From Social to Political Identity: A Critical Examination of Social Identity Theory

Interest in the concept of identity has grown exponentially within both the humanities and social sciences, but the discussion of identity has had less impact than might be expected on the quantitative study of political behavior in general and on political psychology more specifically. One of the approaches that holds the most promise for political psychologists is social identity theory, as reflected in the thinking of Henri Tajfel, John Turner, and colleagues. Although the theory addresses the kinds of problems of interest to political psychologists, it has had limited impact on political psychology because of social identity theorists' disinclination to examine the sources of social identity in a real world complicated by history and culture. In this review, four key issues are examined that hinder the successful application of social identity theory to political phenomena. These key issues are the existence of identity choice, the subjective meaning of identities, gradations in identity strength, and the considerable stability of many social and political identities.     

Stripping the Political Cynic: A Psychological Exploration of the Concept of Political Cynicism

The high level of political cynicism in contemporary society is often considered a serious threat to democracy. The concept, however, has received only scant attention in psychology. The current work introduces political cynicism and extensively explores its psychological implications by investigating the concept's validity, predictive utility and status as a dispositional variable. Our results revealed that political cynicism is empirically distinguishable from the closely related constructs of social cynicism and political trust. Furthermore, political cynicism was found to strongly related to a wide range of political variables, such as voting intentions, political normlessness and political estrangement, as well as to broad social attitudes and racial prejudice. Finally, we show that political cynicism yields limited but meaningful relationships with Neuroticism and Agreeableness, although social cynicism is more clearly related to the Five‐Factor Model personality dimensions. It is therefore concluded that political cynicism can be reliably measured and distinguished from closely related concepts and that it yields meaningful relationships with other relevant psychological variables. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“Time's Up!”: Framing Collective Impatience for Radical Political Change

Grievance is a prominent feature of mobilization for radical political change. Existing scholarship, however, does not pay sufficient attention to the temporal texture of grievance narratives. Temporally “flat” narratives of grievance are ill equipped to provide either the cognitive or emotional stimulus for major political reorientation. In response to this issue, the article develops the concept of collective exhaustion master frames. These are frames that narrate the aggrieved community's arrival to a threshold of collective impatience. Such narratives have two functions—to legitimize radical departures from prevailing political habits (a cognitive task) and to stimulate collective impatience with the political status quo (an emotional management task). In addition to developing the concept of exhaustion frames, the article demonstrates its empirical relevance by outlining five distinctive framing episodes, starting with the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The conclusion outlines the future directions for the study of collective impatience and points to the range of implications for political psychology and adjacent disciplines.     

A Rogerian Perspective on Empathic Patterns in Southern African Healing

This article offers a reflective comment on the topics presented in this special issue. These topics address the concept of community psychology from various perspectives presented in three thematic categories: The states and form of community psychology; the application of community psychology to vulnerable groups and the concept of service delivery and methodologies. The author highlights trends gleaned from the articles, implicitly or explicitly—that of the efficacy of community psychology as a credible branch of psychology, changes needed in training programmes and the idea of the circularity that is community which exists because of the individual who exists because of community.     

Personality and politics: introduction to the special issue

This special issue of Journal of Personality brings together 10 original articles addressing the intersection of personality and politics. Articles build on classic traditions in political psychology by presenting both idiographic and nomothetic work on the motivational, cognitive, ideological, attitudinal, and identity correlates of many different aspects of political behavior. This work is used to understand political activism and leadership as well as everyday political behavior. We hope this collection of articles will inspire our readers to explore new investigations in personality and political psychology.     

国外政治心理学研究的现状与展望

政治心理学是研究政治过程和心理过程相互作用规律的科学。本文论述了国外政治心理学发展的历史背景与进程,阐明了目前国外政治心理学研究的现状：对政治个体、政治群体、国际政治的研究。分析了国外政治心理学未来的发展方向：理论化和系统化;重视政治心理学双向互动机制的研究;关注国际政治中的心理问题;研究方法兼收并蓄。     

WOMEN''S HERITAGE IN PSYCHOLOGY

The American Psychological Association's Centennial provides a unique opportunity to celebrate, preserve, and interpret women's heritage in the origins and development of psychology. This special issue documents women's contributions to, and the impact of feminist critiques on, the discipline of psychology and its organizations. The articles in this special issue demonstrate how psychological theories and practice, research methods, and interpretation of data are embedded in social, political, and historical contexts. Moreover, they document how feminist critiques have challenged traditional assumptions about knowledge and served as a catalyst for the transformation of psychological theories, methods, and practice—a transformation that has just begun.     

