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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: BPS Textbooks in Psychology
- Sprache: Englisch
A research-based guide to political psychology that is filled with critical arguments from noted experts
Political Psychology is solidly grounded in empirical research and critical arguments. The text puts the emphasis on alternative approaches to psychological enquiry that challenge our traditional assumptions about the world. With contributions from an international panel of experts, the text contains a meaningful exchange of ideas that draw on the disciplines of social psychology, sociology, history, media studies and philosophy. This important text offers a broader understanding of the different intellectual positions that academics may take towards political psychology.
Comprehensive in scope Political Psychology provides a historical context to the subject and offers a critical history of common research methods. The contributors offer insight on political thought in psychology, the politics of psychological language, narrating as political action, political decision-making and much more. This important text:
- Offers contributions from a panel of international experts on the topic
- Includes a review of some political ideas associated with the work of Karl Marx, Erich Fromm, R.D. Laing, Michel Foucault and others
- Presents information on prejudice, stereotypes and discrimination in the context of mass migration
- Reviews a wide range of relevant topics such as identity, social exclusion and foreign policy and more
- Contains questions for group debate and discussion at the end of each chapter
Written for academics and students of political psychology, Political Psychology is a comprehensive resource that includes contributions from experts in a variety of fields and disciplines.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Preface
1 Some Historical and Philosophical Considerations
WHEN PEOPLE COME TOGETHER
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
THE DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS IDENTITIES
INTERSECTING HISTORIES: JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, AND ISLAM
THE ISSUE OF GOVERNANCE
TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
THE SOCIAL AND MORAL ORDER
THE SEARCH FOR SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING
PSYCHOLOGY: A NEW WAY OF SEEING THE WORLD
THE INFLUENCE OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY ON SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
LOCATING THE ROOT OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR
SOCIAL COGNITION
A SOCIETAL APPROACH TO POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
SUMMARY
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
2 A Critical History of Research Methods
WHAT DO WE WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE WORLD AND WHY?
HOW CAN WE KNOW THE WORLD?
SEARCHING FOR UNIVERSAL LAWS OF BEHAVIOR
THE COMPUTABILITY PROBLEM
THE HISTORIC NATURE OF RESEARCH FINDINGS
THE ORIGIN OF STATISTICS
THE CONSTRUCTION OF NORMS, NORMALITY, AND NORMALCY
USING STATISTICAL MEASURES AND MODELS FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES
THE NULL HYPOTHESIS SIGNIFICANCE TEST
BAYESIAN METHODS
THE ISSUE OF REPLICATION
THE FILE DRAWER EFFECT
A CAUTIONARY NOTE ON THEORY
CONCLUSIONS
SUMMARY
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
3 From Alienation to Estrangement: Political Thought and Psychology
MECHANISTIC MODELS
KARL MARX
ERICH FROMM
R. D. LAING
MICHEL FOUCAULT
SVETLANA BOYM
SUMMARY
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
4 The Politics of Psychological Language: Discourse and Rhetoric
DISCURSIVE PSYCHOLOGY, RHETORICAL PSYCHOLOGY, AND COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
THE SCIENTIFIC LABORATORY
THE VALIDITY OF EXPERIMENTS AND SURVEYS
LANGUAGE, DISCOURSE, AND RHETORIC
ARGUING AND THINKING
RELATIVISM AND IDEOLOGY—OR THE DP‐CA/RP‐CDA FANDANGO
IDEOLOGY
CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
THE POLITICS OF EXPERIENCE
CONSPIRACY DISCOURSE
A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO CONSPIRACY
REINSTATING THE THINKING PERSON
SUMMARY
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
A USEFUL FOLLOW UP THAT ADDRESSES ISSUES OF RELATIVISM AND REFLEXIVITY:
FOR FURTHER DEBATE AND DISCUSSION OF THE DP‐CA/RP‐CDA FANDANGO:
QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
5 Identity
IDENTITY AND HUMAN RELATIONS
CATEGORIZATION
SELF AND SOCIETY
OCCUPATIONAL IDENTITY: ROLES AND PERFORMANCE
POLITICAL MOBILIZATION: NATIONAL IDENTITY AND NATIONALISM
IDENTITY THREATS
IDENTITY POLITICS
IMAGE, IMAGES, AND APPEARANCE
POLITICAL IDENTITIES
SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY
IDENTITY PROCESS THEORY
DISCURSIVE APPROACHES TO IDENTITY
NARRATIVE IDENTITIES
CONCLUSIONS
SUMMARY
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
6 Narrating as Political Action
PSYCHOLOGY AND POLITICS
SPEECH AND POLITICAL ACTION
THE PERSONAL AND POLITICAL NATURE OF NARRATIVE
EXPANSIVE POLITICAL NARRATIVES
PSYCHOANALYTIC AND PERSONOLOGICAL TRADITION
NARRATIVE APPROACHES
NARRATIVE HERMENEUTICS
NARRATIVE AND NARRATING
INTENSIFYING PERSONS AND SOCIAL CONTEXT
COLLECTIVE MEMORY
REPRESSION
RELATIONAL CONTEXTS
MEANINGS AND ACTION
PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS OF MEMORY
PALESTINIANS WITH ISRAELI CITIZENSHIP
HIBA: THE REAL STORY
LANA: TORN BETWEEN THE TWO
CONCLUSIONS
SUMMARY
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
7 Connecting Social Exclusion and Agency: Social Class Matters
CLASS MATTERS
CULTURAL CAPITAL
THE PRECARIAT
CAPITALIST RESTRUCTURING AND POVERTY
STIGMA
COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES
THE INDIVIDUALIZATION OF CLASS
AGENCY AND SOCIAL CLASS
SOCIAL CAPITAL
CULTURAL INCOMPATIBILITY IN EDUCATION
THREATS TO IDENTITY
THE TRANSMISSION OF CULTURAL CAPITAL
IMPLICATIONS FOR A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIAL EXCLUSION
CONCLUSIONS
SUMMARY
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
8 Migration
PREJUDICE, STEREOTYPES, AND DISCRIMINATION AGAINST IMMIGRANTS
STEREOTYPING, RACISM, AND FORMS OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST IMMIGRANT GROUPS
EXPLANATIONS OF PREJUDICE
INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE REACTIONS TO PREJUDICE
REDUCING PREJUDICE? THE CONTACT HYPOTHESIS
CHANGING SOCIETIES: THE ISSUE OF ACCULTURATION
CHANGING INDIVIDUALS: THE ISSUE OF ADAPTATION
CALLING FOR A NEW SOCIAL ORGANIZATION: THE PARADOX OF INTEGRATION
SUMMARY
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
9 Political Decision‐Making
THE LEVELS‐OF‐ANALYSIS FRAMEWORK
THE RATIONAL MODEL OF JUDGMENT AND DECISION‐MAKING
PSYCHOLOGICAL MODELS OF INFORMATION PROCESSING
COGNITIVE BIASES
MOTIVATED BIASES
PSYCHOLOGICAL MODELS OF CHOICE
PROSPECT THEORY
CONCLUSION
SUMMARY
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
10 Foreign Policy and Identity
FOREIGN POLICY AND IDENTITY: CONCEPTUAL AND THEORETICAL ANCHORS
THE INFLUENCE OF CITIZENS ON FOREIGN POLICY
OUTGROUP PERCEPTIONS AND FOREIGN POLICY ATTITUDES
A CASE STUDY: IRISH NEUTRALITY
IRISH NEUTRALITY IN CONTEXT
THE SOCIAL REPRESENTATION OF IRISH NEUTRALITY
CÉAD MILE FÁILTE NEUTRALITY
THE MACROPOLITICAL DIMENSION OF IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION
CONSTRUCTING THE NATIONAL INGROUP IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: OPPORTUNITIES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
SUMMARY
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
11 Social Memory and the Collective Past
THE ROLE OF THE PAST IN THE FORMATION OF IDENTITY
THE SOCIAL NATURE OF MEMORY
TAXONOMIES AND CLASSIFICATIONS
THE RESURGENCE OF INTEREST IN THE COLLECTIVE PAST
COMPETING MEMORY NARRATIVES
COMMUNICATIVE AND CULTURAL MEMORY
HOW TO STUDY THE COLLECTIVE PAST
LANDSCAPE, SOCIAL SPACE, AND MEMORY
NARRATIVES
SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF HISTORY
THE NATURE OF REPRESENTATIONS
MEMORY AS PERFORMANCE
THE COLLECTIVE PASTS OF FAMILIES, GROUPS, AND ORGANIZATIONS
TIME CONCEPTIONS
THE POLITICS OF REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COLLECTIVE PAST
SUMMARY
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
12 Crowds, Social Identities, and the Shaping of Everyday Social Relations
THE POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF SOCIAL IDENTITIES
CLASSIC CROWD PSYCHOLOGY: THE LOSS OF INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY IN THE MASS
DISPOSITIONAL THEORIES: THE ACCENTUATION OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS IN THE MASS
CROWDS AND THE EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL IDENTITIES
A SOCIAL IDENTITY MODEL OF CROWDS
CROWDS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL IDENTITIES
AN ELABORATED SOCIAL IDENTITY MODEL OF CROWDS
THE IMPACT OF CROWDS BEYOND THE CROWD
CONTESTING THE MEANING OF CROWD BEHAVIOR
SUMMARY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
13 State Militarism and International Conflict
A POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
THE INDIVIDUAL‐SOCIAL DICHOTOMY IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY
BEYOND SOCIAL IDENTITY: ACCOUNTS OF MILITARY SERVICE
BEYOND ATTITUDES: CONSTRUCTING EVALUATIONS OF THE IRAQ WAR
CONCLUDING REMARKS
SUMMARY
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
14 Social Influence and Malevolent Authority: Obedience Revisited
MILGRAM’S STUDIES OF OBEDIENCE
HOW DID MILGRAM INTERPRET HIS FINDINGS?
ETHICS AND ECOLOGICAL VALIDITY
WAS THERE A LEGITIMATE PARALLEL BETWEEN MILGRAM’S LABORATORY AND NAZI GERMANY?
THE POLITICAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF MILGRAM’S STUDIES
THE CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE OF MILGRAM'S WORK
THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND BUREAUCRACY
THE HOLOCAUST AND THE EICHMANN TRIAL
A REINTERPRETATION OF MILGRAM’S STUDIES
FREE WILL AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
WHAT DO WE LEARN FROM MILGRAM’S STUDIES?
A SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF RESISTANCE
SUMMARY
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
15 Intergroup Conflict, Peace, and Reconciliation
INTERGROUP CONFLICTS
CONFLICT ANALYSIS
CONFLICT MANAGEMENT, RESOLUTION, AND TRANSFORMATION
CONFLICT RESOLUTION
PRINCIPLES OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION
ACHIEVING CONFLICT RESOLUTION
CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION
CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION IN PRACTICE
POSTCONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION AND RECONCILIATION
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL DEFINITIONS OF RECONCILIATION
INSTRUMENTAL RECONCILIATION
THE ROLE OF HISTORY AND POWER
SOCIOEMOTIONAL RECONCILIATION AND THE NEEDS‐BASED MODEL OF RECONCILIATION
HISTORY AS A NECESSITY FOR AND AN OBSTACLE TO RECONCILIATION
CONCLUSION
SUMMARY
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 01
Table 1.1 Different approaches to social psychology.
List of Illustrations
Chapter 02
Figure 2.1 The normal distribution (for a hypothetical variable with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 20,
N
= 1,000).
Figure 2.2 The relationship between height and weight.
Chapter 11
Figure 11.1
Characteristics of communicative and cultural memory (after Assmann, 1992)
.
