POLITICS & PERSONALITY/POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY                                 DR. ARNOLD LEDER
Political Science 4335

Department Of Political Science/Texas State University
http://www.polisci.txstate.edu/

Courses for the B.A. in Political Science-Learning Outcomes

The online version of this syllabus can be accessed @ http://www.arnoldleder.com/4335.htm.
Password protected materials for this course can be viewed @ http://www.arnoldleder.com/readings/index.htmlScroll to the section on "Political Psychology".  Password and user name for access will be provided to students in the course.  For links to web syllabi for other courses taught by Dr. Leder see: http://www.arnoldleder.com/.

Office: ELA 335
Office Hours: TBA & by appointment
Texas State University Academic Calendar
Texas State University Final Exam Schedule

Selected Web Resources For Texas State University
Texas State University Library
Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library
Citation & Bibliographic Styles & Related Information

Selected Web Resources For Political Science
Portals to the World Home Page (Library of Congress)

Internet Political Science Resources-Extensive University Links/University Of Michigan
The WWW Virtual Library:International Affairs Resources
The Ultimate Political Science Links Page 

Political Psychology Resources & University Programs
A partial list of Political Psychology resources & university programs is provided at the end of this syllabus. 
See also the interdisciplinary journal: Political Psychology @ http://www.sunysb.edu/polsci/polpsych/index.html#
Full online access to this journal @ Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library.  A valid Texas State University User Name and password are required.
For issues related to law and psychology, see the new journal: Law & Psychology @ http://www.ssrn.com/link/Law-Psychology.html
Law & Psychology (Law-Psych) publishes working papers, articles, and abstracts dealing with research involving the application of psychological principles to law and legal topics.  The journal's scope includes social, cognitive, developmental or behavioral psychological research on the legal system (juries, eyewitness identification, police procedures, and forensic evidence), behavioral law and economics, and mental-health law. Article abstracts are provided and many articles are accessible in full text.  The Journal is sponsored by the Cornell Law School.
 

COURSE ORGANIZATION & STUDENT RESPONSIBILITIES
Please see: Academic Honesty Statement for Texas State University @
http://www.txstate.edu/effective/upps/upps-07-10-01.html.
An excerpt from this statement can be found at the end of this syllabus.

Class Participation, Oral Presentations, Exams, Papers, Grades
1. This course will be conducted as a seminar.  Students must attend every class meeting and be prepared to discuss assigned readings and other materials.  Active participation in class discussion is essential.  Course grades will be determined by oral presentations, class participation, and written papers.
2. Determinants of Course Grade: Oral Reports & Presentations 25%/ Seminar Participation 15%/ Essay Exams/Papers 60%

Attendance
1. Three (3) unexcused absences are permitted.  Students with four (4) unexcused absences will have their course grade lowered by one letter grade.  Students who have five (5) unexcused absences will have their course grade lowered by two letter grades.  No absences beyond five (5) for any reason are permitted.  Any student who has more than five absences is likely to fail the course and, therefore, should withdraw from the course.
2. The instructor for the course is not responsible for bringing students who have missed class "up-to-date" on missed material.  Each student has the responsibility to remain current with respect to class material.

Note On Course & Syllabus Materials: Students may find books, articles, links, websites, and other materials provided in this syllabus useful and of interest. Their listing in this syllabus, including those which are required and recommended, does not necessarily indicate endorsement of or agreement with any views or positions on any issues found in these materials, websites, or on other sites to which they may provide links.

COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course is an introduction to the relationship between political behavior and human motivation. Topics covered include: conceptual and methodological concerns; psychological perspectives and political theory; power and personality; the psychological burdens of freedom and their relationship to authority and individual will; illusion, reality, and the political order; symbols and political quiescence; the psychology of empire; and psychological insights into political behavior offered by fiction and film.

PURPOSE OF COURSE
The purpose of this course is to provide an additional dimension to the student's understanding of the universe of politics. To the rational, and widely taken for granted, model of political behavior, the spirit of which is nicely captured by Harold Lasswell's well known definition of politics as "who gets what, when, how", this course offers an alternative model of the universe of politics.  It is a model of political behavior which examines the "irrational", the world of human emotions and human personality, as they relate to and influence this behavior.  Political Psychology, as it is generally known, is a well established field in the discipline of Political Science.