Pray for the fatherland! Discursive and digital strategies at play in nationalist political blogging

Political blogs have come to constitute important channels for expressing nationalist and anti-immigration political views. The new forms that this rhetoric may take, comprising an intricate intermingling of verbal, digital, (audio-)visual, and communicative elements, present challenges for qualitative research. In this article we propose a way for analysing this “new” nationalist political discourse from a qualitative social psychological perspective. The suggested approach combines analytical procedures form critical discursive and rhetorical psychology with social semiotic and rhetorical studies of images, completed with analytical tools and concepts from narrative psychology and research into online political communication. Using two empirical examples of nationalist and anti-immigration political blog-entries written during the 2015 “refugee crisis,” we show this approach enables the researcher to adequately study how such political messages are conveyed through the multitude of elements provided by the blogs. In so doing, our ultimate goal is to contribute to the analytical capacity of qualitative social psychological research into contemporary political communication and persuasion.     

Political Psychology in Canada

Although a number of political psychologists are active in Canada, there has been relatively little self-conscious development of the field. This article brings together contributions from political science and social psychology in Canada in an attempt to identify aspects of Canadian distinctiveness in the field of political psychology, notably the balance between mainstream and eclectic tendencies.     

Political Psychology as Discipline and Resource

Around the 1960s, political psychology was developed as a field of knowledge that attempted to interrelate scientific psychology and political phenomena. However, social and academic conditions are very different today. More and more, political psychology is becoming a protagonist, as much in the internal context of psychology as in the external context of its relations with the social world. Thus, political psychology can now be seen as a resource relating psychological knowledge to social practice, and relating psychological processes to social action. Political psychology is the interface that puts psychology and society in contact. The development of political psychology in Spain provides an example of this alternative view of the field.     

中国文化下组织政治技能的结构及问卷的编制

本文旨在探讨中国文化背景下,组织政治技能概念的内涵和结构以及编制相应测量工具。研究先对11人进行了关于组织政治技能概念内涵的半结构化访谈,然后以667人为被试,按照严格的心理测量学程序,探讨了中国文化背景下组织政治技能的结构,并编制了一套相应的组织政治技能量表。结果表明：中国文化背景下的组织政治技能为二阶因子模型,量表既包含了以往研究的成果,又体现了中国文化的独特性,具有较好的效度和信度,并具有广泛应用前景。     

Cognitive approaches to the study of episodic future thinking

The concept of episodic future thinking—the ability to simulate events that may take place in the personal future—has given rise to an exponentially growing field of research that spans a variety of sub-disciplines within psychology and neuroscience. In this introduction to the special issue, we provide a brief historical overview of factors that have shaped research on the topic and highlight the need for additional behavioural work to uncover cognitive mechanisms that support episodic future thinking and differentiate it from other related modes of future-oriented cognition. We conclude by discussing the manner in which the various contributions to the special issue fill the gaps in our knowledge and make some of our own suggestions for future work.     

Gendered Characteristics of Political Engagement in College Students

This study was designed to examine gender differences in the political engagement of college students, in relation to perception of gender inequality, partisanship, issue involvement, and media use during the 2000 presidential and congressional campaign. A survey-based study of political engagement was conducted among 236 undergraduate students at a large northeastern university in Pennsylvania—a swing state—during the campaign. Findings support the theory that women with higher perception of gender inequality tend to be more politically engaged than women with lower perception gender inequality. Foreign policy as an issue of interest is important in this study because it is the only policy issue for which there was both a significant gender difference and a significant association with political engagement.     

黄兴政治伦理思想述评

黄兴政治伦理思想是其伦理思想的一个重要方面,其政治伦理思想的主要内容包括四个方面：强调伦理道德在政权和政党建设中的重大作用,倡导政治伦理化;诚挚的爱国之心是黄兴政治伦理思想的主体;团结友善、敬业奉献是黄兴政治伦理思想的外在表现;“为大多数人谋幸福”是黄兴政治伦理思想实践的理想境界。黄兴政治伦理思想的主要特点：一是糅合了中西伦理文化的优点;二是将改造国民社会心理与建设国家统一起来;三是鲜明的政治性和实践性。     

WHAT CONSTITUTES AN ‘APPROPRIATE PSYCHOLOGY’ FOR THE DEVELOPING WORLD?

