Political Psychology: The Hidden Dynamics of Political Behavior

Insights from social psychology, behavioral economics, cognitive science, and neuroscience are changing our understanding of how voters make political decisions. In this course we will explore major areas of research in political psychology, including the dynamics of political participation, ideology, and partisanship, as well as the influence of political campaigns and the media. Students will design their own experimental research to test fundamental theories about political behavior. We will run the experiments on consenting individuals using the Amazon MTURK platform. Course readings will include cutting-edge research articles as well as selected readings from Niemi, Weisberg, and Kimball’s Controversies in Voting Behavior. (American Politics)/