REQUIRED BOOKS
Fyodor Dostoevsky/The Brothers Karamazov (1880/classic)
-In this novel the chapter entitled The Grand Inquisitor (about 20 pages)
Sigmund Freud/Civilization & Its Discontents (1930/classic)
Erich Fromm/Escape From Freedom (1941/classic)
Eric Hoffer/The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements (1951/classic)
Richard Hofstadter/The Paranoid Style In American Politics (Harvard Univ. Press 1996/Original Publication 1952)
O.Mannoni/Prospero & Caliban: The Psychology Of Colonization (Univ. of Michigan-AnnArbor paperback 2001/Original French Publication 1948)
Mannoni's, Prospero & Caliban is a modern classic - whose premise has been questioned.

RECOMMENDED BOOK
Murray Edelman/Symbols & Political Quiescence (Irvington Publishers-Reprint Series in Political Science 1993)

CLASSIC ARTICLES AT RESERVE READINGS DESK/Texas State University Library
The following articles are in
Gordon J. DiRenzo (ed.)/Personality & Politics (1974)
Alexander George, "Power as a Compensatory Value for Political Leaders" (1968)

Harold Lasswell, "
The Political Personality" (1948)

ADDITIONAL ARTICLES AT RESERVE READINGS DESK/Texas State University Library
Stephen J. Wayne, "President Bush (Senior) Goes to War" (1993) in Stanley A. Renshon (ed.) The Political Psychology of the Gulf War (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press 1993)
Herbert McClosky, "Conservatism and Personality" (1958) in Gordon J. DiRenzo (ed.), Personality & Politics.

REQUIRED FILMS AT RESERVE DESK FOR OVERNIGHT & WEEKEND
"The Caine Mutiny" Caine Mutiny, The (1954) [2hrs. 5min.]  The Caine Mutiny1954)  DVD ReviewThe Caine Mutiny
This film is based on the novel HermanWouk/The Caine Mutiny (1951) (Winner Of Pulitzer Prize)
"The Prime of Miss Jean Brody" The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) [1hr. 55min.]
This film is based on the novel Muriel Spark/The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)

REQUIRED FILMS TO BE SHOWN AT ARRANGED TIMES
"The Matrix" The Matrix (1999) [2hrs. 16min.]
"A Passage To India" A Passage To India (1985) [2hrs. 43 min.]
[Based on the novel  E. M. Forster/A Passage To India (1924)]
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) [2hrs. 9 min.]  A film classic on conspiracy thinking.
The Crucible (1996) [2hrs. 2 min.]  A favorite of many secondary school teachers and students of the McCarthy era (1950's) in the U.S.

The Lives of Others (2006 German with English subtitles) [2hrs. 18min.]

RECOMMENDED FILMS
"The Brothers Karamazov" The Brothers Karamazov (1958) [2hrs. 25 min.]
"All About Eve"
All_About_Eve (1950) [2hrs. 38 min.]

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Course Title: Politics & Personality/Political Psychology

Overview Of Course
Topics
I. Introduction
II. Freud - Instinctual Drives & Civilization
III. Personality & Politics
IV.  Political Leaders & Followers
V.  The Political Psychology of Terrorism
VI. Dostoevsky - Religion, Authority, Freedom,  & Individual Will
VII.  The Matrix: Illusion, Reality, & Freedom
VIII.  Edelman - Symbols, Symbolic Reassurance, And Political Quiescence
IX. The Paranoid Style & Conspiracy Thinking
X.  The Psychology Of Empire


TOPICS FOR READING, ORAL & WRITTEN REPORTS, & DISCUSSION
 I. Introduction
Readings: DiRenzo, "Perspectives on Personality and Political Behavior", pp. 3-26 in DiRenzo, Personality & Politics.

II. Freud - Instinctual Drives & Civilization 
A view of "human nature" in ancient Athens:
"Then, with the ordinary conventions of civilized life thrown into confusion,human nature, always ready to offend(emphasis added)  even where laws exist, showed itself proudly in its true colours, as something  incapable of controlling passion, insubordinate to the idea of justice, the enemy to anything superior to itself..."

