Many say that academia is biased towards liberalism.  In some ways I believe this is correct, in that I believe more professors would describe themselves as liberal rather than conservative.   I don’t think that this means they are unprofessional and biased against conservative students.  As this talk by Jonathan Haidt (see my previous post) demonstrates, one can be honest about your own personal views, while still furthering communication between liberals and conservatives.

But political psychology is a touchy thing.  Take this excerpt from the abstract of a recent study as an example:

The Irony of Satire: Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report

The International Journal of Press/Politics, Vol. 14, No. 2, 212-231 (2009)

http://hij.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/14/2/212

“… there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. “

Now, as a liberal, and as someone who has read interviews with Stephen Colbert, I am sure that he is himself liberal and is using irony and satire to poke fun at conservative politics.  A liberal, this is funny, it makes me feel like I have one up on conservatives, who obviously don’t get him, and seem to be making an embarrassingly obvious mistake.

Though that interpretation definitely creates a strong entertainment factor for this study, it isn’t useful.  The questions I should be asking are: what does this say about political communication?  What is the reasoning behind the perceptions of the conservative participants? 

Or even more basic questions like: Was this a well run study? Does this abstract actually say what it appears to say, or will it prove to be more complicated than it first appears if I read the whole study?

Political Psychology is fascinating, and potentially useful.  It can easily be reduced to a game of one-upmanship if we are not careful, but done well, it can help us get along and unravel important political problems from a position of understanding, rather than ridicule.

The video that I like to refer people to to give them an idea of what political psychology is about is the TED talk by Jonathan Haidt: The real difference between liberals and conservatives.

LibsConserv1

This is a good example of what Political Psychology can do: find common ground between people with different views, and usefully further our understanding of how we think about Political problems and the people involved with them.

Nh_ballot_080109_ms

The New Hampshire polls have made almost more news than the candidates themselves lately, in many stories talking about how they were so wrong.

A friend brought this article to my attention, in which Dr. John Krosnick at Stanford University, explains why he thinks a significant part of Hillary's advantage was simply that her name appeared first on the ballot...

It is encouraging to me when I see mainstream media pundits asking the right questions when they talk about how political decisions are made.

David Brooks is doing it here.

I am at SIPP. 

Yesterday we heard Lee Ross speak.  He opened with a picture of him and a colleague with Yasser Arafat.  His research into the psychological causes of barriers to conflict resolution is simple yet fascinating.

He talked at great length about Naive Realism.  I am not talking about Naive Realism in the classic philosophical sense, but in reference to the body of re search Ross and others have put forth (example here).

Naive_Realism

Here is a summary.

Naive Realism

People never really fully develop a purely rational intellect that fully understands the implications of individual construal.

1. I see reality as it actually is, and my actions and beliefs are based on a rational interpretation of reality.

2. Other people would share my view and actions and opinions if they had access to the same information that I do and if they have processed that information in a reasonable way like I do.

3. If others don't share my views, it's because:

* they have different information, and by sharing information we can reach an agreement
* they are lazy, or are not making rational decisions based on the information
* they are biased by ideology or self-interest, or some other distorting influence

One can see how this would create conflict.  I am interested in linking this with personality work, or Motivated Social Cognition.

I have created the group called Political Psychology.  It is for general discussion of the academic subfield of the same name.

The graphic is not original. I pulled it from here because I liked it.

www.apsanet.org/.../political%20psychology1.jpg

Political psychology1