PSCI 1044: Political Psychology

  • Class Readings here

    • Political Science 1044: Political Psychology

    Winter Term 2016

    Visiting Professor Scott M. Guenther

     

    Lectures: Tuesday-Friday, 2:00-4:00 Location: Munroe Hall 320

    Office Hours: Thursday 10:00-12:00 & by appt. Office: Munroe Hall 316

    Phone: 406-600-6683 Email: sguenther@middlebury.edu

     

    Purpose of the Course

    This course examines what behavioral and psychological science can tell us about political phenomenon—that is, rather than examining what happened in politics (e.g.: who won an election) or how it happened (e.g.: who voted for whom), we will look at why it happened by looking at the psychology of individuals. For example, what causes individuals to make decisions and form attitudes? Or, why do individuals identify with certain groups and not others? Answering these types of questions will allow us to explain phenomenon such as the role of media in politics, why people identify with parties, and who wins presidential elections. Although this class will be heavily focused on politics in the United States, there will be examples from other countries. In the course of learning about the substance of these topics, we will also consider how the knowledge was acquired—that is what type of research was conducted? How valid are the conclusions? How could the research be improved? In addition to a class presentation and an article review, all students will undertake original collaborative political psychology research.

    Required Readings

    There are no required books for this course. Your readings consist of scholarly articles and book chapters, which I will be available to you via the course website: http://pages.ucsd.edu/~sguenthe/psci1044.html

    Course Evaluation

    ·      Response Paper – 10%

    ·      Article Presentation – 10%

    ·      Final Research Paper – 50%

    ·      Participation – 30%

     

    1.     Response Paper (Due on Date of Reading) – In no more than one page (250–300 words or so) respond to one of the course readings. This could consist of raising a theoretically-informed question and suggesting avenues for answering it; applying the insights from the reading to a novel example drawn from modern or historical politics; comparing and contrasting parts of two or more readings; or something else. Better responses will be precise in their arguments and observations and will include quotations sparingly. In formulating your essay, you should go with issues, concerns, comparisons, questions, or confusions that struck you when reading the material. If none struck you while reading, go back and read more carefully! Because your space is limited, you should get right to the point without wasting space on description or summary of the readings.   

    2.     Article Presentation (Due on Date of Assigned Reading) – Each student will present one of the “additional readings” during the term. The presentation should present the basic ideas of the article and try to connect the article to some real world political phenomenon. Presentations should be between 5-7 minutes. In that time you should answer the following questions:

    ·       What is the research question? Specifically, what is the basic information the researchers are seeking in their project?

    ·       What is the theory—the logical explanation of how and why the concepts are related?

    ·       What are the hypotheses—the statements predicting a relationship between two or more variables?

    ·       How is the data collected? That is, how are cases identified and selected to be included in the study?

    ·       What research method or methods do the researchers use to test their hypotheses?

    ·       What are the key empirical findings? That is, do the authors present convincing evidence that supports their hypotheses? If not, why not?

    ·       How does the theory or main conclusions from this research speak to political strategies we observe in the real world?

    3.     Final Research Paper (Due February 5) – With one other classmate you will carry out an original political psychology experiment on the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform. I will provide more details on the project in class. You can discuss possible ideas and coauthors  among yourselves, but formal groups and topics can only be chosen with my approval.

    4.     Participation – Regular attendance is a necessary, but insufficient condition, to earn full points for class participation. Participation is weighted so heavily in this course because unlike your lecture-based courses, where the professor typically sets the agenda for discussion, what we talk about each day will be largely determined by the clarifications, questions, and critiques you all have of the readings. Therefore, it is critical that you arrive each day fully prepared to participate. My expectation is that before class starts, you have read and taken notes on the assigned readings and you have identified important questions raised by the readings. You will not be penalized for misinterpreting or incorrectly understanding the course material. You will be penalized for failing to be prepared, failing to comment, or most dastardly failing to show up to class. 

    Honor Code

    You (and co-authors) must complete all work without assistance from others. Violations of this policy will be punished to the greatest extent permissible under the Middlebury College honor code. See here if you are unfamiliar with the consequences: http://www.middlebury.edu/about/handbook/student_policies/Academic_Disciplinary_Policies.