These are the observations of Thucydides [c. 460 - 400 BCE], the ancient Greek historian and student of political behavior, with regard to "The Civil War In Corcyra 427 [BCE]" in: Thucydides, History Of The Peloponnesian War (Rex Warner Translation/Introduction & Notes By M. I. Finley/Penguin Classics/1972), p. 245.

Readings: Freud, Civilization And Its Discontents, the entire monograph.

All students in this course should download and print for their personal use a hard copy of "A Partial Glossary Of Freud".  This glossary can be accessed @ http://www.arnoldleder.com/readings/index.html.   Scroll to the section on "Political Psychology" and look for "A Partial Glossary Of Freud".  This location is password protected.  Password and user name for access will be provided to students in the course.

Mark Edmundson/Defender of the Faith?/NYT Sunday Magazine, September 09, 2007
"To the end of his life, he [Freud] maintained his stance as an uncompromising atheist, the stance he is best known for down to the present.  In The Future of an Illusion, he described belief in God as a collective neurosis: he called it 'longing for a father.'  But in his last completed book, Moses and Monotheism, something new emerges.  There Freud, without abandoning his atheism, begins to see the Jewish faith that he was born into as a source of cultural progress in the past and of personal inspiration in the present."

Recommended:
Christian Perring/Freud's Theory Of The Mind & Overview Of Civilization & Its Discontents
David P. Barash/Evolution, Males, and Violence/The Chronicle Of Higher Education/May 24, 2002

Additional Web Resources On Freud
Sigmund Freud: Conflict & Culture (Library of Congress Exhibition)
Freud Museum
Freud On Religion
Marc Fonda's Freud Page

III. Personality & Politics
1.  Lasswell - Power & Personality
Readings:  Harold Lasswell, "The Political Personality"; Alexander George, "Power as a Compensatory Value for Political Leaders"
The article by Alexander George was originally published as Alexander L. George, "Power as a Compensatory Value for Political Leaders", in Journal of Social Issues, July, 1968, Vol. 24, No. 3.  It is accessible @ Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library with a valid Texas StateUniversity User Name and password.

Wayne, "President Bush (Senior) Goes to War" (1993)
Recommended:  Harold D. Lasswell/Psychopathology And Politics (1930)

Recommended Film:
"All About Eve" All_About_Eve (1950) [2hrs. 38 min.]
Film clips from
"All About Eve":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnr3AMCmJ3A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6m37ddd2Sc


2. Political Orientation, Personality, & Values

a. Political Orientation: How Liberals & Conservatives Think
Readings:
Patricia Cohen/Across the Great Divide: Investigating Links Between Personality and Politics/NYT February 12, 2007

In DiRenzo - McClosky, "Conservatism and Personality"
McClosky's article was originally published as Herbert McClosky, "Conservatism and Personality", American Political Science Review, March, 1958, Vol. 52, No. 1.
It is accessible @ Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library with a valid Texas StateUniversity User Name and password. (See JStor.)

George Lakoff/The Worldview Problem For American Politics-an excerpt from George Lakoff/Moral Politics:How Liberals & Conservatives Think (Univ. Of Chicago 2002)
Noam Scheiber/Wooden Frame: Is George Lakoff Misleading Democrats?/The New Republic/May 23 2005
This article is accessible @ Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library  with a valid Texas StateUniversity User Name and password.

Steven Pinker/The Moral Instinct/NYT Sunday Magazine January 13, 2008
"The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres. In a large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five. It’s not surprising that each side thinks it is driven by lofty ethical values and that the other side is base and unprincipled.
...  So a biological understanding of the moral sense does not entail that people are calculating maximizers of their genes or self-interest. But where does it leave the concept of morality itself?
...  Here is the worry. The scientific outlook has taught us that some parts of our subjective experience are products of our biological makeup and have no objective counterpart in the world. The qualitative difference between red and green, the tastiness of fruit and foulness of carrion, the scariness of heights and prettiness of flowers are design features of our common nervous system, and if our species had evolved in a different ecosystem or if we were missing a few genes, our reactions could go the other way. Now, if the distinction between right and wrong is also a product of brain wiring, why should we believe it is any more real than the distinction between red and green? And if it is just a collective hallucination, how could we argue that evils like genocide and slavery are wrong for everyone, rather than just distasteful to us?"

