Political Psychology

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measuring elite personality: psychobiography

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(Barber) detailed, in-depth case studies of individual leaders, tracing personal social and political development
Problem with Personality tests- majority of elites just don’t fill them out

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measuring elite personality:
content analysis of speeches

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 Political character is not necessarily congruent with the elite’s normal personality
Often politicians don’t write their speeches, they have speech writers

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elements/classifications of personality: traits

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personality characteristics that are stable over time and in different situations, Traits produce predispositions to respond in thinking, feeling, or actions to people, events, and situations.

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elements/classifications of personality: cognitions

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A collective term for the psychological processes involved in the acquisition, organization and use of knowledge

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AOU

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elements/classifications of personality: social context

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The social setting in which personality is expressed

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elements/classifications of personality: motives

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Those aspects of personality concerned with goals and goal-directed actions

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the conditions under which elite personality matters most

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four things:
1. Actor in strategic position
2. situation is ambiguous, unstable, complex
3. situation symbolic or emotional significance
4. when spontaneous behavior required

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Barber’s (1992) presidential typology: active positive

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high effort with lots of emotional reward; high activity, self-esteem, productivity; very rational; working towards developing his self image; works a lot because he likes his work; achievement motivated

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Barber’s (1992) presidential typology: active negative

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high effort with relatively low emotional reward; ambitious, working for power with a compulsive quality; vague and discontinuous self-image; little gained from large amounts of effort put forth into the political system; works a lot because he feels like he has to;

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Barber’s (1992) presidential typology: passive positive

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low effort but high emotional reward; low self-esteem with superficial optimism; search for affection as reward for being agreeable and cooperative

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Barber’s (1992) presidential typology: passive negative

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low effort with less emotional reward; character-rooted orientation towards duty; lack experience and flexibility; motivated by civic duty

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cognitive bias: selective attention

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Cognitive bias denotes a wide variety of observer effects that can modify the way we as humans perceive the world around us.

Selective attention denotes the fact that we tend to pay more attention to details that reinforce notions which we already have, often leading us to ignore details that contradict those notions.

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cognitive bias: inherent bad faith model

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The inherent bad faith model describes the bias that we often show against others, explaining actions of others that we dislike as stemming from their “inherent bad faith”. This is particularly evident in U.S. attitudes toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War. American elites often perceived the Soviet Union to be acting out of “inherent bad faith” rather than any logical reason. As documents revealed after the fall of the Soviet Union, however, Soviet decisions were often made because they felt threatened by us, and often felt that the west was acting out of “inherent bad faith”.

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cognitive bias: fundamental attribution error

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“Fundamental attribution error” is similar to the inherent bad faith model. It describes our tendency to underemphasize situational factors when considering the decisions of others, and overemphasize situational factors when explaining our own behavior.

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cognitive bias: availability heuristic

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The availability heuristic refers to the tendency to view the frequency of an event based on how easily we can recall similar events. This can often be misleading, as the proportion of similar events we can recall is often dissimilar to the number of actual events that are similar.

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motivated bias: wishful thinking

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Motivated biases are a category of cognitive biases that explain how the possibility of material gain or loss influences our thinking.

Wishful thinking describes our tendency to believe what we wish to be true, to be true. This is a common criticism of paranormal claims as well as other dogmatic belief structures.

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motivated bias: loss aversion

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Loss aversion describes our tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Psychologically, losses dominate our thinking, and if people percieve there is a loss at stake, they are much more likely to act aggressively to prevent that loss, than they are to strive aggressively for a gain.

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Khong’s (1992) AE framework (the function and use of historical analogies)

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“analogies are cognitive devices that ‘help’ policymakers perform six diagnostic tasks central to political decision-making. Analogies (1) help define the nature of the situation confronting the policymaker, (2) help assess the stakes, and (3) provide prescriptions. They help evaluate alternative options by (4) predicting their chances of success, (5) evaluating their moral rightness, and (6) warning about dangers associated with the options.

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DAP PEW

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elite management styles: formalistic

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(Cottam pg. 100) Hierarchical and technical, this system focuses on solving problems efficiently rather than politics or compromise. Both compromise and conflict are discouraged.

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elite management styles: competitive

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Relies on assertive advisors with diverse opinions. Leader observes conflict between various advisors and formulates decisions based on information gleaned out of that conflict. This system tends to emphasize short-term decisions and compromises. Both compromise and conflict are encouraged.