    Late Policy

    The final paper is due at the beginning of our last class, February 5th.  Assignments submitted more than 15 minutes after the class has begun will be assessed a 5 percent late penalty, and assignments submitted after the class has ended will be assessed a 15 percent penalty. No late final policy papers will be accepted.

    Class Correspondence

    When communicating via email, please use your official Middlebury email account to ensure it lands in my inbox (and not my junk mail). I will do my best to respond to all emails within 24 hours of your email, though during the weekend, response times may be longer. If you do not hear from me, within 48 hours resend the email.

    Class Schedule           

    Tuesday, January 12 – Introductions

    ·       Introductions

     

    Wednesday, January 13 – What is Political Psychology?

    ·       Galton, Francis. 1907.“Vox Populi”. Nature. March 7: pp. 450–451.

    ·       Downs, A. (1957). An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy. Journal of Political Economy, 65(2), 135–150.

    ·       Sears, D.O., Huddy, L. & Jervis, R. (2013). “The Psychologies Underlying Political Behavior”. In Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, 3-16.

     

    Thursday, January 14 – Methods for Understanding Political Behavior:

    ·       Druckman, James N., Donald P. Green, James H. Kuklinksi, and Arthur Lupia. 2011. Chapter 1 : An Introduction to Core Concepts. In J.N. Druckman, D.P. Green, J.H. Kuklinski, and A. Lupia, eds., Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1-17 http://www.polisci.northwestern.edu/documents/undergraduate/cambridge-handbook.pdf

    ·       Sniderman, Paul, M. 2011. Chapter 8: The Logic and Design of the Survey Experiment: An Autobiography of a Methodological Innovation. In J.N. Druckman, D.P. Green, J.H. Kuklinski, and A. Lupia, eds., Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 182-205 http://www.polisci.northwestern.edu/documents/undergraduate/cambridge-handbook.pdf

    ·       Kahneman, Daniel. 2003. “A perspective on judgment and choice: mapping bounded rationality. American Psychologist 58, (9), pp. 697–720. read pp. 706–720 only

     

    Friday, January 15 –Behavioral Economics

    ·       Thaler, R. (1985). Mental Accounting and Consumer Choice. Marketing Science, 4(3), 199–214.

    ·       Wilson, R. K. (2011). The Contribution of Behavioral Economics to Political Science. Annual Review of Political Science, 14(1), 201–223.

    ·       Camerer, C., Fehr, E. 2002. “Measuring Social Norms and Preference Using Experimental Games: A Guide for Social Scientists.” In Foundation of Human Sociality – Experimental and Ethnographic Evidence from 15 Small-Scale Societies. Oxford University Press.

     

    Tuesday, January 19 – Political Cognition & Memory

    ·       Milton Lodge, McGraw, K. M., & Stroh, P. (1989). An Impression-Driven Model of Candidate Evaluation. The American Political Science Review, 83(2), 399–419.

    ·       Zaller, J., & Feldman, S. (1992). A Simple Theory of the Survey Response: Answering Questions versus Revealing Preferences. American Journal of Political Science, 36(3), 579–616.

    ·      (Additional) Frederick, S. (2005). Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(4), 25–42.

     

    Wednesday, January 20 – Origins of Beliefs

    ·       Fowler, J. H., & Schreiber, D. (2008). Biology, Politics, and the Emerging Science of Human Nature. Science, 322(5903), 912-914.

    ·       Alford, J. R., Funk, C. L., & Hibbing, J. R. (2005). Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted? American Political Science Review, 99(02), 153–167.

    ·       (Additional) Zamboni et al. (2009). Individualism, conservatism, and radicalism as criteria for processing political beliefs: a parametric fMRI study. Social Neuroscience, 4(5), 367-83.

    ·      (Additional) Gerber, A. S., Huber, G. A., Doherty, D., Dowling, C. M., & Ha, S. E. (2010). Personality and Political Attitudes: Relationships Across Issue Domains and Political Contexts. American Political Science Review, 104(01), 111–133.

     

    Thursday, January 21 – Why Do We Vote?

