PS 329 Midterm Study Guide: Political Psychology

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards for the PS 329 Political Psychology Midterm Study Guide covering Rational Choice Theory, Personality Approaches, The Authoritarian Personality, Consistency and Attribution Theories, and Heuristics.

Rational Choice Theory

The model assuming individuals have stable preferences, weigh the costs and benefits of options, and choose the option that serves their interests best.

Utility Maximization

The core decision rule in rational choice theory: picking the option with the highest expected payoff, calculated as benefits minus costs weighted by probability.

Universality

The rational choice assumption that all people reason in the same basic way, allowing one model of decision-making to apply to everyone.

Bounded Rationality

Herbert Simon's concept stating that individuals have limited information, time, and cognitive capacity, preventing them from fully optimizing decisions.

Satisficing

The behavioral result of bounded rationality: choosing the first available option that is "good enough" rather than expending resources to search for the optimal best.

Thick Rational Choice

A form of rational choice theory that assumes specific content for what people want, typically material self-interest such as money, power, or security.

Thin Rational Choice

A form of rational choice theory that assumes only that individuals act purposefully and consistently to pursue whatever goals they hold, whether selfish, altruistic, or ideological.

Self-Interest (Chong, Citrin & Conley definition)

The tangible, relatively immediate, personal or family benefits or costs of a policy.

Personality

Relatively stable patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that distinguish individuals and shape political attitudes and choices.

Trait Approach

An approach describing personality as measurable, stable dispositions (traits) that vary along continuous dimensions and predict behavior across situations.

OCEAN (Big Five)

The dominant trait model of personality, comprising Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

Psychodynamic Approach

The Freudian tradition positing that human behavior is driven by unconscious conflicts and early-childhood experiences, especially family relationships.

Id

The part of Freud's personality structure containing unconscious, instinctual drives (such as sex and aggression) operating on the pleasure principle and demanding immediate satisfaction.

Superego

The moral component of Freud's personality structure containing internalized societal rules, parental standards, and conscience.

Ego

The mediator in Freud's personality structure operating on the reality principle, balancing the impulses of the id, the restrictions of the superego, and real-world demands.

Repression

A defense mechanism involving the pushing of threatening, anxiety-inducing thoughts or impulses into the unconscious mind.

Reaction-Formation

A defense mechanism where an unacceptable impulse is converted and expressed as its exact opposite (e.g., hidden hostility turning into exaggerated reverence).

Projection

A defense mechanism in which an individual attributes their own unacceptable impulses, aggression, or desires onto other people or groups.

Sublimation

A defense mechanism that redirects socially unacceptable urges into productive, socially acceptable channels such as athletics or politics.

Regression

A defense mechanism characterized by reverting to earlier, more childlike patterns of behavior when placed under stress.

Transference

A defense mechanism involving the redirection of feelings and expectations held toward one person (often a parent) onto another figure, such as a political leader.

F Scale

A questionnaire created by Adorno et al. (1950) designed to measure potential for fascism and antidemocratic tendencies without directly asking about prejudice.

Conventionalism

An F Scale trait defined as rigid, uncritical adherence to conventional, middle-class values.

Authoritarian Submission

An F Scale trait defined as a submissive, uncritical attitude toward idealized, moral authorities of the in-group.

Authoritarian Aggression

An F Scale trait defined as the tendency to condemn, reject, and punish individuals who violate conventional norms and values.

Anti-Intraception

An F Scale trait characterized by an opposition to the subjective, imaginative, and tender-minded, alongside hostility toward emotional introspection.

Superstition and Stereotypy

An F Scale trait defined as a belief in mystical determinants of an individual's fate coupled with a disposition to think in rigid, oversimplified categories.

Power and Toughness

An F Scale trait characterized by an obsession with dominance and submission, strong versus weak divisions, and identification with figures of power.

Destructiveness and Cynicism

An F Scale trait marked by generalized hostility toward mankind and a cynical vilification of human nature.

Projectivity

An F Scale trait characterized by the belief that wild and dangerous events govern the world, driven by the outward projection of unconscious impulses.

Sex (F Scale Trait)

An F Scale trait characterized by an exaggerated concern with sexual "goings-on" and aggressively punitive attitudes toward perceived sexual deviance.

Acquiescence Response Bias

The tendency of survey respondents to agree with assertions regardless of their substance, creating a major methodological critique of the uniformly keyed F Scale.

Cognitive Authoritarianism

A cognitive reinterpretation that locates authoritarianism in rigid thinking styles, intolerance of ambiguity, and a need for cognitive closure rather than Freudian childhood dynamics.

Cognition

The collection of mental processes concerned with perceiving, attending, interpreting, understanding, and remembering information.

Consistency Theory

A theory holding that individuals require beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors to be mutually compatible, and that cognitive inconsistency produces psychological discomfort prompting balance restoration.

Denial

A cognitive strategy for handling inconsistency where an individual rejects, dismisses, or ignores conflicting evidence or facts.

Bolstering

A strategy for resolving inconsistency by gathering and adding supportive reasons to reinforce an existing, preferred attitude or belief.

Differentiation

A resolution strategy where conflicting elements are cognitively separated and redefined as unrelated so they no longer cause conflict.

Transcendence

A resolution strategy where an individual links inconsistent elements to an overarching, higher-level concept or principle that reconciles the conflict.

Attribution Theory

The study of how individuals explain causes of behavior, specifically distinguishing between dispositional (internal) factors and situational (external) forces.

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

The tendency to overestimate internal dispositional factors and underestimate external situational influences when explaining the actions of other people.

Ultimate Attribution Error

Thomas Pettigrew's concept extending the FAE to group dynamics: attributing an out-group's negative behaviors to disposition and positive actions to situation, while applying the opposite rule to in-groups.

Heuristics

Cognitive shortcuts and rules of thumb that enable people to make decisions and judgments quickly with limited information.

Availability Heuristic

A mental shortcut in which an event's likelihood or frequency is evaluated based on how readily and easily examples come to mind.

Cognitive Misers

The concept that humans possess limited processing capacity and naturally conserve mental effort by relying on heuristics instead of engaging in exhaustive deliberation.

Schema

An organized cognitive structure or mental framework representing knowledge about a concept, person, or group that directs information processing.

Gap Filling

The cognitive mechanism of using existing schemas to supply missing, incomplete, or ambiguous details without the conscious awareness of guessing.

Stereotypes

Group schemas composed of overgeneralized, widely held beliefs regarding the characteristics, traits, and behaviors of members of social groups.