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elite management styles: collegial

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This management style emphasizes teamwork and cooperation, and forces the leader to bring together divergent viewpoints to master each problem. Compromise is encouraged, while conflict is not.

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Consistency Theory: balance theory

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Heider’s balance theory presented research that indicated that people try to keep the components of the cognitive system in balance. That is, people want to see their environment, the people in it, and their feelings about it as a coherent, consistent picture. For example, if a lifelong Democrat finds a certain Republican candidate to have good policies, she may be appalled at herself. To achieve balance, she has to either vote Democratic, switch to join the Republican Party, or consider this one incident an anomaly.

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Consistency Theory: Dissonance Theory

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Dissonance theory is a related type of consistency pattern, which deals with the inconsistencies between people’s attitudes and behaviors. For example, eating a cake while on a diet will result in either uneating the cake if possible, trivializing its effects, or distort info and say that cake can be good for you. Dissonance creates psychological tension, which people try to avoid by using selective attention or wishful thinking or selective exposure like during Kennedy administration. A good example of inconsistency is also the Vietnam War, where those who supported the war used the issues as those who didn’t, but they all disagreed on all points.

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UTD

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Categorization: schemas

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. A schema is a cognitive structure that represents knowledge about a concept or type of stimulus, including its attributes and the relations among those attributes.

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Categorization: Stereotypes

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Stereotypes are a particular type of social cognitive category. Stereotypes are beliefs about the attributes of people in particular groups or social categories

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affect

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Affect is a generic term for a whole range of preferences, evaluations, moods, and emotions. It can be either positive or negative, pleasant or unpleasant. Some have said that emotions are a bit different from affect in that they are more specific, such as disgust, resentment, hostility, and anger. It is debated how affect and cognition are interrelated. There is said to be a great deal of affect involved in political decision-making, etc. Less complex cognitive processes and more emphasis on affect are also seen to be associated with more violent reactions. Anger, guilt, shame, sympathy, fear, and anxiety are only some of the things that can influence political behavior.

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meep

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components and sources of attitudes: early tripartite view

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Attitudes have 3 key components.
-object – e.g. a presidential candidate
-evaluation (and intensity and strength of feeling)
-salience/centrality – (subjective importance)
-Early view (tripartite model): Combination of cognitive(what you think/believe), affective(what you feel), and behavioral(what you do) components.

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OES CAB

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components and sources of attitudes: contemporary views

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-Contemporary views:
-Only affect; only cognitive(beliefs) and affective(feelings) components.
-Evaluation based on cognitive, affective, and behavioral information.

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models of attitude formation: memory-based

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(in contrast to online)
-head is fill of considerations rather than well-formed attitudes (people don’t really have tight ideologies)
-when needed, we sample from those bits of often conflicting information in our heads
-we then form an opinion on the weighted average of positive/negative considerations sampled
-opinion is based on overall balance of positive/negative considerations and on the accessibility of those considerations.

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Psychological needs that groups fill

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(1) the need for inclusion and affiliation; includes fulfilling communication needs, the desire to be part of a group, and looking for social approval.
(2) the need for power: includes the need for power and control over situations and other people and the need to organize. (3) the need for affection: the desire to have positive relationships with others.

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APIA

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models of attitude formation: online

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Starts with messages put out by elites.
-Initial attitudes are formed and regularly updated (“running tally” as new info is received”)
-Attitudes are stored in long-term memory and retrieved when needed.
-Information that led to formation may or may not be recalled.

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models of attitude formation: dual process

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-Memory-based model of processing explains attitudes:
-toward less important/novel objects(i.e. attitudes not accessed as regularly)
-when faced with flood of new information
-Among less politically sophisticated individuals
Online model of processing explains attitudes:
-When a behavior/evaluation is expected in the future and information is abundant (e.g. campaigns)
-Toward individuals (e.g. candidates)
-Among more politically sophisticated individuals

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Interpersonal needs that groups fill

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social support (decrease in stress and loneliness), emotional sustenance, advice, and feedback

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SEAF

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Informational needs that groups fill

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comparing views, pooling resources, feedback

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collective needs that groups fill

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pooling resources, better decision-making in tasks with demonstrably correct solutions, increased efficiency and production, ability to specialize

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reference group theory

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was popular in the 1970’s and discussed which matters more, identity or group membership, if and when the two conflict.