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
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Political Psychology
A Social Psychological Approach
EDITED BY
CHRISTOPHER J. HEWER& EVANTHIA LYONS
This edition first published 2018© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Hewer, Chris, 1957– editor. | Lyons, Evanthia, editor.Title: Political psychology / edited by Christopher J. Hewer and Evanthia Lyons.Description: Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, 2018. | Series: BPS textbooks in psychology | Includes index. |Identifiers: LCCN 2018013085 (print) | LCCN 2018029389 (ebook) | ISBN 9781118982389 (pdf) | ISBN 9781118982372 (epub) | ISBN 9781118982396 (cloth) | ISBN 9781118929339 (pbk.)Subjects: LCSH: Political psychology.Classification: LCC JA74.5 (ebook) | LCC JA74.5 .P633 2018 (print) | DDC 320.01/9–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018013085
Cover image: The Leningrad (later Neptune) Cinema Mosaic: Gdansk, Poland by Anna Fiszer, 1957Cover design by Wiley
List of Contributors
Xenia Chryssochoou obtained her Ph.D. from the University Rene Descartes‐Paris V and taught at different universities in France, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom before returning to Greece where she is currently Professor of Social and Political Psychology at the University of Panteion in Athens. She is interested in the social psychological aspects of identity and its construction in liberal societies in relation to conflict, political participation, and questions of cultural diversity.
J. Christopher Cohrs is Professor of Psychology at Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany. After receiving his doctoral degree (Dr. Phil) in 2004 from the University of Bielefeld, Germany, he was Lecturer in Psychology at Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. His research focuses on ideology, political attitudes, prejudice, and representations of intergroup conflict. He is cofounder and coeditor of the international open‐access Journal of Social and Political Psychology.
Stephen Gibson is a social psychologist based at York St. John University, UK. His research interests are in the areas of dis/obedience, citizenship, and national identity, and representations of peace and conflict. His most recent work has examined the archived audio recordings of Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments in order to develop a perspective on these studies as rhetorical encounters. He is the coeditor of Representations of Peace and Conflict (with Simon Mollan, 2012), and Doing Your Qualitative Psychology Project (with Cath Sullivan and Sarah Riley, 2012).
Artemis M. Griva received her Ph.D. in social psychology in 2014. She is currently a researcher at the University of Crete, Greece, and her research focuses on the social psychology of identity, globalization, and the sociocultural aspects of government policy. She has worked on research projects funded by the European Union (EU) and is author of scholarly and policy‐oriented publications.
Christopher J. Hewer is Senior Lecturer in Social and Political Psychology at Kingston University, London where he teaches critical social psychology and the psychology of art and film. His research interests focus on collective memory, shifting memorialization, and forgetting in cultural discourse. Recent projects have addressed issues arising from contemporary memory in Britain for the Allied bombing of Germany and the Falklands conflict. Other work has explored the social construction of terrorism, national identity in Kosovo, and attitudes to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Republika Srpska.
Caroline Howarth is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is committed to a form of social psychology that intersects with current social and political concerns—particularly those that lead to programs for social change. Living in multicultural communities in Kenya, South Africa, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji has influenced her approach to social psychology, directing her interests towards the political interconnections between community, identity, representation, and resistance. She is coeditor of Political Psychology, editor of Papers on Social Representations, and she publishes widely across social, community, and political psychology.
Sarah Jay is Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Limerick, Ireland. Her research integrates social psychology with sociological theory, and explores social class as a system of inequality. The objective of her research is to promote social justice and to use social psychology to examine and expose taken for granted systems that advantage the powerful.
Jack S. Levy is Board of Governors’ Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, and an Affiliate of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. He is past‐president of the International Studies Association and of the Peace Science Society. His primary research interests focus on the causes of interstate war, foreign policy decision‐making, political psychology, and qualitative methodology. He is author of War in the Modern Great Power System, 1495–1975 (1983); coauthor (with William R. Thompson) of Causes of War (2010) and of The Arc of War: Origins, Escalation, and Transformation (2011); and co‐editor of Explaining War and Peace: Case Studies and Necessary Condition Counterfactuals (with Gary Goertz, 2007), The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, 2nd ed. (with Leonie Huddy and David O. Sears, 2013), and The Outbreak of the First World War: Structure, Politics, and Decision‐Making (with John A. Vasquez, 2014).
Simon Locke was formerly Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Kingston University, UK. His research interests focus on rhetoric, conspiracy discourse, and the intersection between comic books and the public understanding of science. He is author of Re‐Crafting Rationalisation: Enchanted Science and Mundane Mysteries (2011).
Evanthia Lyons is Professor of Social and Political Psychology at Kingston University, London, UK. Her research focuses on people’s understanding of political processes and the factors that influence their engagement in conventional and unconventional political actions. She has recently completed an EU funded, multinational project looking at the processes that influence political participation among young people from different ethnic backgrounds. More recent work has focused on the way that people manage multiple group memberships; particularly, how different patterns of identification with ethnic, national, religious categories relate to prejudice, social stereotyping, political trust, and political violence. She is coeditor of Changing European Identities: Social Psychological Analyses of Social Change (with Glynis Breakwell, 1996) and Analysing Qualitative Data in Psychology 2nd ed. (with Adrian Coyle, 2016).
Shelley McKeown is Lecturer in Psychology in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Bristol. She received her Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland in 2012 where she was part of the Peace and Conflict Psychology Research Group. Her research focuses on understanding social identity processes and how best to reduce prejudice in diversity and conflict settings.
Orla Muldoon is Professor of Psychology, based in the Department of Psychology and Centre for Social Issues Research at the University of Limerick. Her broad research interests concern the impact of structural disadvantage on social identities and health and well‐being.
Fergus G. Neville is Research Fellow at the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St. Andrews. He is currently employed on an ESRC‐funded project examining the process and limits of behavioral spread in crowds. His work broadly concerns the relationship between social identities, norms, and group behavior, with a particular focus on crowd action, and experience. Dr. Neville also publishes research on violence prevention, and the social determinants and outcomes of child and adolescent health. He is currently an Editorial Consultant for the British Journal of Social Psychology.
