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Political Ideology
INSTRUCTORS: John Jost & Arie Kruglanski
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John Jost |
Arie Kruglanski |
In this course we will address key conceptual, theoretical, and empirical questions concerning the meaning, structure, and functions of political ideology. We will begin by reviewing historical arguments concerning the “end of ideology” and discuss the question of whether ideology exists and, if so, how it affects the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals and groups. We will also revisit “classic” approaches to understanding the psychological basis of ideology, including “the authoritarian personality.” Next, we will explore contemporary theories of ideology as motivated social cognition, which spell out the social and psychological antecedents, contents, and consequences of political ideologies such as liberalism and conservatism.
One focus of the course will be on situational and dispositional factors pertaining to the psychological management of uncertainty and threat and their consequences for political orientation. Specifically, we will investigate the roles of epistemic motives such as the need for cognitive closure and the need to evaluate as well as existential motives such as perceptions of a dangerous world and the fear of death in affecting social and political attitudes. We will also consider broader issues of gender, race, and social class, as well as the relationship between ideology and prejudice and the extent to which certain ideologies serve the system-justification function of defending and protecting the societal status quo. Finally, we will discuss connections between political orientation and attitudes concerning morality and religion.
The course will be conducted as a hands-on research workshop rather than as a lecture series. Students will be encouraged to work together in teams, in collaboration with the instructors, to plan and conduct cutting edge theory-driven research on the topic of ideology, broadly construed. Students will design studies and conduct statistical analyses of on-line public opinion data sets including the General Social Survey, the World Values Survey, and the American National Election Studies.
Background Textbook: Jost, J.T., & Sidanius, J. (Eds.) (2004). Political Psychology: Key Readings.* New York: Psychology Press. [Key Readings in Social Psychology series]. ISBN 1-84169-069-4
Arie W. Kruglanski is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is recipient of the National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Award, the Senior Humboldt Award, the Donald Campbell Award for Outstanding Contributions to Social Psychology from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), and the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP). He was Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, and is Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society. He has served as editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition, editor of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and associate editor of the American Psychologist. His interests have been in the domains of human judgment and decision making, the motivation-cognition interface, group and intergroup processes, and the psychology of human goals. His work has been disseminated in over 200 articles, chapters and books and has been continuously supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, Deutsche Forschungs Gemeineschaft, the Ford Foundation and the Israeli Academy of Science. He has recently served as member of the National Academy of Science panels on counterterrorism, and educational paradigms in homeland security. Kruglanski is now a co-director of START (National Center for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism), at the University of Maryland.
John T. Jost is Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University. Although he is only 38 years old, Jost has published over 60 journal articles and book chapters and has received numerous awards and honors. Much of his work is devoted to the theory of system justification, which provides a key conceptual framework for understanding ideology in everyday life. Jost has co-edited books on The Psychology of Legitimacy (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Political Psychology: Key Readings (Psychology Press, 2004). Awards he has received include the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Award, a Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Theoretical Innovation Prize, the International Society for Self & Identity Early Career Award, and the Erik H. Erikson Early Career Research Achievement Award in Political Psychology. Jost is currently Editor-in-Chief of Social Justice Research and is on the Governing Council of the International Society of Political Psychology and the Executive Committee of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. He is also editing a new book series on “Political Ideology” for Oxford University Press.