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Political Psychology Lectures
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A summary of all lectures of Political Psychology (lecture 1 till 13)
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PoliticalPyschology
Lectures
Inhoud
Lecture 1 – Introduction ............................................................................................................... 2
Lecture 2 – What is Political Ideology .......................................................................................... 4
Lecture 3 – Ideology from above ................................................................................................. 8
Lecture 4 – Motivated Reasoning and Intolerance ..................................................................... 11
Lecture 5 – Populism and Conspiracy ....................................................................................... 16
Lecture 6 – Extremism............................................................................................................... 19
Lecture 7 – Choosing a candidate and party leader ................................................................... 23
Lecture 8 – Trust in Political Psychology ................................................................................... 27
Lecture 9 – Morality and justice ................................................................................................. 33
Lecture 10 – Get out to vote ...................................................................................................... 39
Lecture 11 – Societal Change and Stagnation ........................................................................... 43
Lecture 12 – Political Appeals ................................................................................................... 48
Lecture 13 – Social Utility in Coalition Formation ....................................................................... 53
1
,Lecture 1 – Introduction
Political Psychology can be seen in different places and times in life. For example, after World
War II everyone was concerned about how Germany went from normal to extreme, and why
became China communistic. Political Psychology also want to know why people are scared from
other countries, why people are protesting, and how countries react on tragic events? It is very
broad.
Psychology is the study of the human mind, so their mental processes and behavior. Politics are
beliefs, world views, and ideologies, but also the structure of a society and how it is ought to
work out, what happens in the parliament, or cultural movements. So, Political Psychology are
the mental processes and behavior that go along with the broad topic politics.
Timeline
Firstly, a few books were published. These books discussed how you can get power and what
the best relationship between the state and the people was. There are several eras’:
1. Personality and Culture Era - Where do political beliefs come from?
Political beliefs probably come from socialization (family, education, etc), but also has
biological explanations (genetics). They think external situations (the situation you grew up
in) influences personality and personality influences politics. External situations are also an
explanation for an authoritarian personality (fascism), because if there is a societal threat
(e.g. depression), fascism can seem very attractive because it seems like it solves the
problem.
Sales (1973) looked how much cynicism was used in magazines in the 1930’s with a
depression and in the 1920’s with a good economy. In times of a depression, there was
more cynicism used than in economical good times. Also, in times of a depression, the
number of loyalty laws passed is much higher than in economical good times.
So, external situations personality politics, and threat authoritarian personality
policies.
2
,2. Attitudes and Voting Era – Why do people support policies that hurt racial/ethnic
minorities?
For example: why do whites oppose bussing Blacks to White neighborhood schools?
Many schools had primarily children from one race. They tried to put children in other
schools. It actually works, but nobody likes it. Why? There are three possible reasons:
a) Self-interest. White schools have a better education than black schools, and you
want the best school for your kids.
b) Raw racial animosity. White is better than black, so they shouldn’t be going to the
same school.
c) Subtle, symbolic racism. Blacks don’t follow the traditions and norms of the Us, so
they don’t deserve to go to these schools. This is the predictor, so it is racism with
broader values.
3. Political Cognition and Decision making Era – How do political beliefs affect how we think?
For example: how do people think about political issues?
Tetlock (1983) went through the speeches that were given by
politicians and looked at how integrative complex (take
different pieces of information together) they were. Liberals
and conservatives score lower on this than moderates,
because they have to balance their position between these
two poles and draw their position by justifying their opinions.
4. Intergroup Processes Era – How do our group memberships affect our politics and how we
see society? And how does our politics affect our group memberships?
Krosch et al. (2013) showed participants faces ranging from
totally black to totally white. They had to decide on which
point of the scale the person was white. They found that
conservatives see faces sooner as white than liberals.
Probably, they are trying to justify the American system,
because if you say the people on the pictures are
Canadians, they effect is gone.
