Download Intro to Political Psychology

SYLLABUS
POL-UA 812: Introduction to Political Psychology
Fall 2013, New York University
Mondays & Wednesdays, 11:00am-12:15pm
Prof. Eric Dickson
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 212-992-8697 (email is better)
Office: 19 West 4th Street, Room 306
Office Hours: Mondays 1:30pm-2:30pm & Tuesdays 11:15am-12:15pm
Course Description: How do campaign advertisements influence voters’ perceptions and
behavior? What roles are played by emotion in politics? What features of the political
environment influence the way in which different ethnic, religious, or other social groups interact
with and view one another, and what role do stereotypes play in political behavior? How and
why do ideologies form, and how does partisanship influence the way that voters understand the
political world?
These questions, and many others, are the province of political psychology, a field that uses
experimental methods and theoretical ideas from psychology as tools to help understand political
processes. This course offers a broad overview of political psychology at the undergraduate
level. The basic objectives of the course are threefold. First, it introduces important concepts
from psychology, offering new ways of thinking about subjects as varied as personality, the
dynamics of social groups, and the ways in which emotion affects decision making. Second, it
applies these concepts to various topics within political science, including the media and political
advertising, race relations, the legitimacy of government institutions, and the formation of
opinions and ideologies, as a means of providing a new perspective on how to understand the
political world around us. And third, by describing political psychology experimentation in
detail, the course teaches about how the scientific method can be applied to the study of politics.
Course Prerequisites: There are no formal prerequisites for this course. No mathematical
knowledge beyond what is typically taught in high school is required; additional concepts that
may be used in class will be introduced and discussed at length as we go along.
Course Requirements: Your course grade will be determined by a combination of the following
factors: (1) homework assignments (35%), of which there will be four over the course of the
semester; (2) one in-class midterm exam (25%); (3) and a (comprehensive) final exam (40%).
The course homework assignments will offer opportunities to engage the course material
creatively. As mentioned above, this class teaches political psychology in part through describing
various kinds of experiments that researchers have undertaken as a way of learning about political
processes. The homework assignments will give you the opportunity to, for example, think about
how you would design a political psychology experiment of your own, write a memo advising
one of the presidential candidates on how they should conduct their television advertising
campaign, and so on.
I do not take attendance; however, you cannot reasonably expect to do well in the course without
having assimilated the contents of the lectures. Some of the contents of the lectures will not be in
any assigned reading materials, and quite a bit of the material in the assigned readings will not
come up in lecture; you will be responsible for everything covered in the assigned readings and in
lecture for the purposes of the exams.
Course Books & Readings: There are two required textbooks for the course, available in the
NYU Bookstore:
(ITPP) Cottam, Dietz-Uhler, Mastors, and Preston. 2nd edition (2010). Introduction to Political
Psychology. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
(PPNGP) Marcus, George E. 1st edition (2013). Political Psychology: Neuroscience, Genetics,
and Politics. Oxford University Press.
These two texts are very different introductions to political psychology. The first is more
encyclopedic, systematically covering all the traditional substantive areas studied by political
psychologists. The second is more personal, talks more about what is involved in doing political
psychology, and gives more weight to the ways in which 21st century scientific methods are likely
to transform political psychology in the future. We will make extensive use of both during the
semester.
In addition, students will read a modest number of supplementary research articles (most of them
relatively brief), at the rate of about one per week. Most of these appear on the syllabus below;
all are available online through the NYU library system. I may add another couple of articles as
class discussions develop, but this will not amount to very much additional reading beyond what
is listed here.
Course Outline dates approximate
Week 1 (4 September 2013): Introduction to Political Psychology
ITPP Chapter 1
PPNGP Chapter 1
Weeks 2-3 (9, 11, 16 September 2013): Cognition, Heuristics, Biases, and Dissonance in
Political Psychology
ITPP Chapter 3 (section on Information Processing)
PPNGP Chapters 2 & 3
Quattrone, George A., and Amos Tversky. 1988. "Contrasting Rational and Psychological
Analyses of Political Choice." American Political Science Review 82:719-736.