Jost, John T., "The End of the End of Ideology", American Psychologist, Vol. 61 (7), October 2006, pp. 651-670.
Abstract: The "end of ideology" was declared by social scientists in the aftermath of World War II. They argued that (a) ordinary citizens' political attitudes lack the kind of stability, consistency, and constraint that ideology requires; (b) ideological constructs such as liberalism and conservatism lack motivational potency and behavioral significance; (c) there are no major differences in content (or substance) between liberal and conservative points of view; and (d) there are few important differences in psychological processes (or styles) that underlie liberal versus conservative orientations. The end-of-ideologists were so influential that researchers ignored the topic of ideology for many years. However, current political realities, recent data from the American National Election Studies, and results from an emerging psychological paradigm provide strong grounds for returning to the study of ideology. Studies reveal that there are indeed meaningful political and psychological differences that covary with ideological self-placement. Situational variables--including system threat and mortality salience--and dispositional variables--including openness and conscientiousness--affect the degree to which an individual is drawn to liberal versus conservative leaders, parties, and opinions. A psychological analysis is also useful for understanding the political divide between "red states" and "blue states."
This article is accessible @ Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library  with a valid Texas StateUniversity User Name and password.
A shorter version of this article can be accessed @ http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/ideology-is-back-and-the-divides-are-still-deep/.

b. Values, Personality, & Political Choice
G. V. Caprara, S. Schwartz, C. Capanna, M. Vecchione, C. Barbaranelli, "Personality and Politics: Values, Traits, and Political Choice", Political Psychology, February, 2006, Vol. 27, Issue 1. 
Abstract
Voters' political choices have presumably come to depend on their personal preferences and less on their social characteristics in Western democracies.  We examine two aspects of personality that may influence political choice, traits, and personal values, ... Data from 3044 voters for the major coalitions in the Italian national election of 2001 showed that supporters of the two coalitions differed in traits and values ... values explained substantial variance in past and future voting and in change of political choice, trumping personality traits.  ...

This article is accessible @
Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library with a valid Texas StateUniversity User Name and password.  At the Texas State University Library site, go to EBSCO host EJS January 2005 to Present.  Look for: Available on Publisher's Site: 1997 - 2006  Scroll to link for article.

Bryan Caplan/The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Voters Choose Bad Policies (Princeton 2007)
Read the Introduction to this book.
From the Introduction:
"This book develops an alternative story of how democracy fails. The central idea is that voters are worse than ignorant; they are, in a word, irrational—and vote accordingly. Economists and cognitive psychologists usually presume that everyone “processes information” to the best of his ability.6 Yet common sense tells us that emotion and ideology—not just the facts or their “processing”—powerfully sway human judgment. Protectionist thinking is hard to uproot because it feels good. When people vote under the influence of false beliefs that feel good, democracy persistently delivers bad policies. As an old computer programming slogan goes, GIGO—Garbage in, garbage out.
... This book has three conjoined themes. The first: Doubts about the rationality of voters are empirically justified. The second: Voter irrationality is precisely what economic theory implies once we adopt introspectively plausible assumptions about human motivation. The third: Voter irrationality is the key to a realistic picture of democracy.
...  In the naive public-interest view, democracy works because it does what voters want. In the view of most democracy skeptics, it fails because it does not do what voters want. In my view, democracy fails because it does what voters want. In economic jargon, democracy has a built-in externality. An irrational voter does not hurt only himself. He also hurts everyone who is, as a result of his irrationality, more likely to live under misguided policies. Since most of the cost of voter irrationality is external—paid for by other people, why not indulge? If enough voters think this way, socially injurious policies win by popular demand."  (boldface added)

For an overview of the basic ideas that inform Bryan Caplan's much discussed book, see: Bryan CaplanThe Myth of the Rational Voter/Essay @ cato-unbound.org/November 6, 2007
See also this review of Bryan Caplan's book:
Louis Menand/Fractured Franchise:Are the wrong people voting?/The New Yorker July 9, 2007
"Caplan rejects the assumption that voters pay no attention to politics and have no real views. He thinks that voters do have views, and that they are, basically, prejudices. He calls these views irrational, because, once they are translated into policy, they make everyone worse off. People not only hold irrational views, he thinks; they like their irrational views. In the language of economics, they have demand for irrationality curves: they will give up y amount of wealth in order to consume x amount of irrationality. Since voting carries no cost, people are free to be as irrational as they like. They can ignore the consequences, just as the herdsman can ignore the consequences of putting one more cow on the public pasture. Voting is not a slight variation on shopping, as Caplan puts it. Shoppers have incentives to be rational. Voters do not.