5. Social Cognition and Ideology Era – How do political beliefs affect how we think?
For example: Do liberals and conservatives process stimuli differently? They differ in how
they respond to stimuli. In the Go/noGo test, conservatives react less to mistakes than
liberals.
Also, what are the process that link our genetics to our political beliefs? How does this
influence how we treat people with different beliefs? What are the biological and genetic
underpinnings of ideology?
3
,Lecture 2 – What is Political Ideology
What is ideology?
Other words for an ideology are belief system or worldview. The definition for ideology is very
complex, but the definitions for belief system or worldview are a bit
looser and mean almost the same.
Philip Converse (1964) says that belief systems are an interrelated
set of ideas and attitudes that are logically bound together. He
calls this constrained, because the values, attitudes and ideas are
all related. This means we can predict one attitude from another.
So, if attitude #1 is getting more conservative, the other attitudes,
ideas and values also should become more conservative.
Some attitudes, ideas or values are more central than other attitudes, ideas or values. According
to Converse, centrality means that if you change the attitude or idea, it will also change the other
parts of the belief system. For example, if you think a strong welfare state
is important, you will also support higher taxes (otherwise you can’t get a
stronger welfare state). But, if you think higher taxes are important, it is not
certain that you’ll also support a strong welfare state, because it can also
predict a lot of other attitude, for example a stronger military. This means
higher taxes is less central to ideology than a stronger welfare state or a
stronger military. So, if the issue changes another issue, it is more central.
In a research they measured the political preferences of participants and gave them information
about a specific policy, which was randomly supported by democrats or republics. They
measured the preferences for these policies and found that participants only support the policy if
it is supported by their own political party.
This constraint can have different sources:
Logical Sources – Some ideas just go logically together.
Psychological Sources – People think ideas are logically constrained, but this doesn’t
have to be the case.
Social Sources – Beliefs are based on a particular interest and where you come from.
These beliefs are combined into ‘packages’ by politicians and their parties, so these
ideas might not go all together or you don’t support all of them.
There are different types of ideologies or belief systems. They can be
sorted in all kind of domains, for example religious, economic, social,
political, or educational. There is a difference between left and right in
politics. Right (Republican) is more supportive of the status quo, so how
the things are, and left (Democratic) are more supportive of change and
equality. But, this single dimension is too simple, because there are
more differences between parties than only more left or right. That’s why
we can add a second dimension, namely conservative to progressive.
4
, Do people have ideology?
Do most people have ideologies? They
asked voters about their ideologies and
classified them in five different groups:
No issue content They had no idea (18%)
Nature of the times They support one policy or another, given the current situation (21%)
Group interest Say they have beliefs, because it supports their own group (45%)
Near-Ideologues They have an ideology, but don’t connect it to their politics (12%)
Ideologues They have an ideology and use it to structure politics (4%)
So, most people use the beliefs from their group, and only a few people have
their own belief system.
Who are those people? They measured political beliefs and issues with politicians
(elite) and general people (mass). The table shows that politicians have a
stronger ideology and the
correlation for general people is
very small. So, it are probably the
politicians who have ideologies
Are those ideologies stable over time? Most stable over time is the party
identification, so probably the group interest is stable and not their ideologies.
Thus, people probably don’t have ideologies, but only group interest. This is
important to know, because it is asked and used in surveys a lot. Also, politicians
are different in their beliefs and issues than normal people, so their beliefs might
be different from the beliefs of their followers.
But, according to Jost and Tedin, ideology does exist. Firstly, they say that people
who have studied ideology in the past used a too stringent definition of ideology. For example, is
you use the definition of Shils (1968), it is almost impossible to have an ideology. Jost and Tedin
say that an ideology is an interrelated set of attitudes and values about the proper goals of
society and how they should be achieved. They can be both affective and cognitive. If you use
this definition, it is easier to find ideologies. Secondly, they argue that if you ask people about
their ideology, it predicts voting behavior. Lastly, in the past it wasn’t clear which party supported
which policy, because the political systems were changing a lot.
5
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