Spyridoula Ntani received her Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Surrey, and she is currently a researcher at Panteion University, Greece. Her research focuses on the development of extreme ideologies and political participation in times of crisis. She has taught social psychology at undergraduate level at different universities in Greece and has participated in funded research projects on fundamental rights protection, health care inequalities, and gender issues.
Emma O’Dwyer is Senior Lecturer in Political Psychology at Kingston University, London. Her research broadly focuses on the ways in which individuals and groups understand and relate to foreign policy, wars, and military intervention. She has explored these issues in relation to Irish foreign policy and its link to national identity, lay understandings of armed drones, and peace activism.
Stephen D. Reicher, Wardlaw Professor, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St. Andrews is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a Fellow of the Academy for Social Sciences. He is also former Chief Editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology and is a Scientific Consultant to Scientific American Mind. Professor Reicher’s work concerns the relationship between social identities and collective practices. In approaching 300 publications, he has studied such issues as mass rhetoric and leadership, nationalism and national identities, social exclusion and intergroup hatred, and the psychology of obedience and tyranny. Throughout his career, he has been interested in crowd psychology and his work has transformed both our theoretical understanding of this field and also public order practices in Europe, North America, and beyond.
Ron Roberts is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. He was formerly Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Kingston University and he previously held posts at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of Westminster, King’s College Medical School, University College London, St. Bartholomew’s Medical School, Queen Mary College, and the Tavistock Institute. He is the author of numerous research articles and books, including Parapsychology: The Science of Unusual Experience. 2nd ed. (with David Groome, 2017), Just War: Psychology and Terrorism (2007), Psychology and Capitalism (2015), and The Off‐Modern: Psychology Estranged (2017).
Brian Schiff is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology, and Director of the George and Irina Schaeffer Centre for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights, and Conflict Prevention at the American University of Paris. Professor Schiff was guest editor of New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development's Rereading Personal Narrative and Life Course (2014), coeditor (with A. Elizabeth McKim and Sylvie Patron) of Life and Narrative: The Risks and Responsibilities of Storying Experience (2017), and author of A New Narrative for Psychology (2017). He was the recipient of a research grant from the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace (2014–2016) to conduct longitudinal interviews on the identity stories of Palestinian students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2016, he received the Theodore Sarbin Award from the American Psychological Association’s Division 24: Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology.
Johanna R. Vollhardt is Associate Professor of Psychology at Clark University, USA and she is affiliated with the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Her research interests include psychological processes in the aftermath of ethnic conflict and genocide and, in particular, collective victimhood and acknowledgement of mass atrocities. She is cofounder and coeditor of the international open‐access Journal of Social and Political Psychology.
Preface
This book has been compiled as a teaching and learning aid for students who wish to take political psychology as part of an undergraduate program. The text is designed to inform through empirical research and critical argument, and the approach taken in this volume is quite different to other books on political psychology, not least because it includes alternative approaches to psychological enquiry that challenge our “taken‐for‐granted” assumptions about the world. In places, the reader may encounter unsettling critique, or positions that are unfamiliar or alien. Indeed, what has often been missing in political psychology is a meaningful exchange of ideas with critical social psychology, sociology, history, media studies, and philosophy. Often, when academics schooled in different disciplines, epistemologies, and methodologies get together to discuss political psychology, they often find themselves talking at cross purposes because their vision of the world and their view of psychology are quite different. It is our hope that this text will lead to a broader understanding of the different intellectual positions that academics may take toward political psychology. To create a sense of mutual exchange and exploration in the classroom, there are questions for group debate and discussion at the end of each chapter. After many years of working in higher education, we take the view that transformative education does not take place so much through learning about research findings, but more through the questions that these studies raise and the discussions that follow. We hope you find the book interesting and useful.
Christopher J. Hewer and Evanthia Lyons
1Some Historical and Philosophical Considerations
CHRISTOPHER J. HEWER
CHAPTER OUTLINE
WHEN PEOPLE COME TOGETHER
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
THE DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS IDENTITIES
INTERSECTING HISTORIES: JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, AND ISLAM
THE ISSUE OF GOVERNANCE
TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
THE SOCIAL AND MORAL ORDER
THE SEARCH FOR SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING
PSYCHOLOGY: A NEW WAY OF SEEING THE WORLD
THE INFLUENCE OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY ON SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
LOCATING THE ROOT OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR
SOCIAL COGNITION
A SOCIETAL APPROACH TO POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
SUMMARY
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
WHEN PEOPLE COME TOGETHER
Life is a social encounter and when people come together as individuals, families, or groups, it soon becomes apparent that everyone has a different idea about how matters should be organized. Some will argue that everyone should do what is best for the majority while others simply want what is best for themselves or those close to them. Others may be less guided by relationships and instead seek the most efficient, systematic, and fair approach to decision‐making. As time goes by, other questions come to the fore. Who has access to resources, how much, and how often? Who has the authority to say what can and cannot be done, and what gives a person the right to dictate to others? These questions reflect the political nature of our existence and such questions arise in the home, office, local neighborhood, or, indeed, between peoples and nations.
Then there is the question of how we should understand the world and our position within it. For thousands of years, human culture has ventured beyond the material and observable aspects of our existence to explore and embrace supernatural concepts in the form of God, gods, demons, or other unseen forces. Indeed, today, the world is ideologically divided between those who claim that there exists a nonphysical life‐world beyond our senses and those who maintain that there is no such world. There are also many who are unable to decide. Given these circumstances, and the additional difficulties created by differences in language, history, and culture, there is huge potential for disagreement and division between individuals, groups, nations, and peoples.