D. Sunshine Hillygus & Todd G. Shields/The Persuadable Voter: Wedge Issues in Presidential Campaigns (Princeton University Press 2008)
Read Chapter 1.
"Our theory of the persuadable voter challenges three widespread myths about contemporary American politics. First, there is a popular perception that recent presidential candidates have campaigned on divisive issues as a way to fire up their core partisan base.  ...  Academic works have similarly concluded that candidates will be willing to take extreme positions on controversial issues to pander to their partisan base—either because they need to win party primaries or to obtain the campaign contributions and other resources necessary to run for office.  In contrast, we argue that divisive issues are often used to appeal to persuadable voters, often from the opposing partisan camp.

The second myth we take on in this book is the widespread view that the polarization we observe in Washington has led to or has followed similar polarization in the electorate. The reality is that in a complex and pluralistic society, political parties are inherently coalitions of diverse individuals. The choice of only two major parties ensures that some partisans will be incongruent on some issues, thereby creating policy cleavages within the party coalitions. We argue that these cross-pressures between partisan loyalties and policy preferences have clear implications for the behavior of both voters and candidates in the campaign.

Cross-pressured partisans are willing to reassess their expected support for their party’s nominee if they come to believe that an issue about which they disagree with their party is at stake in the election. These voters might find the salience of a conflicting issue increased by real-world events or personal experiences, but a political campaign can also activate a policy disagreement by highlighting the candidates’ differences on the issue and calling attention to one’s own party’s failings and the opposition’s virtues on the issue.

Finally, the third myth that we challenge in our analysis is the enduring conventional wisdom that persuadable voters are the least admirable segment of the electorate—poorly informed and lacking in policy attitudes. The prevailing perception about the persuadable segment of the electorate is that “its level of information is low, its sense of political involvement is slight, its level of political participation is not high.”7 It is thought that these muddled voters make up their minds on the basis of nonpolicy considerations, like candidate personality, charisma, and the “guy you’d wanna drink a beer with” criteria. In contrast, our theory suggests that policy issues are often central to how persuadable voters make up their minds. To be clear, this book is not a polemical account of an American populace composed of ideal citizens highly engaged and fully informed across all policy domains. Rather, we argue simply that for those voters who find themselves at odds with their party nominee it is the campaign that often helps to determine whether partisan loyalties or issue preferences are given greater weight in their vote decision".

Return to Top
Return to Topics

IV.  Political Leaders & Followers
1. Personality of Leaders & Political Behavior
a. Political Leaders
Readings
(Revisited)
In DiRenzo - Lasswell, "The Political Personality"; George, "Power as a Compensatory Value for Political Leaders".

b. Followers
Readings:
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, the entire book.
Tim Madigan/The True Believer Revisited/Philosophy Now/Decembe r2001-January 2002
On kitsch:
http://www.denisdutton.com/kitsch_macmillan.htm
A Guide To Kitsch: A Definition/World of Kitsch.com

World of kitsch.com
__________________________________________________

Aileen Kelly, "Why They Believed in Stalin", The New York Review of Books, April 26, 2007, Vol. LIV, No. 7, pp. 58-62.  A review essay on Tear Off the Masks: Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia (Princeton University Press, 2007) by Sheila Fitzpatrick and Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary Under Stalin (Harvard University Press 2007) by Jochen Hellbeck.  Read the Prologue and part of the first chapter of Hellbeck's book.
The Kelly article can be viewed @ http://www.arnoldleder.com/readings/index.htmlScroll to the section on "Political Psychology" and look for "Aileen Kelly: Why They Believed in Stalin".  This location is password protected.  Password and user name for access will be provided to students in the course.

