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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