We might conclude then that each polity has its own way of looking at the world and its own way of doing things. In psychology, the term “polity” is seldom mentioned, but it is important because it refers to people living under a particular regime (Gr. polītiteiā). Its root gives us two related Greek words—polītikos—from which we get politics—actions that proceed from a motive to enact policy, and polīte&c.macr;s—a citizen of a state. When we consider people grouped together, their motives to organize matters, and issues of belonging, the psychological implications become clear. Because we do not live in a political vacuum, every system—whether capitalistic, democratic, theocratic, or totalitarian—affects, influences, and perhaps even determines, the psychological state of the people. Therefore, if we wish to understand people, we need to take a closer look at the social, economic, and political systems that govern their lives. This analysis reflects one of the broader concerns of political psychology—“the behavior of individuals within a specific political system” (Huddy, Sears, & Levy, 2013a, p. 3). However, there is also a more general objective within political psychology; that is, to apply “what is known about human psychology to the study of politics” (Huddy et al., 2013a, p. 1).
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Social psychology has something to say about both areas of enquiry and featured in this textbook are psychological insights gained from research into topics such as intergroup conflict, prejudice and discrimination, migration, obedience to authority, crowds, militarism, political decision‐making, and peace psychology. Indeed, a lot of work in political psychology is social psychology, which broadly speaking, fosters an attempt to understand the social and psychological processes involved in social relations. However, social psychology takes many forms and in this textbook the emphasis is on language, social interaction, the person (not to be confused with personality), identity, and the social construction of reality. What is more, many of the chapters raise questions and challenge “taken for granted” knowledge about psychology, politics, and human nature. Indeed, the material encourages a discussion of epistemology and ontology.
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge. It addresses two main questions: how can we know the world (by what method?) and what can we know about the world (what are the limits and scope of knowledge?). Ontology refers to the assumptions we make about the nature of being (what we are), our existence (what makes us who we are), and reality (what we believe the world/universe to be). Different epistemologies and ontological beliefs will inevitably produce different ways of explaining human behavior and different ways of explaining the political world. Only through a full consideration of these issues (which includes our own assumptions and beliefs), can we produce sound academic analysis. For this specific purpose, there are questions for class discussion at the end of each chapter.
At this point, we might ask two questions: what can social psychology tell us about the social and political world? And can its insights shed light on and provide solutions to human problems? These questions direct our attention to some key issues in the history of humanity, and identity, governance, and conflict are at the forefront. First, let us consider some key developments in the history of humankind that continue to play an important role in contemporary politics: the development of religious identities.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS IDENTITIES
The history of humanity shows that in the earliest forms of civilization, the worship of an unseen God or gods has been at the heart of culture. The remains of ancient temples located in various parts of the world are testimony to the worship of the many gods that dominated common thinking and practice. Ashtoreth, Baal, Molech, Artemis, Hermes, and Zeus are just a few of the many thousands of gods who had to be appeased. In the twenty‐first century, a large number of religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam continue to influence the worldview of billions of people and we might add that Atheism, with its fervent rejection of the existence of God or gods, is the preferred alternative for many. In terms of their influence on world politics, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have been particularly significant and all three traditions trace their ancestry back to Abraham who lived around 2000 BCE.1
INTERSECTING HISTORIES: JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, AND ISLAM
The history of Abraham and the Jews is contained in the Torah—the first five books of the Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—also known as the Pentateuch.2 The Genesis account outlines the founding of ancient Israel, identifying Abraham’s son Isaac, and his son Jacob (whose name was changed to Israel—see Genesis 32 v 28) as the progenitors of the nation. Chapters 37–46 of Genesis describe the circumstances under which Jacob (Israel), his 12 sons, and their extended family eventually came to settle in Egypt. In time, this Hebrew speaking family grew into what we might call today “a large ethnic group,” and a new regime in Egypt oppressed them and treated them as slaves. The book of Exodus provides an account of their enslavement and release from captivity in Egypt in 1513 BCE under the leadership of Moses. Once liberated, a theocracyemerged—an administration with God as sovereign. Israel accepted a new divine law—the Ten Commandments with some 600 additional laws to govern all aspects of life—as well as a prescribed set of religious practices. After wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, Israel eventually conquered the land of Canaan to take hold of “the promised land.” The territory of this new nation would, however, be under constant threat for the next 15 centuries from a variety of tribes and nations, including Moab, Edom, Amalek, Midian, Philistia, Persia, Assyria, Babylon, and Rome. By the first century CE,3 the Jewish religious system became known as Judaism, although it was no longer solely based on the Torah.
Judaism’s relationship with Christianity is significant. For many centuries, prophets in Israel such as Isaiah, Zechariah, Malachi, Hosea, Micah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and various writers of the Psalms had provided the means for identifying a Messiah (Shiloh) who would liberate Israel. Although Jesus’ arrival in 29 CE fulfilled prohecy, he was nonetheless rejected by the Jews. The first five books of the New Testament of the Bible—Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Acts of the Apostles provide an historical account of this new ‘way’ that was set to replace Judaism. The death of Jesus (the Christ or Messiah as identified by Christians) at the hands of the Romans, and the evangelical nature of this new message, ensured that Christian ideas spread very quickly across the known world. Most significantly for the Jewish nation, the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE by the Roman armies under General Titus resulted in the loss of their homeland, and those whose who survived were scattered into exile across the globe. Within a century, Jerusalem was rebuilt by Roman Emperor Hadrian and renamed Aelia Capitolina.
By 325 CE, the Council of Nicaea had established that the Christian faith was to be based on the worship of a triune god (a trinity) and this proved to be significant. Some three centuries later between 610 and 632 CE, Islam emerged with a new sacred text (the Qu'ran) and a mandate to worship a singular deity; Arab adherents also claimed ancestry to Abraham through his son Ishmael. Eventually, Jerusalem became a center of Islamic culture and, in the centuries that followed, Islam developed under the authority of the Ottoman Empire. However, between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, Jerusalem became a battleground for Christians and Muslims as the Crusaders of Christendom bearing the sign of the cross, (French: croisade, Latin: crux) sought to regain the “Holy Land” from the Muslim Turks.
