order to do this, they need to process incoming information from their environments and evaluate it.
People like to think that they are good at processing information. We assume that we recognize and
evaluate important information and that we store it in memory quite accurately.
Cognitive processes are the channels through which the mind and the environment first interact. They
involve receiving and interpreting information from the outside. They are the mind’s computer in that
they facilitate the individual’s ability to process information, interpret his or her environment, and decide
how to act towards it. Cognitive processes help us understand an environment that is too complex for
any individual to interpret. The cognitive system in our brains helps us organize that environment into
understandable and recognizable units and to filter information so that we do not have to consciously
assess the utility of every piece of information available to us in the environment
In psychology, the concept of cognition is central to understanding how people process information and
understand the world around them. Cognition is “a collective term for the psychological processes
involved in the acquisition, organization, and the use of knowledge”. The knowledge is organized in
our minds in a cognitive system. The terms beliefs or attitudes are often used to describe these
components of the cognitive system. Beliefs are associations people create between an object and its
attributes. Cognitive processes refer to what happens in the mind while people move from observation of
a stimulus to a response to that stimulus. Cognitive processes include everything from perception,
memory, attention, and problem solving to information processing, language, thinking, and imagery.
INFORMATION PROCESSING-
People are bombarded with vast amounts of information all the time. They cannot attend to all of it, and
the mind has developed techniques for deciding what information is important and relevant and what
information can be ignored. Several theories in psychology address patterns of information processing
and provide explanations for different propensities in attending to and interpreting information. One
theoretical perspective in psychology that focuses on how people judge and evaluate others is attribution
theory. One of the earliest attribution theorists was Heider (1958), along with Jones and Davis (1965),
Kelley (1967), and Weiner (1986). People process information as though they are “naïve scientists,” that
is, they search for cause in the behavior of others, just as scientists search for the cause of a disease.
However, people often do not properly employ the scientific method, and they tend to make a number of
errors in this quest for the cause of others’ behavior. Attribution theorists argue that individuals use
heuristics, which are mental shortcuts, in processing information about others.
In interpreting and evaluating information regarding the cause of behavior of other people, one of the
most important aspects of perceptions of causality is whether it is attributed to internal states
(personality) or to external forces (situation). People are more likely to attribute others’ behavior to their
general dispositions (personality traits or attitudes) than to the situation they are in. This is known as the
fundamental attribution error.
The fundamental attribution error is the most recognized, but we have others as well. For example, the
positivity effect is the tendency to attribute positive behaviors to dispositional factors and negative
behaviors to situational factors with individuals we like. When dealing with individuals we dislike, we
tend to do the opposite; that is, attribute behavior to dispositional rather than situational factors. This is
the negativity effect.
Another set of theories that contributes to our understanding of information processing comes under the
general category of consistency theories. One of the earliest consistency theories was Heider’s (1946,
1958) balance theory, which posits that people try to keep the components of the cognitive system in
balance. He described balance as “a harmonious state, one in which the entities comprising the situation
and the feelings about them fit together without stress”.
A related type of consistency pattern is described in dissonance theory, which addresses the
inconsistencies between people’s attitudes and behaviors. Dissonance refers to an aversive state that
results when our behavior is inconsistent with our attitudes.
The drive for consistency in information processing has a number of important political consequences.
Accepting only information that con - forms with expectations can lead people to miss important
information, for example, about a candidate’s stand on a political issue, if that position is inconsistent
with their party’s or with the candidate’s other issue positions. Interpreting information so that it
conforms to expectations, rather than to some other possibility, can lead to spiralling conflicts between
countries or political groups. Distorting information in a search for consistency can produce a failure to
recognize the need for value trade-offs in politics.

2. SOCIAL IDENTITY
Political psychology involves not only the individual but also the individual’s interaction with their
political environment. On one side, we have those important social units, or groups, that are politically
relevant to the Political Being and to which the Political Being is strongly attached. They constitute us in
his or her mind, and are assessed in terms of studies of social identity.
