Political Psychology

The Political Psychology section aims to survey important areas of current Political Psychology research. It is organized in twelve panels focusing on the elite level, elite-mass linkages, and the mass level and especially welcomes theoretically driven empirical research papers. The first panel focuses on person heuristics and sophistication. The work presented here explores the role of political competence and sophistication in opinion formation and the use of emotional heuristics in the evaluation of policy issues. The second panel examines the role of media in elections. It gives the floor to original empirical studies that focus on how the mass media shape politics and influence citizens’ political behavior and orientations. The work presented discusses perceptions of politicians among children and adults, the impact of media attention on electoral outcomes, descriptive analysis of political rhetoric and a review of the political psychology of political posters. The third and forth panels explore the main theoretical approaches regarding the nature and function of political cynicism. Papers in these panels review the definitions of political cynicism, compare it with social cohesion, examine its relationship with other political attitudes such as political satisfaction, trust, and alienation, and provide empirical analyses on the significance of this phenomenon in Europe. The fifth panel explores the role of democracy. Papers in this panel review issues of political support to democracy, the representations for democracy among citizens, political mobilization. The sixth panel reviews the role of emotions in political preferences and choices. The work presented here explores the distinct effects of emotions such as anger and anxiety on reactions to the Iraq war, the function of political reputations as affective heuristics in the evaluations of policy issues, the role of affect in party centered elections, and the role of perceptions of fairness on citizens’ acceptance of negative outcomes. The seventh panel ‘Political Socialization’ reviews current research on political socialization structures and processes. Papers in this panel investigate the political socialization of minorities, parental influences on partisan socialization, political school education, and the interaction between academic activities and the political affiliation in institutions. The eighth panel provides an analysis of political attitudes, their structures and applications. The work presented examines the rational public hypothesis, explores the linkage between positive beliefs and normative beliefs in politics, and reviews the structures of political attitudes in Europe. The ninth panel focuses on public opinion, prejudice, and the EU. Papers in this panel examine the formation of EU attitudes, review the images of the EU in non-European television news, analyse the mediation of politics in respect to the Israel-reporting in the German television-news, and assess the impact of exposure to news media content on anti-immigration attitudes. The tenth panel, titled “Image making and political rhetoric” focuses on the relationship between speaker and audience interactions during political speeches, examines the power of rhetoric and the political and ethical dimensions of language, and develops a framework for the analysis of governmental image politics. The eleventh panel aims to explore the role of identification and partisanship on vote decisions. Papers presented in this panel consider the determinants of left-right placement, the reasons why voters change their opinions during election campaigns, the micro-foundations of electoral de-alignment, and the influence of values on vote choice. The twelfth panel investigates the role of cognition and values in politics. The work presented illuminates the relationship between cognition, communication and citizenship, explore the value of values on political tolerance, and review how authoritarianism and related constructs (like dogmatism & conservatism) underly cognitive styles and political orientation.