Political Psychology and COVID-19 Flashcards
What is Political Psychology?
- Political psychology is an application of what is known about human psychology to the study of politics (Huddy et al., 2013)
- More specifically, it studies the psychological underpinnings of political behaviour and attitudes
What different approaches from psychology can be applied to politics?
- biopsychology
- neuroscience
- personality
- psychopathology
- evolutionary psychology
- social psychology
- developmental psychology
- cognitive psychology
- intergroup relations
Describe what is meant by personality
- a complex psychological concept.
- Refers to habitual and distinct patterns of physical and mental activity that distinguish one individual from another
- A dynamic system of psychological structures and processes that mediates the relationship between the individual and the environment
- Interactions among multiple subsystems (cognitive, affective, and behavioural), which convey, foster, and preserve a sense of personal identity (Caprara & Cervone,2000)
Describe the Relationship between Personality and Politics
- Personality can be viewed as consisting of traits or dispositions (e.g., extraversion)
Basic tendencies to exhibit consistent, stable patterns of experience and action across situations (McCrae & Costa, 2008) - Social learning theories have paved the way to a more comprehensive account of personality
- Highlighting that social environments set the conditions for the construction and functioning of personality
- A view of personality as a selective, generative and proactive system, not just reactive and adaptive
- Values, and self-beliefs are related to evaluative-motivational functions – they concern people’s views of themselves and what they cherish in life (Caprara & Vecchione, 2013)
What is a characteristic of Democracies?
- They rest on the notion of choice (voting for representatives, in referenda etc.)
What is the “personalisation of politics?”
a process where the influence of the candidate as an individual is enhanced at the expense of parties.
Personality can be used to explain voting behaviours
What is the Stereotype Content Model (SCM)?
- that we evaluate others through the perception of their intentions (warmth) and their capability to make those intentions a reality (competence) (Fiske et al., 2007)
Describe Falcao et al. (2023)
- synthesize evidence regarding the impact of voters’ evaluation of candidates’ traits on political outcomes and the effects of voters’ traits on voting.
- Voters’ personality traits represent significant predictors of voting decisions.
- Both warmth and competence represented robust short-term predictors of evaluations of candidates, turnout decisions, demographic variables and partisan identifications.
- Political implications: may cause parties to nominate candidates who are perceived as appealing to the electorate, personalising campaigns to give them visibility and capitalize on their mobilising potential
Describe how these findings may be used in a socially irresponsible way
- Persuasive communication is particularly effective when tailored to people’s unique psychological characteristics and motivations (Hirsh et al., 2012)
- People’s personality profiles have been predicted from personal websites, blogs, Twitter messages, Facebook profiles and Instagram pictures (Hirsh et al., 2012)
- However, none of the five personality traits were not significantly related to any TikTok usage behaviours (Omar & Dequan, 2020)
- Matz et al. (2017) sought to test the effects of psychological persuasion on people’s behaviour in ‘real world’ contexts
Describe Matz et al. (2017)
- Three field experiments that reached over 3.5 million individuals with psychologically tailored advertising.
- They found that matching the content of persuasive appeals to individuals’ psychological characteristics significantly altered their behaviour as measured by clicks and purchases.
- Personality types of these 3.5 million people were gained through a Facebook app – “myPersonality”
- This line of research inspired a wholly new way of thinking about politically persuasive communications
Explain what Kogan did.
- University of Cambridge, School of Psychology; 2012-2018)
- Kogan developed the quiz app “This Is Your Digital Life”, harvesting data from Facebook users who installed the app - as well as from their friends
- Profiling users based on their Facebook ‘Likes’ or preferences
Cambridge Analytica (CAL) then placed targeted, political advertising
The company is reputed to have swayed opinions and voting behaviour, specifically:
The 2016 UK referendum on the country’s European Union membership (Brexit)
Donald Trump’s 2016 US presidential campaign
Elections in India, Mexico and Kenya
How did CAL do what they did?
- Video ads that were ‘dark’
- A dark posted ad looks like a post from a Facebook page but does not show up on a page’s public timeline and is only seen by the users it was targeted to reach.
- Versions of these were targeted to individual’s based off of their psychological ‘profile’
- These profiles were based on the big-five model of personality (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism
Was CALs research socially irresponsible?
- Data-driven psychological research played a major role in fuelling uncertainty regarding Cambridge Analytica’s impact on elections (Richterich, 2018)
- Are psychometrics and social media data key to individuals’ decision making?
- Are the concerns valid?
- Or are we worried just because the of the outcomes achieved…?
- Have things changed since?
COVID-19 (“Flattening the curve”)
- A time when there were no vaccinations, nor ‘cure’
A ‘new normal’ of:
Lockdown/physical distancing from others
Regular handwashing
Wearing of facemasks
Complying with test and trace guidelines
A health crisis, but one rooted in the political: required coordinated policy from national government
Describe the lessons learnt from intergroup psychology (1)
Given the threat to personal health, unsurprising that research and commentary initially focussed on factors relating to individual risk or compliance
However, there was also a lot to learn from intergroup relations and social identity dynamics
People’s social identities provide psychologically meaningful frames within which to define themselves and to navigate the social world (Abrams & Hogg, 1988)
People tend to come together in time of crisis
“All in the same boat” (Abrams et al., 2021)