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social identity theory

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more popular theory since the 1990’s which studies group identification by itself. It was especially developed by Tajfel and Turner (see p. 46-47 of textbook), who said that (1.) group members strive to achieve or maintain a positive sense of group identity (defined as the self-conception and attached emotional significance attached to a person’s membership in a group); (2.) social identity is based on a favorable comparison between your group and out-groups; and (3.) group members will leave or join a better group when they’re not satisfied with their social identity

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relative deprivation theory

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a strategy used to cope with a negative in-group position or a negative social identity. People feel discontent if the group doesn't meet up to their value expectations or will feel they deserve more than they have, leading to relative deprivation feelings like anger, resentment, or moral outrage (personally or on behalf of the group). In the RDT model, groups' levels of resentment, etc. depend upon referent outcomes (the comparison group of higher status), the perception of the referents' justification and methods of being better (valid or not), and likelihood of future change.

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prejudice (components; as depicted in "Blood in the Face"

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: Categorization of and consistent negative evaluative orientation of out-group members.
Components: (1) Social categorization, in which out-groups are seen as a collective instead of as individuals, and (2) consistent negative attitudes, which include stereotyping, feelings, and behavioral inclinations.
As seen in “Blood in the Face” – includes elements of right-wing aggression, submission, and conventionalism, gross stereotyping and categorization of groups by ethnicity, framing categories of other groups in terms of threats they pose to white supremacists (minorities “breeding like flies”, taking over territory, language of “contamination” or “tainting”, etc.), use of religious or spiritual language to justify the perception of the in-group as better than the out-group, the emphasis on distinctions between the in-group and the out-group and implications that the out-groups are not actually people, etc.

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associative network model of memory

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Long-term memory is organized associatively, and working memory is the conscious retrieval of long term memory associations, which are known as nodes. In working memory, you think of about 7+- 2 nodes per word, picture, etc., the connections between the nodes have varying degrees of strength, and they also have affective components.

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levels of conceptualization

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classification of people on the basis of information and attitudes used to express likes and dislikes about parties and candidates
- arranged in terms of level of political sophistication (more to less knowledgeable)
- idealogue: highest level of sophistication (2.5% of population)
- near-idealogue: semi-confident about difference between liberals and conservatives (9.5% of population)
- "group benefits" level: politics based on proximate goals (42%)
- "nature of the times" group: no concept of ideology, happy in times of prosperity, upset in times of unrest (24% of population)
- "absence of issue content" group: know nothing about political issues or difference between political parties (22.5% of population)
- many claim this model suggests Americans do not follow particular ideologies

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considerations

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opinions or ideas that a person forms in response to political discourse or the mass media (from Zaller's memory-based model of attitude formation)
- considerations often conflict;
- the more politically aware a person is, the more apt they are to receive them
- we form opinions based on the average of positive or negative considerations

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theory of reasoned action

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proposes that a person's volitional behavioral intention is based on the person's attitude about the behavior and the subjective norm; and, if a person intends to do an action, they will probably do it
- model is successful at predicting behavior when short intervals exist between feelings of intention and the behavior, itself

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ideology

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prescriptive political outlook derived from core assumptions
- in essence, a set of values, ideals or principles of a large group of people that attempts to explain how society should or does work

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Rokeach (1973)Value System

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- hierarchical model of terminal values (end states like inner harmony or national security) and instrumental values (means of achieving terminal values like forgiving or polite)
- "rank of values from 1 to ...."
- some predispositions to values; most learned or observed

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Schwartz's Value System

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- based on value pairs (ex: creativity and daring) of affinities and antagonisms
- motivational foundations

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tolerance (including measurement techniques)

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 Tolerance is one of the key democratic values. It is used to discuss how permissive individuals or societies are of individuals or groups who are different from them.
 Using standard survey measures (using groups such as communists, atheists, and African Americans) show that America’s tolerance has grown greatly since the 1950’s, and maintains a high level.
 A fairly new model by Sullivan et al. (Least liked groups approach) measures political tolerance in two parts.
 Ask people being surveyed to decide how much they identify with a number of groups such as the KKK, religious right, Latinos, etc.
 Insert the name of the most disliked group into a political tolerance survey
 This measure shows Americans being far less tolerant than standard measures.

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democratic elitism

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 democratic elitism is one way that the liberties of the “least liked groups” are protected.
 This model relies on the fact that those who are more educated and are more politically involved are more tolerant, and that educated, involved people make up the “political elite”, and therefore better equipped to protect liberties of all.

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pluralistic intolerance

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Intolerance is another way that liberties are protected in the United States.
 This model emphasizes that there are cross-cutting cleavages among groups in the United States, and as long as there is not a single out-group, all groups are protected.

