Psychology: Week 4 Discussion Post
Welcome to Week 4
With Week 4, we will be focused on politics and political behavior. While, like all of the topics we cover in this course, there is a vast array of topics that fall into this category, we will focus only on a few areas: political leadership, voting behavior, and ideology. Additionally, you will be reading more about the three areas noted above, beyond the textbook via a study about how mediums change perceptions of leaders (particularly in a debate), a brief piece about predictions of voting behavior based on polling, and a brief piece about moral superiority. Please also review the study on which the latter piece was based, via the academic journal article, The Illusion of Moral Superiority. You will also be watching a few videos about 1) how human behavior is influenced by authority figures, 2) political discourse with others and 3) whether political identity interferes with information processing.
Read chapter 15 : Steg, L., Kees, K., Buunk, A.P., & Rothengatter, T. (2017). Applied social psychology: Understanding and managing social problems (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK and NY NY: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 978-1107044081
https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case2.html
Tappin, B.M & McKay, R.T. (2017). The illusion of moral superiority. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8(6), 623-631
As noted in your textbook, the Yale Obedience to Authority Study (1963) (by social psychologist, Dr. Stanley Milgram) demonstrates how people respond to prompts from an authority figure (a researcher). As Dr. Milgram suggests, the findings from this study can also be used to consider how people blindly follow other authority figures such as governments and political leaders (approx. 11 minutes).
https://www.ted.com/talks/robb_willer_how_to_have_better_political_conversations?language=en
Dr. Robb Willer, Professor at Stanford University, studies the forces that unite and divide us. As a social psychologist, he researches how moral values — typically a source of division — can also be used to bring people together. Willer shares compelling insights on how we might bridge the ideological divide and offers some intuitive advice on ways to be more persuasive when talking politics (description per Ted Talk, 2016) (approx. 12 minutes).
https://www.ted.com/talks/jay_van_bavel_do_politics_make_us_irrational
Dr. Jay Van Bavel, Associate Professor of Social Psychology, Cognition and Perception, and Neural Science at NYU, explores whether someone’s political identity actually affects their ability to process information. The answer lies in a cognitive phenomenon known as partisanship. While identifying with social groups is an essential and healthy part of life, it can become a problem when the group’s beliefs are at odds with reality. So how can we recognize and combat partisanship? Jay Van Bavel shares helpful strategies (description per Ted Talk, 2020) (approx. 5 minutes).
You have been hired as a consultant/adviser to address the issues related to politics and political behavior, covered this week. Please take 1/3 of your post to summarize the major social problems presented and why these are occurring (psychologically speaking). Then, for the other 2/3 of your post, please suggest ways that these issues can be addressed, as informed by psychology/psychological findings. Don’t just move article by article and give a summary. You are being asked to read all of the materials and synthesize them into a “brief” – a short summary of the issues – for those that hired you. Additionally, for your suggestions/recommendations, please don’t simply summarize the ideas others have given in your readings; come up with your own ideas as informed by what you’ve read. Make sure to support your ideas with evidence – why are you making these suggestions? What are they based on? Which findings suggest these ideas could help? Please use all of the resources for this week in your post and use in-text citations.
Finally, at the end of your post, in a separate sentence (titled – “Remaining Question”), please post a question that you had, based on what you’d read. You should think of this as a discussion question you are proposing (not just a question about something in an article).