Weeks 3-4 (16, 18, 23 September 2013): Social Identities and the Political Psychology of
Groups
ITPP Chapter 3 (sections on Categorization, Social Identity)
ITPP Chapter 4
Tajfel, Henri. 1982. "Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations." Annual Review of Psychology
33: 1-39.
Weeks 4-5 (23, 25, 30 September 2013): Emotions, Attitudes, and Beliefs in Political
Psychology
ITPP Chapter 3 (sections on Affect and Emotion, Attitudes)
PPNGP Chapters 4 & 5
Converse, Philip E. 2006. "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics." Critical Review 18,
nos 1-3.
Brader, Ted. 2005. "Striking a Responsive Chord: How Political Ads Motivate and Persuade
Voters by Appealing to Emotions." American Journal of Political Science 49(2): 388405.
Weeks 5-6 (30 September, 2, 7, 9 October 2013): Voting and the Role of the Media in
Political Psychology
ITPP Chapter 6
PPNGP Chapter 6
Iyengar, Shanto, Mark D. Peters, and Donald R. Kinder. 1982. "Experimental Demonstrations of
the “Not-So-Minimal” Consequences of Television News Programs." American Political
Science Review 76(4): 848-858.
No Class on Monday, 14 October 2013 (Columbus Day)
Weeks 7-8 (16, 21, 23 October 2013): Political Psychology of Race and Ethnicity
ITPP Chapter 7
Bobo, Lawrence. 1983. "Whites’ Opposition to Busing: Symbolic Racism or Realistic Group
Conflict?" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 45:1196-1210.
MIDTERM: in class, Monday, 28 October 2013
Weeks 9-10 (30 October, 4 November 2013): Personality and Politics
ITPP Chapters 2 & 5
PPNGP Chapter 7
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling. 2011. "The Big
Five Personality Traits in the Political Arena." Annual Review of Political Science 14:
265-287.
Levin, S, C.M. Federico, J. Sidanius, and J.L. Rabinowitz. 2002. "Social Dominance Orientation
and Intergroup Bias: The Legitimation of Favoritism for High-Status Groups."
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28(2): 144-157.
Week 10 (6 November 2013): Election Debriefing, Overflow from Previous Weeks
Weeks 11-12 (11, 13, 18 November 2013): Political Psychology of Extremism and Violence
ITPP Chapters 8 & 10
Darley, John M. 1992. "Social Organization for the Production of Evil." Psychological Inquiry
3(2): 199-218.
Weeks 12-13 (20, 25 November 2013): Political Psychology of Nationalism, International
Security, and Conflict
ITPP Chapters 9, 11, & 12
Simon, Bernd and Bert Klandermans. 2001. "Politicized Collective Identity: A Social
Psychological Analysis." American Psychologist 56(4): 319-31.
Weeks 13-14 (27 November, 2 December 2013): Fairness, Legitimacy, and System
Justification in Politics
PPNGP Chapters 8 & 9
Jost, John T. and Mahzarin R. Banaji. 1994. "The Role of Stereotyping in System Justification
and the Production of False Consciousness.” British Journal of Social Psychology 33(1): 1-27.
Weeks 14-15 (4, 9 December 2013): Political Psychology of Democratic Transitions
Week 15 (11 December 2013): Overflow / Wild Card / Wrap-Up
PPNGP Chapter 10
FINAL EXAM: Monday, 16 December 2013, 10am-11:50am – FROM REGISTRAR’S
WEBSITE, SUBJECT TO RE-CONFIRMATION
Approximate Homework Dates: May Vary Depending on Progress in Lecture
HW 1: assigned approx. 23 September, due approx. 30 September
HW 2: assigned approx. 16 October, due approx. 21 October
HW 3: assigned approx. 4 November, due approx. 11 November
HW 4: assigned approx. 25 November, due approx. 2 December