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political trust (trust in government)

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 Political trust is one of the branches within the democratic value of Trust. It relates to how people think and feel about politicians and politics.
 Political trust is related to other measures:
 Is America on the right or wrong track?
 Partisan Support
 Political trust levels generally follow the presidential approval rating, but are less reactive and slower to change.

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group identity (vs. group membership)

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There is greater power in subjective group loyalty than in objective group membership.*
 Group Identification has two components
 Social Identity – Occurs when individuals include group identification as part of their own self-concept
 Interdependence/Shared Faith – Occurs when people believe their individual future is tied to the future of the group.
• These push people towards conformity

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Values

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- general claims or preferences about desirable social or personal conditions
- need not subscribe to a particular ideology, but may do so in conjunction with the correct set of correlating values

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Working Memory (WM)

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o Working memory (WM) is the conscious retrieval of LTM associations. It refers to what the memory is doing actively, in the moment, like a computers’ RAM. There are three primary limitations to the working memory:
 Capacity- can only focus on 7 (plus or minus 2) nodes at any given moment
 Serial functioning- in order for new information to enter, some old information must leave.
 Slow Fixation Rate- a slow upload, takes 8-10 seconds for information to get written in the network.

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nodes

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Nodes are logical placeholders for data. They’re used to build data structures, such as associative networks in the memory. Connections between them vary in strength and familiarity. They’re often assigned a positive or negative association.

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Long Term Memory (LTM)

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o Long term memory (LTM) describes the network of associations people form when storing information. It’s comparable to a computer’s hard drive.

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Stages of Information Processing

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o Exposure and attention- the subject must be exposed to the stimulus and choose to pay attention to it
o Interpretation- the new information is interpreted in light of past experiences
o Evaluation- An attitude is formed, regarding the new information in terms of like/dislike and importance
o Storage- To play a role in future choices and processing, the new information must be linked back to long-term memory

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Lupia & McCubbins theory of learning

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o Learning is active and goal oriented. Humans choose when and what to learn.

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Lupia & McCubbins theory of connectionism

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o Connectionism is the systematic process through which people connect their basic experiences with previous encounters of a similar nature. Connections seen as successful are used increasingly and grow stronger, making them more likely to be used in the future.

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Lupia & McCubbins theory of calculus of attention

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o People pay attention to the stimuli that are most likely to prevent costly mistakes or result in generous rewards. They focus on stimuli that have expected benefits far exceeding expected costs.

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Prejudice: Realistic Conflict

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o The realistic conflict theory proposes that intergroup stereotyping and derogation occur as a result of competition for resources and competitive goals.

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Prejudice: Social Learning

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o The social learning theory argues that children learn negative attitudes and discriminatory behavior from their parents, teachers, family, friends, and others, when they are rewarded for such behavior.

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Prejudice: Social Identity

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o Social identity is the part of a person’s self-concept that is determined the groups to which a person belongs. Social identity theory explores the impact of group identity and desire for positive comparisons to other groups on behavior.

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Prejudice: Personality Traits

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o Personality traits are also credited with prejudice. Studies have shown that individual differences such as genetics, socialization, and lifestyle account for varying degrees of racism, prejudice and ethnocentrism (e.g. Altemeyer and authoritarian personality type).

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Prejudice: Social Dominance Theory

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o Social dominance theory examines favor towards social hierarchy and the desire for in-groups to dominate out-groups.

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Contact Hypothesis

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Allport’s 1954 contact hypothesis argues that increasing intergroup contact, exposing people to the complexity of group members, helps break down stereotypes. He claims that categorization comes from misinformation, ignorance, not knowing, and lack of contact. Critics of Allport’s theory point out continuing categorization and prejudice in our society, despite increased contact.

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Common Ingroup (recategorization ) model

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Through cognitive categorization people make sense of the world around them in order to process information more efficiently and create a basis for action and reaction. The organization of the social and political world involves certain stereotypes and heuristics which form schemas that divide people into groups by perceived values, identities, beliefs, or attitudes. This separation creates ingroups, those with larger perceived similarities that the individual belongs to, and outgroups, those whom the individual has a more difficult time relating to, does not belong, and therefore has a more difficult time associating with
Recategorization can occur with larger and further encompassing goals which even more people will identify with. An example would be the summer camp study where the divided ‘teams’ of boys needed to come together to overcome deficiencies in their water supply or to rent a movie.

