Political psychology applies what is known about human psychology to the study of politics. It examines how people reach political decisions on topics such as voting, party identification, and political attitudes as well as how leaders mediate political conflicts and make foreign policy decisions.

In this updated third edition of The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, Leonie Huddy, David O. Sears, Jack S. Levy, and Jennifer Jerit have gathered together an international group of distinguished scholars to provide an up-to-date account of key topics and areas of research in the field. Chapter authors draw on theory and research on biopsychology, neuroscience, personality, psychopathology, evolutionary psychology, social psychology, developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, and intergroup relations. Some chapters address the political psychology of political elites, while other chapters deal with the dynamics of mass political behavior. Focusing first on political psychology at the individual level (attitudes, values, decision-making, ideology, personality) and then moving to the collective (group identity, mass mobilization, political violence), this fully interdisciplinary volume covers models of the mass public and political elites and addresses both domestic issues and foreign policy.

Now with new chapters on authoritarianism, nationalism, status hierarchies, minority political identities, and several other topics along with substantially updated material to account for the recent cutting-edge research within both psychology and political science, this is an essential reference for scholars and students interested in the intersection of the two fields.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Theoretical Foundations of Political Psychology

Part I. Theoretical Approaches

2. Personality Approaches to Political Behavior

3. Childhood and Adult Political Development

4. Rational Choice as an Empirical and Normative Model of Political Behavior

5. Political Decision-Making

6. Emotion and Political Psychology

7. The Evolutionary Approach to Political Psychology

8. Biology and Politics

9. Political Language

Part II. International Relations

10. Foreign Policy Decision-Making: The Psychological Dimension

11. Perceiving Threat: Cognition, Emotion, and Judgment

12. Signaling, Resolve, and Reputation in International Politics

13. Public Opinion about Foreign Policy

14. The Political Psychology of Terrorism

Part III. Mass Political Behavior

15. Information Processing

16. Political Communication

17. The Psychological and Social Foundations of Ideological Belief Systems

18. Morality as the Enduring Basis of Public Opinion

19. The Political Psychology of Gender

20. Authoritarianism and Political Conflict

21. National Identity, Patriotism, and Nationalism

22. The Social Identity Approach to Political Leadership

Part IV. Intergroup Relations

23. Group-Based Hierarchies of Power and Status

24. Political Identities

25. The Gaze from Below: Toward a Political Psychology of Minority Status

26. Social Movements and the Dynamics of Collective Action

27. Prejudice and Politics

28. Migration and Multiculturalism

29. Prejudice Reduction and Social Change: Dual Goals to Be Pursued in Tandem

30. Emotional Processes in Intractable Conflicts

About the Authors

Leonie Huddy is a Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Stony Brook University. She served as co-editor of the journal Political Psychology from 2005 till 2010, is past-president of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP), serves on the American National Election Studies Board, appears regularly on CSB Radio as an exit poll analyst, and serves on numerous editorial boards in political science. Huddy has written extensively on social and political identities, emotions, reactions to terrorism, gender and politics, and race relations. She is the co-author of Going to War in Iraq: When Citizens and the Press Matter (2015, with Stanley Feldman and George Marcus).

David O. Sears is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Political Science, former Dean of Social Sciences, and former Director of the Institute for Social Science Research, all at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Sears received his B.A. in History from Stanford University, his Ph.D. in Personality and Social Psychology from Yale University in 1962, and since then has taught at UCLA. He has held visiting faculty positions at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, has been a Fellow at the Brookings Institution and twice at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and has been a Guggenheim Fellow. His books include Public Opinion (1964, with Robert E. Lane), The Politics of Violence: The New Urban Blacks and the Watts Riot (1973, with John B. McConahay), Tax Revolt: Something for Nothing in California (1982, with Jack Citrin), Social Psychology (12 editions from 1970 to 2006, with Shelley E. Taylor and L. Anne Peplau), Obama's Race: The 2008 Election and the Dream of a Post-Racial America (2010, with Michael Tesler), and American Identity and the Politics of Multiculturalism (2014, with Jack Citrin).

Jack S. Levy is Board of Governors Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, and Senior Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. His research focuses on the causes of interstate war, foreign policy decision-making, and political psychology. Levy is past president of the International Studies Association (ISA) (2007-08) and of the Peace Science Society (2005-06). He received the Helen Dwight Reid (now Merze Tate) Award for the best dissertation in International Relations in 1975-76 from the American Political Science Association, the Distinguished Scholar Award from ISA's Foreign Policy Analysis Section (2000), and the Distinguished Scholar Award for lifetime achievement from ISA's International Security Studies Section (2022). Levy is co-author of Causes of War (2010, with W. R. Thompson) and of The Arc of War: Origins, Escalation, and Transformation (2011).

Jennifer Jerit is a Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. She has taught Experimental Methods at the Summer Methods School at the National University of Singapore and at the University of Vienna. Jerit is a co-editor at the Journal of Experimental Political Science and serves on the American National Election Studies Board and numerous editorial boards in political science. She has written on political knowledge, misinformation, political communication, survey methodology, and experimental design.