What Is Political Psychology?

Political psychology is an interdisciplinary academic field that studies the relationship between psychology and politics, focusing on the study of human thinking, emotions, and behavior in politics. Political psychology analyzes politics with voters, legislators, local and central government and administration, international organizations, political parties, and associations. The term "political psychology" emphasizes psychology as a central field, so this discipline can also be called "political psychology" in order to emphasize its interdisciplinary nature. The areas of political psychology research also include anthropology, cognitive psychology, personality psychology, sociology, psychiatry, and other more distant fields such as economics, philosophy, and fine arts.

The bud of political psychology can be traced back to ancient times, and modern political psychology as a science did not really come into being until after the end of the First World War. There are still different views on the subject development and positioning of modern political psychology, and even scholars hold different opinions on the formulation of subject names. Political psychology is an interdisciplinary subject of political science and psychology. It is a study of the common parts of political phenomena and psychological processes. Its definition mainly has the following three expressions: The first one defines political psychology as a research field about the interaction between politics and psychology, which is a two-way interaction process. The second regards political psychology as a way to think and understand political issues or phenomena, and particularly emphasizes the importance of context to political psychology and the significance of understanding political issues. The third is that the core of political psychology's attention lies in how cognition and emotion (emotion) affect behavior and environment. Based on a comprehensive consideration of the above definitions, this study proposes the following definitions in combination with the discipline background and goal orientation of political psychology: Political psychology is an interdisciplinary research that uses scientific research methods to study common phenomena in the fields of politics and psychology In the course of its development, it has shown two-way interaction and interactive influence between disciplines. It is specifically expressed in two aspects: the first is to use the concepts, theories, and research methods of psychology to scientifically analyze, describe, explain, and verify the basic theories of political science and socio-political phenomena; The mechanism of the occurrence and development of processes on the psychological characteristics and behavioral patterns of individuals (or groups), and make corresponding predictions and controls ^[1]

Human beings have researched political psychology for a long time, but it is a matter of conscious use of psychological methods to study political phenomena in the early 20th century. During this period, K. Wallace's Humanity in Politics (1908), G. Le Pen's Political Psychology (1910), JF Brown's Psychology and Social Order (1936), etc. The birth of political psychology has made an important contribution. But it is generally believed that the main founder and leader of modern political psychology is HD

The research scope of political psychology mainly includes five aspects, namely political motivation, political socialization, political personality, political culture and political behavior, which basically cover the entire process of various political activities from individuals to groups. These five aspects focus on studying the driving force of political subjects' political activities, including the definition, nature, forming conditions and types of political motivations; the political learning process of political subjects acquiring political beliefs, knowledge and personality, including direct and indirect politics Examination of the socialization process; the sum of the lasting psychological characteristics of the political subject, that is, the nature, type, individual characteristics of political personality and the interrelationship with other political characteristics; political culture as the sum of political beliefs, attitudes, perceptions and values The definition, essence, and function of each political behavior, including individual political behaviors, group political behaviors, leadership and led behaviors, election behaviors, legislative behaviors, and judicial behaviors, and infer their causes, consequences, and development trends, or Provide a diagnostic plan for pathological and unusual political behavior. The most commonly used methods in the above five aspects of research are biographical methods, interview methods, observation methods, measurement methods, experimental methods, case methods, simulation methods, and statistical methods.

The value and status of political psychology as a branch of discipline has been unshakable, but it is still basically a collection of the results of various theories and investigations. To become a perfect knowledge unity, it is necessary to form a kind of knowledge unity. A theory that enables highly abstract generalizations of various political phenomena.