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symbolic racism scale (new racism)

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Symbolic racism theory states that traditional acts of racism through discrimination and prejudice can still be found in America today, however they are now identified as traditional American individualist values

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principles objection/ politics-is-complicated

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The politics-is-complicated model argues that White Americans vary in the degree to which they blame the inequalities between the races on structural factors (such as historical legacy of slaver and current system-wide discrimination), as opposed to individual factors (individual acts of prejudice and discrimination, rather than system-wide factors)

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Kuklinski and Hurley's field experiment (conclusions)

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What we found in the analyses reported earlier is when political statements are made in a social context and concern real-world issues, people focus on the pragmatic meaning of the statements, that is, why they were said and not their semantic meaning alone…the characteristics of the political source influence the pragmatic meaning that people assign.”

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Explicit Attitudes

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Explicit attitudes are those that are acted upon for known reasons or purposefully

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Implicit Attitudes

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attitudes can only be seen in underlying actions or appeals, but not for specific reasons directly related to the attitude

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Implicit Attitude Test(IAT)

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An implicit attitude test can measure an individual’s hidden biases. This is done by measuring response time to differing types of imagery and wording correlated to issues such as gender, political preference, sexuality, race, etc.

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bogus pipeline

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• Used as an implicit measure of discrimination.
• Subjects were hooked up to a machine they were told could measure their true feelings/attitude/prejudices, though in reality it was just and electronic box with wires, a “bogus” machine.
• Because they believed the machine to be real, subjects would answer more truthfully when responding to survey questions, elimination the problem of people conforming to social norms when answering surveys.

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theories of media effects: direct effects

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o Held that media had a powerful effect on people’s attitudes and opinions.
o Mainly audio effects from radio, reactions to War of the Worlds main example.
o No actual literature or studies were created.

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theories of media effects: minimal effects

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o First experiments/literature on media effects.
o People’s existing attitudes are maintained and reinforced by the media.
o Selective attention, individuals hear what they want to hear.
o Example, the television series Roots, though popular, had no observable effect on racism.

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theories of media effects: subtle effects

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o Media directs attention, tells people what to think about or what others think, not necessarily what to think. (Cohen 1963)
o Media affects attention, persuasion, and action.

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agenda setting

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o The media tells the public what is newsworthy (NY Times, All the news that’s fit to print)
o Tells the public what problems/issues are most important, and public concern follows media attention

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priming

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o What is the basis for evaluating issue/candidate, what issues are made salient.
o If you read a story about national defense, and are then asked to evaluate the president, you will evaluate him/her based on status of national defense, even though you were not asked to.
o Campaigns are about struggling over salience, what the debate is over, what voters think about on their way to the polls.
 Democrats benefit from education, environment, healthcare. Republicans benefit from national defense, taxes.

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framing

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o Organizational, how to think about an issue, organize thoughts into different frames.
o Elites offer competing frames which people choose between.
 KKK rally free speech or public disturbance?

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persuasion effects

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• Kinder: Campaigns are more about reinforcement than persuasion.
• Political messages often neutralize each other.
• Only 5-7% of voters change their minds as a result of ads, speeches, etc.

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action/behavioral effects

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• Mass media effects on voter turnout.
• Evidence for all sides
o Negative ads hurt voter turnout.
o Negative ads increase turnout because they get voters thinking.

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narrowcasting

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• Getting in touch with specific demographic groups, reaching each one with a different message.
• People are categorized and sent specific messages based on these categories.
• Drastically different messages for different groups.

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F-Scale

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F is for Facism.
Adorno et. al. 1950s.
It claims to be measuring facism by measuring conventionalism, submission, aggression, destructiveness, cycnicism, the belief that the world is wild and dangerous, and sexual activity.
All framed within rigid categories.

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Right-Wing Authoritarianism

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The argument that Right-Wing Authoritarianism is a personality trait. It is characterized by having the follow traits all together: aggressiveness, being your tendency towards violence and destruction; submission, being your tendency to listen and act according to authority; and conventionalism, being your tendency to favor traditional, conservative social norms.

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Situationism

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How personality cannot be studied in an isolated way, but must include study of the environment, because personality depends largely on environmental factors.

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Altruism

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Actions for the good of another person.
Monroe (1996)
Altruism is not a personality trait, but rather a perspective - the perspective of common universality, common humanity. Actions are spontaneous. No active choice involved.

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Cognition

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Perceiving, reasoning, knowing. The aquisitinon, organization, and use of knowledge.

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Heuristics/Cues

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Mental shortcuts in processing information about others.
These allow people to quickly recall schemas and make decisions based on these mental shortcuts built over time by frequency of use.