Houghton David. Political Psychology: Situations, Individuals, and Cases
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Political Psychology
What shapes political behavior more: the situations in which individuals find
themselves, or the internal psychological makeup—beliefs, values, and so
on—of those individuals? This is perhaps the leading division within the psy-
chological study of politics today. Political Psychology: Situations, Individuals, and
Cases provides a concise, readable, and conceptually organized introduction to
the topic of political psychology by examining this very question.
Using this situationism–dispositionism framework—which roughly paral-
lels the concerns of social and cognitive psychology—this book focuses on such
key explanatory mechanisms as behaviorism, obedience, personality, group-
think, cognition, affect, emotion, and neuroscience to explore topics ranging
from voting behavior and racism to terrorism and international relations.
Houghton’s clear and engaging examples directly challenge students to
place themselves in both real and hypothetical situations which involve intense
moral and political dilemmas. This highly readable text will provide students
with the conceptual foundation they need to make sense of the rapidly chang-
ing and increasingly important field of political psychology.
David Patrick Houghton is Associate Professor of Political Science at the
University of Central Florida.
Political Psychology
Situations, Individuals, and Cases
David Patrick Houghton
First published 2009
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2009 Taylor and Francis
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Houghton, David Patrick.
Political psychology : situations, individuals, and cases / David
Patrick Houghton.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Political psychology. I. Title.
JA74.5.H68 2008
320.01′9—dc22
2008019240
ISBN10: 0–415–99013–0 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–415–99014–9 (pbk)
ISBN10: 0–203–88911–8 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–99013–4 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–99014–1 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–88911–4 (ebk)
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
ISBN 0-203-88911-8 Master e-book ISBN
Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii
Preface ix
INTRODUCTION 1
1 The Conceptual Scheme of This Book 3
2 A Brief History of the Discipline 22
PART I
The Situation 35
3 Behaviorism and Human Freedom 37
4 The Psychology of Obedience 46
5 Creating a “Bad Barrel” 57
6 Group Decision-Making 69
PART II
The Individual 83
7 Psychobiography 85
8 Personality and Beliefs 101
9 Cognition 114
10 Affect and Emotion 132
11 Neuroscience 143
PART III
Bringing the Two Together 155
12 The Psychology of Voting Behavior 157
13 The Psychology of Nationalism, Ethnic
Conflict, and Genocide 168
14 The Psychology of Racism and Political
Intolerance 184
15 The Psychology of Terrorism 201
16 The Psychology of International Relations 216
17 Conclusion: A Personal View 232
Notes 242
Index 267
vi Contents
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
2.1 The relationship between political science and
other fields 23
4.1 The cards used in Solomon Asch’s experiments
on social pressure 48
5.1 M.C. Escher’s “Circle Limit IV” 58
5.2 Zimbardo’s interpretation of the Stanford experiment 61
5.3 One of the photos released in 2004 showing
U.S. servicemen torturing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison 64
Tables
2.1 A summary of the features of the Homo
economicus and Homo psychologicus models 32
3.1 A summary of the arguments for and against
behaviorism 45
4.1 A summary of some of the arguments for and
against Milgram’s obedience paradigm 56
5.1 A summary of the arguments for and against
Zimbardo’s “bad barrel” approach 67
7.1 Barber’s characterization of modern presidents 95
16.1 Solidarity and Status dimensions 223
Preface
For almost as long as I can remember, I have always been interested in the
causes of political, economic, and other social behaviors, though it took me a
long time to realize that what I was most interested in had a name and formed
an academic field in its own right: “political psychology.” In fact, it was not
until I moved to the United States as a graduate student that I found what I was
looking for. I was raised in the British university system, and cannot recall the
term ever being used during my undergraduate years at Sheffield University
(though thankfully it is now widely taught in Britain). I had begun my higher
education as a student of economics. Rather naively believing that I would learn
something about the causes of human economic behavior from microeconom-
ics, I was dismayed to find that many economists simply assumed various things
to be true about human behavior—treating them as “givens”—and then used
these assumptions to build models of various sorts.
There is a very old joke about an engineer, a priest, and an economist who
have fallen down a cavernous hole. Naturally, they begin debating a way to get
out of this predicament, and after a little thought each comes up with a pro-
posal. The engineer says “let’s make footholds at various points by climbing on
one another’s shoulders, which will enable us to clamber out of the hole.” The
priest goes next, and not unexpectedly offers a more spiritual solution. “Let us
all join hands and pray to God. He will find an answer to our problem.” Then it
is the economist’s turn. He thinks a bit more for a moment, and then simply
says to the others, “assume a ladder!” The microeconomics teachers tried in
vain to fill my head with preference curves and shifting lines on graphs, based on
assumptions about human behavior (perfect information, the non-existence of
advertising, and so on) which they admitted were manifestly untrue. They
nevertheless recommended proceeding (after Milton Friedman) “as if” they
were true. This was definitely not what I was looking for, and I didn’t last long
at it. I didn’t want to assume anything about human behavior. I wanted to know
how people actually thought in the real world, and why.