"... the Soviet notion of selfhood had deep roots in a different cultural tradition which did not recognize the same dichotomy of public and private. Lack of historical perspective is a major flaw in Fitzpatrick's book. The "new man" was not, as Fitzpatrick implies, a concept invented by the Soviet regime. It was central to a tradition of introspection and moral self-perfecting that arose in the early nineteenth century as a response to the dilemma of the Russian intelligentsia whose talents were frustrated in their benighted country, and whose longing for personal fulfillment was combined with a strong commitment to social justice. From Enlightenment rationalism, German romantic philosophy, and French utopian socialism many educated Russians absorbed a vision of history as a collective process leading to the fullest self-realization of man through the healing of all painful divisions between individuals and the social whole.
... In the worst years of Stalinism many maintained their faith in the Party's infallibility by developing a dual consciousness. As Stephen Kotkin explains, for Soviet citizens the discrepancies between lived experience and revolutionary ideology based ultimately on theory seem to have given rise to a dual reality: life could resemble 'a split existence: sometimes in one truth, sometimes in the other.' Even when theoretical 'truth' was contradicted by common sense, it still formed an integral part of everyday existence; without an understanding of it, citizens found it impossible to know what was permitted and what not. But acceptance of the truthfulness of the revolutionary truth also fulfilled another function: "it was also," Kotkin writes, "a way to transcend the pettiness of daily life, to see the whole picture, to relate mundane events to a larger design; it offered something to strive for.' True believers (boldface added) could explain away the worst excesses of Stalinism by viewing the present from the perspective of eschatological time. In this form of secular religiosity, history, like Providence, was seen to move in mysterious ways; when the goal was attained it would become clear that policies and actions which now seemed objectionable or senseless all had their place in the overall grand design.
... The diaries Hellbeck has selected are especially significant for the light they shed on an aspect of the Soviet mentality under Stalin which, as he notes, Western readers find particularly challenging: the acceptance of violence in the service of self-realization. We see at first hand the operation, chilling and sometimes poignant, of the dual consciousness that allowed many to accept the mass slaughter of collectivization and the Terror and to justify the violence inflicted on them and those they cherished for crimes they did not commit.
... His study adds an important dimension to the work done by other scholars to throw light on the psychological reasons behind the collusion of moral idealists in the extreme violence of the Stalin years.  He concludes by reminding us that the modes of thought that encouraged Soviet citizens to accept violence in the service of self-realization were not specific to the Soviet Union or the political left.  (boldface added) In the first half of the last century the attraction of movements promising fulfillment through an all-embracing worldview led intellectuals across Europe such as Ernst Jünger and Georges Sorel to extol the morally and aesthetically purifying effects of political violence."

For reviews of this book, see:
Sheila Fitzpatrick/Journals of the Purge Years/The Nation, August 10, 2006
Karl Schlögel, 'Life has been reborn', London Review of Books, 16 August 2007.  Karl Schlögel's review essay may be accessed @
http://www.arnoldleder.com/readings/index.htmlScroll to the section on "Political Psychology" and look for "Schlögel review of Hellbeck book".  This location is password protected.  Password and user name for access will be provided to students in the course.
See also: Jochen Hellbeck/The Ice Forge/The Nation, February 13, 2008

Films:
The Lives of Others (2006 German with English subtitles) [2hrs. 18min.]
See:
The Lives of Others - WikipediaOn the use of Wikipedia see this note.
Timothy Garton Ash/The Stasi on Our Minds/The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54, No. 9, May 31, 2007

2.  Crisis, Stress, & Political Leadership
Films:
The Caine Mutiny, Caine Mutiny, The (1954)  The Caine Mutiny1954)
Film clip from "The Caine Mutiny": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9KlQPX1qiE
DVD Review The Caine Mutiny

This film is based on the novel HermanWouk/The Caine Mutiny (1951, Winner Of Pulitzer Prize)

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)
Film clips from "The Prime of Miss Jean Brody":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m-3SgRKnB0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meWDndCUaDk&feature=related

This film is based on the novel Muriel Spark/The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
James Wood, "The Prime Of Ms. Muriel Spark", Atlantic Monthly, November 2004.
This article is accessible @ Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library  with a valid Texas StateUniversity User Name and password.
For an analysis of the life and works of Muriel Spark, see: Roger Kimball/Muriel Spark, 1918-2006/newcriterion.com/April 4, 2006
Readings:
Joel Brodkin/The First Neoconservative: Herman Wouk, the Americanization of the Holocaust, and the Rise of Neoconservatism/New Politics/Summer 2005/Vol. X No. 3.

(See Brodkin's remarks on The Caine Mutiny.)