Social identity derives from membership in social groups such as nationality, gender, age, race,
ethnicity, occupation, and other kinds of group membership. Groups are depicted in our picture of the
Political Being generally in terms of in-groups (those groups people belong to) and out-groups (those
they do not belong to). The creation of social categories can produce many important behavioral
predispositions, including stereotyping, discrimination, and ethnocentrism. Our social identities, much
like our values and attitudes, can strongly motivate behavior.
We classify others into groups, and we classify ourselves into groups, as well. Groups we belong to are
called in-groups, and those we do not belong to are out-groups. Conflict among political groups is, of
course, a central issue in political psychology.
People belong to many different groups, and we are interested in the role played by attachment to
politically relevant groups. Groups themselves have particular dynamics that influence people’s
behavior.
Whenever individuals find themselves in a situation in which there exists clear evidence of an “us” and a
“them,” they are likely to discriminate against the out-group (them) and in favor of the in-group (us).
According to Tajfel (1978), social identity is “that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives
from his [her] knowledge of his [her] membership in a social group (groups) together with the value and
emotional significance attached to that membership”.
Tajfel and Turner (1979) imply that intergroup discrimination is a result of a motivation to evaluate
one’s own group more positively than a relevant out-group. By comparing one’s in-group to a relevant
out-group, individuals attempt to differentiate their group from other groups so that their social identity
will be enhanced.

3. EMOTION
Politics can be an extremely emotion-evoking arena of life. Emotions affect all aspects and are affected
by all aspects of the Political Being’s mind. Values, identities, and attitudes are emotional, have
emotional components, and emotions interact with the next portion of the Political Being’s mind,
cognition. Emotion permeates politics and the mind of the Political Being: hence, they are left to freely
move about in our picture of the mind of the Political Being.
People have emotional responses to political issues, actors, and events, and also to political principles
and ideals that they value. When social categories and stereotypes are discussed, there is a tendency for
the emphasis to be placed on cognitive processes and properties, such as beliefs, assumptions, and
knowledge about different kinds of people, groups, or countries. But clearly cognitive phenomena, such
as stereotypes, information processing, and making political decisions, such as for whom to vote, involve
affect and emotion, too. Affect and emotions are difficult to study because of considerable disagreement
about what they are and how to measure them, and, in political science, it is often argued that rational
decision making must be unemotional. Nevertheless, it is crucial that political psychology make
advances in understanding the impact of affect and emotions on behavior.
Fiske and Taylor (1991) regard emotion as a “complex assortment of affects, beyond merely good
feelings or bad to include delight, serenity, anger, sad - ness, fear and more”, but Ottati and Wyer (1993)
define emotions as affective states that are more precisely labeled, such as anger, hatred, fear, love, and
respect.
Affect and emotions clearly influence information processing, decision making, and some
predispositions for behavior. Isen (1993), in a review of studies of positive affect, notes that positive
affect and emotions promote improvements in problem solving, negotiating, and decision making.
Positive affect seems to expand peoples’ abilities to see interrelationships and connections among
cognitive items. On the other hand, when compared to neutral affect, positive and negative affect, but
particularly positive affect, reduce peoples’ ability to perceive variability in other groups.
Emotions and the behaviors they influence are intricately related to goals at stake in a situation. Political
goals naturally vary over time, given particular political contexts and values. Even so, people generally
assume that out-groups hinder in-group goals, and therefore the out-group is automatically associated
with negative emotions. Out-groups, by definition, are assumed to be different and thus have different
goals.
Emotions also vary in intensity, which can increase in response to certain psychological properties, as
well as to the nature and impact of events. One of those event characteristics is simply how real the event
seems to the person experiencing the emotion. Second, the closer the emotion-producing situation is in
time, that is, its proximity, the greater the intensity of the emotion. Third, unexpected events or actions
increase intensity. Fourth, physical arousal and the flow of adrenaline increase the emotional intensity.