The impact of psychology on the developing world has begun to receive some attention, but there is a need for theoretical concepts in order to provide a framework for critical discussion. Using the concepts ‘dual perception’ and ‘parallel growth’ (Moghaddam and Taylor 1985) as a framework, the concept of ‘appropriate psychology’ is introduced to assess the transfer of psychology from the developed to the developing world. Six criteria for evaluating appropriateness are discussed: self-reliance, needs responsiveness, cultural compatability, institutional feasibility, economic suitability and political practicality.     

On the Independent Roles of Cognitive & Political Sophistication: Variation Across Attitudinal Objects

People are motivated to maintain consistency between importantly held identities, preferences, and judgments. In political contexts, motivated reasoning can help explain a wide range of political phenomena, including extremism, polarization, and misperceptions. However, recent findings in psychology have challenged this account. These perspectives emphasize the role of cognitive sophistication (e.g., analytical reasoning, numerical literacy) in political attitudes, but differ in terms of whether it is expected to attenuate or exacerbate politically motivated reasoning and belief in conspiracy theories. Yet prior investigations have not examined the relative and independent effects of both political and cognitive sophistication. Using data from two samples, including one sampled to approximate representativeness in the U.S., we demonstrate that both types of sophistication have independent and (at times) countervailing effects on belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories and other political attitudes. Our results are critical for theories of cognitive sophistication, political cognition, and attitudes, and the psychology of conspiracy theories.     

政治信任:心理学视角下的前因后果

政治信任(Political Trust)是近年来政治心理学和社会心理学研究领域的一个关键变量。研究主要从政治信任的概念、基础理论、特征、测量、相关前因及结果变量的比较及实证研究方面,对国内外相关实证研究进行了梳理与评析。针对现有研究情况,提出未来研究应注意从测量客观性、实验室操纵、相关因素关系、多学科综合研究等方面进一步完善。     

Taking Stock of Organizational Psychology in Sport

Welcome to this special issue of Journal of Applied Sport Psychology dedicated to organizational sport psychology. In this introduction, my goal is to provide some background to organizational sport psychology to “take stock” of the emergence and key lines of inquiry of this domain, before outlining the contributions contained within the issue. Further, this special issue concludes with an editorial epilogue in which I offer a commentary on these articles and some general reflections on organizational sport psychology.     

The cultural in the social: A reflection on sociocultural models approaches

Culture is a critical concept for social psychology in Asia. The sociocultural models approach, as exemplified in this special issue, is a significant synthesis of the past work and a generative platform for future research. From the perspective of cultural dynamics, this commentary provides what I hope to be constructively critical reflections on this approach and attempts to point to potential directions for future investigation.     

Motivated Closed‐Mindedness Mediates the Effect of Threat on Political Conservatism

In this article we synthesize theory and research from several areas of psychology and political science to propose and test a causal model of the effects of threat on political attitudes. Based in part on prior research showing that fear, threat, and anxiety decrease cognitive capacity and motivation, we hypothesize that under high (vs. low) threat, people will seek to curtail open‐ended information searches and exhibit motivated closed‐mindedness (one aspect of the need for cognitive closure). The subjective desire for certainty, control, and closure, in turn, is expected to increase the individual's affinity for political conservatism, insofar as resistance to change and adherence to authority figures and conventional forms of morality are assumed to satisfy these epistemic motives more successfully than their ideological opposites. Consistent with this account, we find in Studies 1a and 1b that putting people into a highly threatened mindset leads them to exhibit an increase in motivated closed‐mindedness and to perceive the world as more dangerous. Furthermore, in Study 2 we demonstrate that a subtle threat manipulation increases self‐reported conservatism (or decreases self‐reported liberalism), and this effect is mediated by closed‐mindedness. In Study 3, we manipulated closed‐mindedness directly and found that high (vs. low) cognitive load results in a greater affinity for the Republican (vs. Democratic) party. Finally, in Study 4 we conducted an experiment involving political elites in Iceland and found that three different types of threat (to the self, group, and system) all led center‐right politicians to score higher on closed‐mindedness and issue‐based political conservatism. Implications for society and for the theory of ideology as motivated social cognition are discussed.