By the nineteenth century, French and British colonial powers had come to dominate the Middle East, and the First World War 1914–1918 brought Britain and its allies into conflict with the Ottoman Empire because it was an ally of Germany. In November 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour made an official declaration on behalf of the British government that it was their intent to secure Palestine as a permanent homeland for the Jews—a policy that was arguably influenced by Christian Zionism (Lewis, 2010)—the belief that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ would be established in Jerusalem through a restored Israel. This declaration, however, contradicted previous assurances from official British sources that independence for the Arab territories would be reward for helping the allies defeat the Turks.4 A month later, in December 1917, the British defeated the Turks and took control of Jerusalem. After the League of Nations was formed in 1919, Britain was given a mandate to govern Palestine until 14 May 1948.
During World War II (1939–1945), the Nazi occupation of Europe claimed the lives of six million Jews, and after the war, many of those who had survived sought refuge in Palestine, their historic homeland, the place from which their forebears had been exiled over 18 centuries earlier. Although a new administration in Britain opposed the mass immigration of Jews to Palestine, once the UN mandate expired, the British withdrew, and the political situation became the responsibility of the United Nations. On the day the British left, David Ben‐Gurion announced the establishment of the modern State of Israel and conflict between the Israelis and the Arab states ensued.
What significance do these identities and events have for the modern political world? Osama Bin Laden (2001), for example, described the occupation of Palestine by the West since 1917 as “80 years of humiliation” and further claimed that the US has been “occupying the lands of Islam,” that is Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and now Iraq—“plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors and turning its bases in the peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples” (Bin Laden, 1998). According to Bin Laden, Christendom was again manifesting itself as an Anglo–American crusade—part of a joint venture with Israel to regain the Holy Land from Islam—and this was now justification for global jihad. Here, we see a view of the ancient past resurfacing in the present.
We also see that historical divisions within Christendom have created identities of political significance. The social and political consequences of the Reformation in the sixteenth century that brought about a division between Roman Catholics and Protestants can still be seen in many parts of the world. Indeed, religious identities and the events that have endorsed and intensified them continue to shape the modern world.
THE ISSUE OF GOVERNANCE
The history of humanity can also be told in terms of its approach to governance. Among the many systems of rule that have been tried, monarchy—the anointing of kings and queens—has been the preferred system throughout history. In the Christian world, a belief in the divine right of kings provided the basis for absolute monarchy. Monarchs were deemed appointed by God, and therefore anyone who opposed the monarch opposed God (see Romans 13 v 1, 2). However, after many centuries, this form of rule was challenged by the people; rebellions and revolutions such as the English Civil War (1642–1649), the French Revolution (1789), and the American War of Independence (1776) all paved the way for the development of democracy: government for the people by the people.
There were also important cultural developments at this time. From the middle of the seventeenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth century, Europe entered the Age of the Enlightenment, which saw a movement away from religious explanation of natural and social phenomena toward more rational or reasoned explanations of the world. These developments along with further constitutional reform eventually led to a separation of “Church and state,” which would allow political authority to function independently—without interference from religious institutions. This arrangement is broadly characteristic of modern democratic states although the precise nature of the relationship between “Church and state” varies within each country.
We might note that the historical developments in Europe provide an important contrast between the politics of the West and the Islamic world. Because the Islamic world has never been subject to the same or similar secularizing influences, there is still broad acceptance of theocracy—a divinely ordained and prescribed political order. Indeed, Islamic religious law provides a comprehensive system for regulating individual, social, and political life, which means that, for many Muslims, political consciousness, and religious identity are inseparable.
TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the map of Europe had been redrawn by the creation of larger and more powerful states such as Italy in 1870, and Germany in 1871. The Balkan wars in 1912 and 1913 and the First World War 1914–1918 had a profound effect on world politics and cast a long shadow over human affairs. In 1917, a revolution in Russia established communism, a totalitarian political system and ideology to replace the monarchy, and after three long years of trench warfare on the western front, the stalemate between Britain’s imperial forces (e.g., India, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) and Germany ended when the United States entered the war as an ally to Britain in 1917. The huge resources of the Anglo‐American alliance eventually brought about the surrender of Germany and an end to the war in 1918.
The postwar political settlement—the Treaty of Versailles—imposed harsh financial reparations upon Germany and this, combined with the world's financial collapse in 1929, brought unemployment and poverty to millions. Between 1919 and 1933 Germany tried to make democracy work; in 1932, over half the German people had expressed support for the democratic Republic by rejecting the political extremes of the left and the right (the Nazis received 36.8 % of the vote). However, in what were very complex political circumstances (see Shirer, 1960), Hitler wrestled power away from the people and parliament to create a one party state. Within a year of the democratic elections held in 1932, Adolf Hitler was dictator of the new German Reich.
Hitler’s desire to expand Germany’s territories toward the east resulted in the annexation of the Sudetenland and Austria in 1938. In 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and Britain and France declared war on Germany. In December 1941, Japan’s attack on the United States brought America into a war with Japan and an alliance with Britain, which meant that US forces were again deployed in Europe to fight against Germany. Earlier in 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and the war in Europe was settled when the Soviet army successfully repelled the German invasion and advanced into Berlin. With the Allied advance in the west, the Germans surrendered in May 1945. In the Far East, two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States brought an end to the war with Japan in August 1945.
After 1945, there were revolutions, counter‐revolutions, invasions, and wars in South America, Africa, and the Middle East and new forces for independence emerged. Although victory in Europe and the Far East had secured Britain’s imperial interests, there was now a clamor for independence and self‐determination among people living under colonial rule. This eventually led to the dismantling of the British Empire; political freedom would now be achieved through “the will of the people.” In the decades that followed, many British colonies gained independence and the British colonial system was transformed into a Commonwealth of Nations. European colonialism, which had nurtured a belief in the superiority of European peoples, was to end and democracy and self‐determination was to govern future political developments.