V.  The Political Psychology of Terrorism
1. Psychological Sources of Terrorism

Readings:

Michael J. Mazarr/The Psychological Sources Of Islamic Terrorism/Policy Review/June-July 2004

2.  Suicide Bombers: Rationality, Culture, Structure, & Psychological Profiles
Readings:
Mohammed M. Hafez, "Rationality, Culture, and Structure in the Making of Suicide Bombers: A Preliminary Synthesis and Illustrative Case Study", Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, March-April 2006, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 165-185.
Abstract
Suicidal violence involves three levels of analysis: individual motivations, organizational strategies, and societal conflicts. Using rationalist, culturalist, and structuralist approaches to contentious politics, this article explores the intersection of rationality, norms, and conflict in the making of extreme violence. The case of Palestinian suicide bombers demonstrates the interdependence of the three approaches to explaining suicidal violence. For individuals, self-sacrifice is conceived as an act of personal redemption rooted in religious morality and national salvation. For organizations, human bombs provide strategic advantages in the context of asymmetrical warfare. For collectivities, martyrs are venerated when three conditions converge: (1) cultural norms encompass symbolic narratives that honor martyrdom; (2) legitimate authorities acquiesce to extreme violence; and (3) conflicts generate feelings of victimization and threat by external enemies.
This article is accessible @ Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library with a valid Texas StateUniversity User Name and password.  At the Texas State University Library site, go to EBSCOhost EJS.  Look for: Available on Publisher's Site: 1999 - 2006.

David Lester, Abijou Yanf, Mark Lindsay, "Suicide Bombers: Are Psychological Profiles Possible?",  Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, July-August 2004
Abstract
Review of research on the characteristics of suicide bombers.
Contrary to previous commentary, it is suggested that suicide bombers may share personality traits (such as the authoritarian personality) that psychological profiles of suicide bombersmight be feasible, and that the suicide bombers may be characterized by the risk factors that increase the probability of suicide. Two assertions are common in essays on suicide bombers. The first is that suicide bombersdo not appear to be characterized by the risk factors that predict suicidal behavior... The second is that psychological profiles of suicide bombers are not possible...  This essay will argue that both assertions are certainly premature and probably incorrect.  Both of these tasks (identifying suicide risk factors and constructing psychological profiles) require extensive biographies of the individuals involved.


3.  The "Harun al-Rashid Motive": Disguised Terrorists' Desire To Reveal Their True Identities
Peter Suedfeld "Harun al-Rashid and the Terrorists: Identity Concealed, Identity Revealed"/Political Psychology, Volume 25, Number 3 (June, 2004)
Abstract
The assumption of false identities is a frequent theme in history, fiction, and current events.  Spies and criminals are among those who pretend to be other than they are, although the strategy is not restricted to them.  Harun al-Rashid (763-809), medieval Caliph of Baghdad, was described in the Thousand and One Nights as disguising himself in order to detect and punish evildoers.  One distinctive feature of his adventures is that at some point he threw off the disguise and revealed his true identity.  This paper recounts similar self-exposures by spies and terrorists (including those of 9/11) in situations where such an act could spell disaster for them.  It further explores a number of explanations for the "Harun al-Rashid motive", suggests a way to measure it and discusses ways in which conterterrorism agencies could build upon it for their own purposes.

This article is accessible @  Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library with a valid Texas StateUniversity User Name and password.

4. The Psychological Dimensions Of Prisoner Abuse
The Stanford University Prison Abuse Experiment (1971) and related links
Cass Sunstein/The Thin Line/The New Republic, May 21, 2007, Vol. 236, No. 4, 183, pp. 51-55. 
Cass Sunstein's essay is a review of the book
The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Can Turn Evil by Philip Zimbardo (March, 2007).
"Why do human beings commit despicable acts? One answer points to individual dispositions; another answer emphasizes situational pressures. In 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stressed the importance of individual dispositions in describing terrorists as "simply evil people who want to kill." Situationists reject this view. They believe that horrible acts can be committed by perfectly normal people. The most extreme situationists insist that in the right circumstances, almost all of us might be led to commit atrocities.  ...  What emerges is a clear challenge to the most ambitious claims for situationism, and a more complicated understanding of the relationship between individual dispositions and social situations. And there is a final point. Zimbardo shows that the very assumption of a particular social role automatically conveys a great deal of information about appropriate behavior: consider the roles of nurse, first officer, and prison guard. But social roles are not fixed. Nurses and first officers need not think that they should always follow doctors and captains, and prison guards need not feel free to brutalize prisoners. Perhaps the largest lesson of Zimbardo's experiment involves the importance of ensuring that a constant sense of moral responsibility is taken to be part of, rather than inconsistent with, a wide range of social roles."
Sunstein's review essay is also accessible @
Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library with a valid Texas StateUniversity User Name and password.