    ·       Beck, P. A., Dalton, R. J., Greene, S., & Huckfeldt, R. (2002). The Social Calculus of Voting: Interpersonal, Media, and Organizational Influences on Presidential Choices. The American Political Science Review, 96(1), 57–73.

    ·       Bond, R. M., Fariss, C. J., Jones, J. J., Kramer, A. D. I., Marlow, C., Settle, J. E., & Fowler, J. H. (2012). A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization. Nature, 489(7415), 295–298.  

    ·       Gerber, A. S., Green, D. P., & Larimer, C. W. (2008). Social Pressure and Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment. American Political Science Review, 102(01), 33–48.

    ·       (Additional) Burden, B. C., Canon, D. T., Mayer, K. R., & Moynihan, D. P. (2014). Election Laws, Mobilization, and Turnout: The Unanticipated Consequences of Election Reform. American Journal of Political Science, 58(1), 95–109.

    ·       (Additional) Nickerson, D. W. (2008). Is Voting Contagious? Evidence from Two Field Experiments. American Political Science Review, 102(01), 49–57. 

    Friday, January 22 – Political Knowledge & Heuristics

    ·       Popkin, Samuel L. 1991. The Reasoning Voter. Chapter 1 & 3

    ·       Bartels, Larry L. 2005. “Homer Gets a Tax Cut: Inequality and Public Policy in the American Mind.” Perspectives on Politics, 3(1): 15-31.

    ·       (Additional) Lau, R. R., Andersen, D. J., & Redlawsk, D. P. (2008). An Exploration of Correct Voting in Recent U.S. Presidential Elections. American Journal of Political Science, 52(2), 395–411.

    ·       (Additional) Lupia, A. (2006). How elitism undermines the study of voter competence. Critical Review, 18(1-3), 217-232.

    Tuesday, January 26 – Who Do We Vote For?

    ·       Healy, Andrew J., Neil Malhotra, and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo. 2010. “Irrelevant Events Affect Voters’ Evaluation of Government Performance.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 (29): pp. 12804–12809

    ·       Todorov, Alexander, Anesu N. Mandisodza, Amir Goren, and Crystal C. Hall. 2005. “Inferences of Competence from Faces Predict Election Outcomes”. Science 308, 1623–1626.

    ·       (Additional) Atkinson, Matthew A., Ryan D. Enos, and Seth J. Hill. 2009. “Candidate faces and election outcomes: Is the face-vote correlation caused by candidate selection?”. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 4. 229–249.

    ·       (Additional)  Kam, C. D., & Kinder, D. R. (2007). Terror and Ethnocentrism: Foundations of American Support for the War on Terrorism. The Journal of Politics, 69(02), 320–338.

    Wednesday, January 27 – Consequence of Partisanship

    ·       Taber, C. S., & Lodge, M. (2006). Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs. American Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 755–769.

    ·       Westen, D., Blagov, P. S., Harenski, K., Kilts, C., & Hamann, S. (2006). Neural bases of motivated reasoning: an FMRI study of emotional constraints on partisan political judgment in the 2004 U.S. Presidential election. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18(11), 1947–1958.

    ·       Schreiber, D., Fonzo, G., Simmons, A. N., Dawes, C. T., Flagan, T., Fowler, J. H., & Paulus, M. P. (2013). Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes Differ in Democrats and Republicans. PLoS ONE, 8(2), e52970.

    ·       (Additional) Klofstad, Casey A, Rose McDermott, and Peter K Hatemi. 2012. “The Dating Preferences of Liberals and Conservatives.” Political Behavior 35: 519-538.

    ·       (Additional) Gerber, A. S., & Huber, G. A. (2010). Partisanship, Political Control, and Economic Assessments. American Journal of Political Science, 54(1), 153–173.

    ·       (Additional) Iyengar, S., & Westwood, S. J. (2015). Fear and Loathing across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization. American Journal of Political Science, 59(3), 690–707.

     

    Thursday, January 28 – Group Dynamics

    ·       Huckfeldt, R., & Sprague, J. (1987). Networks in context: The social flow of political information. American Political Science Review, 81(04), 1197-1216.

    ·       Karpowitz, C. F., Mendelberg, T., & Shaker, L. (2012). Gender Inequality in Deliberative Participation. American Political Science Review, 106(03), 533–547.