At the end of World War II, a new ideological divide between “the free democratic world” and “totalitarian communism” came to the fore. In order to prevent the spread of communism, the United States embarked on wars in Korea (1950–1953) and Vietnam (1955–1975) and as tensions between the Soviet Union and the West increased, the world entered a Cold War and a nuclear arms race. In 1962, after the United States had placed nuclear missiles in Turkey, the USSR5 placed nuclear warheads in Cuba, close to the American mainland. The two superpowers were engaged in a tense confrontation, and given the stockpile of conventional and nuclear warheads on both sides, a full‐scale war would have guaranteed mutually assured destruction (MAD). The Soviet authorities relented and the missiles were withdrawn.
THE SOCIAL AND MORAL ORDER
The twentieth century was also dominated by rapid social change. The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century in Britain brought about mechanization (largely through steam power), mass production, and new forms of transportation; for example, rail travel. However, these developments also made wealthy elites more prosperous, which increased social inequality and intensified class divisions. The early twentieth century also saw the rise of the women’s movement—the fight for the rights of women to vote in government elections (see Hannam, 2012)—which inspired a feminist ideology that would emerge in the 1960s to challenge patriarchal values and practices.
After two world wars, the newly formed United Nations (1948) reflected on the catastrophic human consequences of Nazism and other totalitarian regimes, and it thus sought to establish human values that would protect individuals from powerful governments. Nazism had required the subordination of the individual to the state or nation and communism required similar state allegiance. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the European Convention on Human Rights, which came into force in 1953, signaled the beginning of a new morality. Very slowly, the world started to embrace the idea of individual human rights.
The postwar period also brought about a shift in sexual mores. In Britain, the availability of the contraceptive pill (1961), and the legalization of abortion (1967) and homosexuality (1967) liberalized sexual attitudes. An emerging popular culture working in tandem with a new consumer culture would promote the “new morality” of a “permissive society” that, over the next 50 years, would change social values in many parts of the world. Since that time, the idea of “individual rights” has filtered down to counter traditional ideas of “what is right.” Cultural commentator, Clifford Longley (2014) identifies the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights as having moved the culture away from a “sin‐based morality” (largely determined by Judeo–Christian teachings)—to a “justice based morality.” The transition would also grant greater personal freedoms in relation to the construction and presentation of the self. Indeed, a new form of moral discourse has since emerged in which people of all persuasions, sexualities, and alignments publicly unite to indict discrimination and injustice as the most serious offense in the new moral hierarchy. Any counterclaim from the “sin‐based” repertoire is seen as intolerant. For many people with conservative values, these changes have been confusing and have led to some apparent contradictions in the political sphere; for example, the legalization of gay marriage in the UK by a Conservative Prime Minister.
We also have to remember that the coming and going of generations also contributes to social change. As one generation passes off the scene, their values very often disappear with them and new values assimilated by a new generation are accepted as the norm. In a rapidly changing technological world, a rights‐based morality has constructed new ways of thinking, living, and being. The world has also changed in other ways. Modern living is no longer a localized experience. Jet travel, communications, migration, and transnational corporations have transformed the physical and psychological world into a globalized experience, in which time and distance take on new meanings (Bauman, 2000). Indeed, if the enchanted world of God, saints, spirits, angels, or gods acting as agents in the everyday lives of people has largely disappeared (Taylor, 2007), we now live in a psychologized world where scientific understanding of individual human thoughts, motivations, and actions has become an alternative search for self‐understanding.
THE SEARCH FOR SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING
The emergence of psychology and sociology in the late nineteenth century was a product of Enlightenment thinking—an institutionalized attempt to understand and improve our existence through rational scientific means. In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx (1818–1883), Charles Darwin (1809–1882), and Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) presented new ideas that would influence these new disciplines, and that would change western intellectual thought. Marx had argued for a proletarian revolution that would bring an end to capitalism and social inequality, while Darwin had proposed that evolution through natural selection rather than God was responsible for life on earth; and Freud through his therapeutic encounters, maintained that the presence of internal, inaccessible sexualized sources of conflict within the individual was at the root of all human behavior. What effect did these ideas have on the political landscape? The history of the twentieth century shows that ideas have the power of material forces. Marx inspired a communist revolution in Russia, while Darwin's work brought about a “secular revolution” that sought to undermine all forms of religious explanation and religious authority. And in the 1960s—as if internalized sexual conflict was emerging from its repressed state within society—Freud’s emphasis on sexuality was used in some quarters to justify the sexual revolution.
What is perhaps less well known is that Darwin's evolutionary ideas brought science and politics into an unholy alliance. Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton (1822–1911) used evolutionary arguments to advance the science of eugenics, which was intent on finding ways to improve the physical quality of the human population (Fanchner, 1979). Galton originally proposed state‐sponsored arranged marriage of the highly intelligent as a strategy to produce better quality offspring (Fanchner, 1985), but by the 1930s, other methods such as the sterilization of criminals and “mental defectives” had become common practice in places such as the United States. Eugenic ideas spread across the world, and what started in nineteenth century Britain as a class‐based social engineering project, eventually developed into a racial theory that placed certain social and ethnic groups at the bottom of the evolutionary scale—an argument that was used in Nazi Germany to justify the systematic destruction of the disabled and the genocide of six million Jews (Hothersall, 2004). We might ask ourselves, are there any scientific ideologies operating today (inside or outside of psychology) that make certain groups vulnerable? Indeed, we should be wary about anything that looks like “political ideology dressed up as science,” and when reading scientific findings, we would do well to ask: who gains from this perspective? Whose interests are being served? Where is this research taking us? What are the implications? Are there political motivations behind the research? Who is funding it and for what purpose? To understand the political nature of psychology (and science) is perhaps as important as understanding the psychological nature of politics.