Fifth, in terms of psychological properties, leaving aside individual differences, the salience of social
identity groups will increase emotion intensity. The stronger the sense of belonging to a group, the more
important belonging is to members’ self-esteem, the more salient will be group membership, and the
more intense will be emotions generated by that membership. Thus, one can expect politically motivated
emotions to be intense when important political identity groups face threats or unusual opportunities.
The intensity of the emotion may come as a great surprise to outside observers, if it has not been
witnessed before.
The intensity of affect and emotion is also determined by perceptions of the other group. Out-groups are
reacted to more negatively and with greater intensity than are in-groups. Also, extreme stereotyping
corresponds with more extreme affect. Generally, we would expect positive emotions to be associated
with in-groups and negative emotions with out-groups. This is an important principle to keep in mind
when looking at emotion and political behavior.
The list of negative emotions is long, and one in particular, anger, is an emotion often found in political
behavior. Anger is a negative emotion, wherein blame for undesirable behavior, and resulting
undesirable events, is directed at another person or group. It occurs when goals are thwarted and
attention is focused on the source of the obstacle to the goal. Other emotions are closely related to anger
and are also politically important, including frustration, resentment, contempt, and disgust. Dis - gust
involves being repulsed by the actions or characteristics of others. It can be quite severe and lead people
to fear that the very social order is being contaminated.
Fear and anxiety, two other emotions important in politics, both occur when danger is perceived, but
they differ, in that fear is associated with a clear and certain threat, and anxiety is associated with
uncertainty about the threat.
There are positive emotions that are also important in politics, such as pride in the achievements of one’s
group or country or happiness, when an opportunity to achieve an important goal occurs. As mentioned
earlier, positive emotions tend to make people more flexible and more creative in problem solving. They
are able to see more nuances and have more complex evaluations of other people, when feeling positive
emotions.

4. ATTITUDES
Attitudes can be thought of as units of thought composed of some cognitive component (that is,
knowledge) and an emotional response to it (like, dislike, etc.). Many important political attitudes are
acquired through socialization, as we shall see in Chapter 6. In the diagram of the Political Being, they
are placed toward the top of the mind because they are accessible to thinkers and because they are
subject to change based on new information, changes in feeling, or persuasion. Attitudes are the focus of
attention in political psychology when it comes to voting decisions, political socialization, the impact of
the media on how and what people think, and important political notions such as tolerance.
A standard definition of attitudes is that they are an enduring system of positive or negative beliefs (the
cognitive component), affective feelings and emotions, and action tendencies regarding attitude objects,
that is, the entity being evaluated. Stone and Schaffner (1988), for example, regard attitudes as “an
organized set of beliefs, persisting over time, which is useful in explaining the individual response to
tendencies”.
One of the most important controversies in attitude research has concerned the behavioral component in
the original conceptualization of attitudes. Originally, it was simply assumed that a person’s attitudes
determine his behavior. A person who favors a certain politician is likely to vote for him. A person who
smokes marijuana is likely to support bills legalizing marijuana.
Attitudes that are strong, clear, and consistent over time, and that are directly and specifically relevant to
the behavior under examination, are more likely to be associated with attitude–behavior consistency.
Inconsistencies can come from weak or ambivalent affect. In addition, the affective and cognitive
components of an attitude may be in some conflict, which also reduces the changes of attitude–behavior
consistency.
Unlike the image and stereotype concepts, the attitude concept can more easily separate cognition and
affect, and for that reason it can be very useful in studying voting behavior, particularly in a country such
as the United States, where people have political attitudes that often are based upon little, and often
inaccurate, cognition. An attitude can be driven mostly by affect, but as our discussion of images and
stereotypes shows, there is considerable knowledge, although often inaccurate, embodied in them.
Alternatively, an attitude may be primarily cognitive in content, that is, based solely on beliefs without
affect.
Attitude studies have been conducted on many issues, one of which is, as mentioned, the relationship
between cognition and affect, particularly when they are not consistent. Marcus et al. (2000) examine the
role affect plays in the behavior of American citizens in elections and regarding important issues. They
argue that emotions help people monitor and take surveillance of politics.