    ·       (Additional) Levitan, L. C., & Visser, P. S. (2009). Social network composition and attitude strength: Exploring the dynamics within newly formed social networks. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(5), 1057–1067.

    Friday, January 29 – Media Effects

    ·       Mutz, Diana C., and Byron Reeves. 2005. “The New Videomalaise: Effects of Televised Incivility on Political Trust.” merican Political Science Review, 99(1): 1-15.

    ·       Iyengar, S., Peters, M. D., & Kinder, D. R. (1982). Experimental Demonstrations of the “Not-So-Minimal” Consequences of Television News Programs. American Political Science Review, 76(04), 848–858.

    ·       (Additional) Tesler, M. (2012). The Spillover of Racialization into Health Care: How President Obama Polarized Public Opinion by Racial Attitudes and Race. American Journal of Political Science, 56(3), 690–704.

     

    Tuesday, February 2 Race & Identity

    ·       Piston, S. (2010). How Explicit Racial Prejudice Hurt Obama in the 2008 Election. Political Behavior, 32(4), 431–451.   

    ·       Lieberman, M. D., Hariri, A., Jarcho, J. M., Eisenberger, N. I., & Bookheimer, S. Y. (2005). An fMRI investigation of race-related amygdala activity in African-American and Caucasian-American individuals. Nat Neurosci, 8(6), 720–722.

    ·       Schreiber, D., & Iacoboni, M. (2012). Huxtables on the Brain: An fMRI Study of Race and Norm Violation. Political Psychology, 33(3), 313–330.

    ·       (Additional) Kam, Cindy D. 2007. “Implicit Attitudes, Explicit Choices: When Subliminal Priming Predicts Candidate Preference.” Political Behavior 29(3): 343–367.

    ·       (Additional) Arkes, Hal R. and Philip E. Tetlock. 2004. “Attributions of Implicit Prejudice, or ’Would Jesse Jackson ‘Fail’ the Implicit Association Test”’. Psychological Inquiry 15 (4): pp. 257–278.

    ·       (Additional) Kurzban, R., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2001). Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(26), 15387 –15392.

     

    Wednesday, February 3 — Political Psychology on the Periphery

    ·       Blattman, C., & Annan, J. (2010). The Consequences of Child Soldiering. Review of Economics and Statistics, 92(4), 882–898.

    ·      Posner, D. N. (2004). The Political Salience of Cultural Difference: Why Chewas and Tumbukas Are Allies in Zambia and Adversaries in Malawi. American Political Science Review, 98(04), 529–545.

    ·       (Additional) Paluck, E. L., & Green, D. P. (2009). Deference, Dissent, and Dispute Resolution: An Experimental Intervention Using Mass Media to Change Norms and Behavior in Rwanda. American Political Science Review, 103(04), 622–644.

    ·       (Additional) Apicella, C. L., Marlowe, F. W., Fowler, J. H., & Christakis, N. A. (2012). Social networks and cooperation in hunter-gatherers. Nature,481(7382), 497-501.

     

    Thursday, February 4 — Persuasion

    ·       Huber, G. A., & Arceneaux, K. (2007). Identifying the Persuasive Effects of Presidential Advertising. American Journal of Political Science, 51(4), 957–977.

    ·       Hill, S. J., Lo, J., Vavreck, L., & Zaller, J. (2013). How Quickly We Forget: The Duration of Persuasion Effects From Mass Communication. Political Communication, 30(4), 521–547.

    ·       (Additional) Anderson, Rindy C, and Casey A Klofstad. 2012. “Preference for Leaders with Masculine Voices Holds in the Case of Feminine Leadership Roles.” Edited by Cédric Sueur. PLoS ONE 7(12): e51216.

    ·       (Additional) Mayer, N. D., & Tormala, Z. L. (2010). “Think” Versus “Feel” Framing Effects in Persuasion. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(4), 443–454.

    ·       (Additional) Arceneaux, K. (2012). Cognitive Biases and the Strength of Political Arguments. American Journal of Political Science, 56(2), 271–285.

    Friday, February 5

     

    ·       Research Project Presentations