PSYCHOLOGY: A NEW WAY OF SEEING THE WORLD
Psychology had proposed a new way of looking at human existence and its content and focus eventually came to mirror the needs of the culture. In the postwar period, subdisciplines within psychology started to form to meet the particular needs of the military and the broader capitalist enterprise (see Wexler, 1983; also Richards, 2002). These included industrial, consumer, occupational, vocational, and military psychology and the psychology of advertising. There were also developments in economic psychology, ergonomics, sport, and health psychology; and many studies in social psychology, directly or indirectly, set out to explain the Holocaust (e.g., Adorno, Frenkel‐Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950; Asch, 1951, 1952; Milgram, 1963; Tajfel, 1974; Zimbardo, 1969). Political psychology was no different; indeed, one of its tenets is that research should be “responsive to and relevant to societal problems” (Hermann, 1986, p. 2). Overall, the approach of political psychology has reflected the traditions and shifting positions in the parent discipline, although its origins may be traced back to different times and events in different countries (see Monroe, 2002; Stone & Schaffner, 1988). From the 1940s to the 1960s, the main focus was on relations between personality and politics, which was largely informed by psychoanalytic psychology, and as social psychologists started to explore attitude theory and change in the 1950s, political psychologists looked at voting patterns and beliefs systems. By the early 1970s, behavioristic approaches had made way for a more cognitive approach to understanding political behavior (Rahn, Sullivan, & Rudolph, 2002).
Given these developments, we might ask: what is the nature of political psychology today? The first Handbook of Political Psychology (Sears, Huddy, & Jervis, 2003) acknowledged that there is no one political psychology—that everything from social cognition to discourse analysis to Freudian psychodynamics forms part of the fabric of the discipline. Political psychology thus offers a broad collection of approaches with no single set of assumptions. What is more, it is multidisciplinary—drawing upon insights from politics, psychology, social psychology, international relations, sociology, anthropology, economics, philosophy, media, journalism, and history. However, because each discipline has its own conceptual language and methodology, it can make theoretical conversations between disciplines difficult. Nonetheless, the importance of seeking dialog and listening to other disciplines cannot be overstated.
In political psychology, it is acknowledged that when studying political behavior, “context can make a difference” (Hermann, 1986, p. 2). We could expand this idea to think about people, not only in different contexts that permit or exclude certain actions, but also people’s behavior in different cultures and across time. What is more, recognizing the context‐specific nature of human behavior will help us guard against theoretical imperialism—the tendency to impose theory, concepts, or explanations derived from a politically and economically dominant culture onto other cultures. We therefore need to check that our assumptions, explanations, constructs, classifications, and theories are appropriate to other cultural settings. For example, even the broad linear classifications of liberal‐conservative that dominate American politics take on different meanings in Europe and elsewhere in the world.
THE INFLUENCE OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY ON SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Given the broad and eclectic approach of political psychology, we have to accept that different approaches can lead to very different conclusions. Indeed, our own political philosophies can influence our understanding or interpretation of the human condition. To illustrate, let us consider a proposition: that the type of society we live in determines the type of explanation we give for human behavior. For example, religious societies (where religious creeds have priority over science) will likely resort to religious beliefs and concepts to explain human behavior, such as “I have been blessed by God”; “Unbelievers behave like this because …”, and so on. Similarly, in societies where scientific findings take precedence over religious explanation, science will be used to explain human behavior—particularly those behaviors we do not like or understand. For example, we might draw upon genetics or the idea of faulty brain chemistry to explain some forms of criminal behavior. Having science as our principal source of knowledge, we likely believe that our approach to knowledge is rational, reasonable, and objective and that, above all, we seek evidence‐based arguments. In so doing, we may come to see our own society as ideologically neutral. However, on closer inspection we may find that western culture is saturated with ideology that we have never considered before, and that this has implications for the way we explain events and outcomes.
Consider a key political philosophy that is foundational to the politics of the western world: liberalism. The liberal mind is thought to be rational and judicious, and it embraces the notion of rights, choice, and autonomy. Principally, the aims of a liberal society are to maximize individual freedoms. American society, for example, was founded on the notion of preserving individual autonomy and liberty (Farr, 1996). We are also aware that we live in a society dominated by capitalism, which has three principal characteristics: private ownership, the free market, and profit (see Bowles, 2012).
It is no coincidence that liberalism and capitalism have a common root—a shared subject—the individual and the freedom of the individual. Indeed, “Liberals are formally committed to individualism” (Vincent, 1992, p. 32), and individualism as a political philosophy posits the idea that “the individual is more real than, and prior to society” (p. 32). Critics, however, claim that individualism as a philosophy on how to live, that is, a life based on self‐interest, self‐determination, and self‐reliance has arguably led to widespread greed, loss of community, a decline in political and religious participation, crime, fear of crime, disregard for the environment, depression, and suicide. Nonetheless, individualism continues to play a central role in the lives of people in the West. For example, we believe that people should be free to pursue their self‐interests and that by so doing they benefit society and the economy. We also believe that justice is served when individuals are held responsible for their own crimes and misdemeanors, which are usually committed against other individuals or individual property—rather against a religious or state ideology, community, or nation. Individualism also embraces the idea of individual human rights.
LOCATING THE ROOT OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR
The question is: if we have been socialized in a society founded on liberalism and individualism in which the freedom of the individual is paramount, how are we likely to see the world? What type of social psychological explanation are we most likely to give when we observe human behavior? Where are we most likely to look for its cause—within the psychology of the individual or within the social and political circumstances? With our beliefs in individualism fully operational, how might we explain poverty, for example? In a highly competitive economic system, it is inevitable that some will do better than others. However, to understand the psychology of social inequality, it would be a very limited analysis simply to look at “the individual” and make assumptions about why someone is doing well—namely, through their hard work and mental application, or not so well, because of a lack of initiative, ambition, or physical, and mental application. We have to interrogate the nature of the system in which the inequality took place. We have to ask to what extent is the system contributing to the behavior? That is, the observed inequalities may be properties of systems not individuals.
