Political Psychology

Journal of the International Society of Political Psychology

Editors: Stanley Feldman, Leonie Huddy, Howard Lavine, and Charles Taber, Stony Brook University
Book Review Editor: Doris Graber, University of Illinois, Chicago
Editorial Assistants: Christopher Weber and Bradley Verhulst, Stony Brook University

Contents of the Current Issue

See Blackwell Site for earlier issues.

Volume 28, Issue 5 - October 2007

Presidential Address: 

The Political Psychology of Liberation: From Politics to Ethics and Back

Maritza Montero

The origins and development of the psychology of liberation are described, detailing the intellectual and political context in which the concept of liberation emerged in Latin American social sciences. Its constitution as a mode of doing psychology, and the founding ideas of Ignacio Martin Baró, its pioneer, are analyzed. Primary concepts such as problematization, de-ideologization, and de-alienation are discussed, and I explain how they are integrated into a central process characterized as concientization. The role of relatedness as an epistemological base for knowledge construction and liberation is highlighted. The dynamics in which these processes interact in order to facilitate and catalyze the transformation of negative living conditions through participatory action and reflection, to empower people so they become conscious citizens, and to strengthening civil society and democracy is also discussed. I argue that the ethical, critical, and political character of the liberating actions respond for the participatory, reflexive, and transformative conception of this form of psychology.

Expertise, Evaluative Motivation, and the Structure of Citizens’ Ideological Commitments

Christopher M. Federico

Political psychologists have typically argued that ideological commitments are structured in a bipolar fashion, where a positive evaluation of conservative objects implies a negative evaluation of liberal objects (and vice versa). Individual differences in conformity to this pattern are usually attributed to an ability-related variable, i.e., political expertise. Departing from this strict focus on ability, this study examines the hypotheses that an important motivational variable—the need to evaluate, or the desire to form opinions of objects as “good” or “bad”—would (1) predict deviations from ideological bipolarity, even controlling for expertise; and (2) moderate the relationship between expertise and deviations from bipolarity. Data from two national surveys provided evidence for these hypotheses and indicated that the results extended to deviations from bipolarity in evaluations of presidential candidates and political parties.

An Information Processing Theory of Ambivalence

Thomas J. Rudolph and Elizabeth Popp

This paper analyzes the sources of ambivalence toward political parties and candidates. We propose and test an information-processing theory of ambivalence in which systematic processing is hypothesized to heighten partisan and candidate ambivalence. We show that ambivalence is linked to several dispositional sources of systematic processing, including individuals’ information, motivation, and cognitive style. Specifically, we find that ambivalence tends to be greater among the well informed and those who are high in need for cognition while it tends to be lower among those motivated by directional goals. Collectively, our results suggest that levels of partisan and candidate ambivalence are greatest among those most likely to engage in effortful processing of information and that these effects are independent of value conflict. The results further suggest that the effects of effortful processing on ambivalence are moderated by attitude commitment.

Need for Cognitive Closure and Conservative Political Beliefs: Differential Mediation by Personal Worldviews

Agnieszka Golec de Zavala and Agnieszka Van Bergh

The paper investigates the relationships between motivated social cognition (need for cognitive closure), personal worldviews (traditional, modern, or postmodern), and conservative political beliefs. The relationships were analyzed in a sample of 189 Polish adults. High need for closure was found to be associated with support for both traditional and modern worldviews. Although different in content (i.e., endorsing different values and assumptions about the methods and limits of cognition), the worldviews share similar formal characteristics: Both assume the absolute nature of values and the existence of definite truths. However, acceptance of the traditional worldview was related to political conservatism (i.e., support for nationalist and isolationist opinions and a stronger role for traditional, religious values in public life), whereas acceptance of the modern worldview was associated with a rejection of conservative political beliefs. Moreover, personal worldviews mediated the relationship between need for closure and political beliefs: Support for social conservatism was mediated by acceptance of the traditional worldview, whereas acceptance of the modern worldview predicted rejection of conservative values.

When Likeness Goes With Liking: The Case of Political Preference

Gian Vittorio Caprara, R. Chris Fraley, and Michele Vecchione

Three studies show that people tend to vote for politicians (i.e., either Romano Prodi or Silvio Berlusconi in Italy or George W. Bush or John Kerry in the United States) whose traits they rate as being most similar to their own. People perceived higher similarity between themselves and political figures with respect to traits that were most distinctive of each platform and their respective leaders. These findings, while corroborating the similarity-attraction relationship, further attest to the role that personal characteristics of both voters and candidates play in orienting political preference.

BOOK REVIEWS

Wulf Kansteiner. In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and Politics after Auschwitz. Reviewed by Ed Cairns

Chunhou Zhang and Michael Margolis. Toward a New Theory of American Electoral Psychology: Achieving the Superordinate Goals of the Nation State. Reviewed by Jennifer Merolla

D. Sunshine Hillygus, Norman H. Nie, Kenneth Prewitt, and Heili Pals. The Hard Count: The Political and Social Challenges of Census Mobilization. Reviewed by S. Mark Pancer

Richard R. Lau and David P. Redlawsk. How Voters Decide: Information Processing during Election Campaigns. Reviewed by Todd Belt