Module POL3136 for 2018/9
- Overview
- Aims and Learning Outcomes
- Module Content
- Indicative Reading List
- Assessment
Undergraduate Module Descriptor
POL3136: Political Psychology
This module descriptor refers to the 2018/9 academic year.
Module Aims
Beliefs about how people think about politics have been at the core of theories of politics since the ancients. In this course, we will begin with a survey of important theories of political psychology from the past century. We will focus mainly on hypotheses about how people develop their political attitudes and on the methods used to test those hypotheses. Twentieth century researchers were constrained to observing behavior and relied on surveys, interviews, and simple experiments to make inferences about the political mind. The second half of the course will look at the future of political psychology. We will learn about cutting edge insights from fields like neuroscience, genetics, computational modeling, and evolutionary theory. And, we will ask how those insights should inform our understanding of political cognition, affect, and behavior.
On successfully completing the programme you will be able to: | |
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Module-Specific Skills | 1. apply a wide variety of models of human decision-making, even in difficult contexts; 2. design and critically evaluate experiments testing hypotheses about human decision-making; |
Discipline-Specific Skills | 3. analyze a broad spectrum of research designs; 4. synthesize competing theories in order to apply them to novel social science problems; |
Personal and Key Skills | 5. understand the physiology of anxiety and how to manage it in order to improve their performance in challenging contexts; 6. employ an inductive writing method to facilitate more powerful communication; and 7. use the IRAC (Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion) method to more effectively respond to problems in both written and verbal contexts. |
Module Content
Syllabus Plan
The course is roughly organized around “20th Century” and “21st Century” approaches to questions in Political Psychology:
20th Century approaches
Psychoanalytic Approaches
Rational Choice Theory
Philip Converse and His Legacy
Schema Theory
The Online Model
Racial Attitudes
Zaller’s RAS Model
21st Century approaches
Affective Intelligence
Neuropolitics
Evolution of Machiavellian Intelligence
Genopolitics
Race and Neuroscience
Physiological measures
Learning and Teaching
This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
---|---|---|
49 | 251 | 0 |
...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:
Category | Hours of study time | Description |
---|---|---|
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | 44 | 22 x 2 hour seminars |
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activity | 5 | 5 x 1 hour lab sessions |
Guided independent study | 163 | Completing assessment tasks: Reading, research and writing |
Guided independent study | 88 | Preparing for seminars: Reading and research |
Online Resources
This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).
ELE – http://vle.exeter.ac.uk/
Indicative Reading List
This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.
A General Theory of Love, Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, Richard Lannon (2000) Vintage Press
The Nature and Origin of Mass Opinion John Zaller (1992) CambridgeUniversity Press
Your Brain is Built for Politics Darren Schreiber (in review) Princeton University Press
Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences. John R. Hibbing, Kevin B. Smith, John R. Alford. (2013) Routledge Press.