Where politics and psychology intersect

John Sullivan cofounded the U's Center for the Study of Political Psychology in the early 1990s.

Photo courtesy of the College of Liberal Arts

By Eric Black

From eNews, October 23, 2008

Perhaps you have a hard time giving up on the idea that political behavior is--or at least can be--based heavily on facts and the rational processing of facts. But it's a hard conviction to maintain in the face of, well, established facts.

For example, in exit polls, relatively few voters can correctly answer basic questions about the policy positions held by the candidates for whom they have just voted. Many citizens will describe themselves as "conservatives," then give "liberal" answers to questions about the fundamental role of government. Most voters vote for the same party their whole adult lives, and usually it's the same party for which their parents voted.

Political psychology, says University of Minnesota associate professor Christopher Federico, is "the study of how human thoughts, feelings, and behaviors intersect with the political world, and how they mutually influence one another."

The map of this intersection between politics and psychology has grown steadily more detailed over recent decades. And the University of Minnesota has made itself a national leader by creating the Center for the Study of Political Psychology (CSPP).

The center receives support from the Graduate School and the College of Liberal Arts. Students from many disciplines can pursue political psychology as a minor, and graduate students can take a Ph.D. minor in political psychology through the center. The center is also a place for faculty members from political science and psychology and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication to pool their expertise and collaborate on research that draws from all three.

Regents Professor John Sullivan cofounded CSPP with psychology professor Eugene Borgida in the early 1990s. Federico is the center's director.

Poli-pscyh research

Political science long ago noted several factors that correlate with higher levels of political participation, and they are intuitively obvious: people with higher incomes, higher educational levels, and more political knowledge are more likely to vote, contribute to campaigns, and volunteer. But some affluent people don't vote or donate time or money. And plenty of poor people do. Controlling for the more obvious socioeconomic factors, associate professor Joanne Miller's research pursued the question of what kind of psychological motivations lead to various forms of political participation.

Using data from surveys that asked respondents about both their personal motivations and their political participation, Miller found, for example, that participation is less common among people who are actively pursuing their self-interest. In other words, most people don't vote or volunteer for campaigns because they hope to come out ahead by any kind of concrete economic logic. But those who are motivated by the pursuit of collective interest, and especially those who are motivated to express their personal values, are more likely than average to volunteer or contribute.

The only motivation that Miller tested that seemed to increase the likelihood of voting itself was the desire to express one's identity as an American. Observations like those, Miller says, "may put us down the path of ideas that will help make participation more widespread."

Among those who do vote, political scientists are virtually unanimous in the belief that the single biggest indicator of how someone will vote is party identification, which is closely linked to socioeconomic and lifestyle factors such as race, income, religion, and frequency of church attendance, says Federico. All of these factors are or become aspects of personal identity, he adds.

Politico psychology

One major branch of political psychology focuses on the individual and small-group psychology of the presidents and presidential circles that elections have put into power.

In Groupthink, a book that Sullivan assigns in his Political Psychology of Elite Behavior course, political psychologist Irving L. Janis explores three famous cases: the unpreparedness of the United States for the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy administration's decision to go forward with the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion plan it had inherited from the Eisenhower administration, and the Truman administration's decision to expand the Korean War into an invasion of North Korea.

In all of these instances, Janis finds evidence of what he calls "groupthink," wherein the pressure to go along with ideas that the group seems to favor leads individual members of the group to ignore--or least to not force the group to consider--serious problems with a plan.

This kind of research is done by interviewing the key members of the group, asking how the group failed to see-or at least to discuss and deal with-obvious problems. Theorists of groupthink have developed the concept of a "mindguard," a member of the group who pressures other members to stay in line with the emerging consensus and keeps troublesome facts and arguments away from the group. (Janis concluded that President Kennedy's brother Robert played that role in the Bay of Pigs case.)

Sullivan's class also reads a political psychology book that looks at the two Presidents Bush and the group dynamics within their administrations as they contemplated war against Saddam Hussein. The book portrays the two Bushes as having a lot of psychological characteristics in common, including a tendency to trust their gut instincts over the advice of their subordinates, Sullivan says. In the case of George H. W. Bush, those instincts were based on a lot of foreign policy experience. In the case of George W. Bush, they were not.

Looking at these and other current and past events, political scientists at the University of Minnesota are unraveling the mysteries of political behavior. It's difficult to let go of belief in a rational, informed electorate. It may be downright scary to think that childhood adjustment issues will cause a president to mess up a major foreign policy decision. But, to the degree that this is reality, political psychology can help us understand it.

Edited from PoliSci Connection, fall 2008, a publication from the Department of Political Science.