Political Psychology

Political psychology is an interdisciplinary academic specialty focusing on the study of psychological processes that influence political behavior. Accordingly, a more precise label for the discipline might be the psychology of politics or psychological political science. Contemporary political psychology draws from all cognate areas of psychology, with the strongest emphasis on social, cognitive, personality, and developmental psychology; motivation and emotion; and cognitive neuroscience. It also draws abundantly from its other parent discipline, political science, including the field of international relations. Furthermore, it has ties with political communication, economics, philosophy, sociology, and other related disciplines. The encyclopedia entry briefly traces the development of political psychology as an organized discipline and outlines its major areas of inquiry, including cognition, affect, and motivation in politics; political socialization; political personality and leadership; political participation; intergroup relations; international relations; and political stability and change

Why we need to establish international political psychology

A combination of Psychology with International Relations yields important results and ideas for improving the international world. This chapter proposes to establish International Political Psychology as a discipline with the purpose of harvesting ideas, theories and concepts that derive out of a combination of the above disciplines

Wanted: A Political Psychology

This article describes guidelines for a political psychology curriculum that could be pursued by the academic, the academic student, and the autodidact

Political Psychology and Choice

This article discusses political psychology and choice, starting with an overview of the recent emphasis on the importance of emotion in understanding political choices. This is followed by a discussion of the research that deals with the ability of citizens to process information without any bias. It then highlights the contributions of methodological innovations to an understanding of political psychology. The article concludes with several reflections on the political psychologists\u27 emphasis on the importance of information, cognition, and rationality in research for the past few decades

Political Psychology and Political Policy

This article describes the basic components of political policy which can be influenced through political psychology. It also suggests some political limitations of this influence