For a different perspective on the behavior of individuals under certain conditions, including a predisposition to altruistic behavior, see:
"Parochial Altruism" '... the notion that people might prefer to help strangers from their own ethnic group over strangers from a different group ...'
Olivia Judson/The Selfless Gene/The Atlantic/ October, 2007, Vol. 300, No. 3, pp. 90-98. -Article PreviewThe full text of this article is accessible @ Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library with a valid Texas StateUniversity User Name and password.

See also: Helen Bernhard, Urs Fishchbacher, Ernst Fehr/Parochial altruism in humans/Nature/24 August 2006, Vol. 442, pp. 912-915. - Article Preview
The full text of this article is accessible @ Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library with a valid Texas StateUniversity User Name and password.

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VI. Dostoevsky - Religion, Authority, Freedom,  & Individual Will
Readings: Dostoevsky, The Grand Inquisitor
Recommended Film: The Brothers Karamazov  The Brothers Karamazov (1958)

Caitrin Nicol/Brave New World at 75/The New Atlantis/No. 16, Spring 2007
"Huxley’s most famous novel, Brave New World, was published in 1932, and the occasion of this seventy-fifth anniversary should lead us to wonder about his peculiar description of how we understand the future. We live in a time of biotechnological leaps forward that have made the term “Brave New World” almost a reflex for commentators worried we are rushing headlong toward a sterilized post-human society, engineered to joyless joy. It is easy to imagine that we see the shadows of our society in Huxley’s vision of the future. But could it be that our insistence on seeing Huxley’s book as an exceedingly successful prophecy actually prevents us from recognizing its real insight? Is there a way for us to understand the book free of the great distorting influence of our own times? We can do that only by reading the book on its own terms, as its first readers did, and by letting ourselves be guided by the literary, scientific, and cultural critics of Huxley’s day. In doing so, we may glimpse afresh something of the meaning of Brave New World in its author’s mind and time.  ...
...  This 'illusion of freedom' was cast into a clearer light by a reviewer who discerned that the temptation to sacrifice liberty to end suffering often becomes an attack on the reality of the liberty itself. Rebecca West, a prominent novelist and literary critic ... said Huxley had 'rewritten in terms of our age' Dostoevsky’s famous parable of the Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov—a 'symbolic statement that every generation ought to read afresh.' (boldface  added)
...
By shifting the question from political control to personal conscience, West’s reading anticipated the decentralized way that many of the particular scientific and cultural furnishings of Huxley’s world have made appearances in ours.  ... the separation of sex from procreation, and love from sex; the consumption-saturated culture threatening to commodify the consumers; the increasingly physico-chemical attempt to explain and treat a troubled psyche—we did not need bureaucratic threats or hypnopaedic repetitions to want these things, and in this sense Huxley profoundly overestimated (or is it underestimated?) mankind, and his book may, in the deepest sense, have gotten our present all wrong. We chose these things ourselves, uncoerced by terror or war or social engineers. They have been developed to respond to real human hurts and desires; and, as might be expected of human choices, the results and motives have been mixed."

Note: The text of Brave New World is accessible on the Web @ this location.

VII.  The Matrix: Illusion, Reality, & Freedom
1. The Matrix
Film:  The Matrix (1999)
Readings:
Iakovos Vasilou/"Reality,What Matters, And The Matrix"
http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/rl_cmp/new_phil_iakovos.html

James Pryor/"What's So Bad About Living In The Matrix?"
http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/rl_cmp/new_phil_fr_pryor.html

Adam Gopnik/The Unreal Thing:What's Wrong With The Matrix?/New Yorker/May 19, 2003
John Tierney/Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy's Couch/NYT/August 14, 2007 (with links to related articles)

Ronald Bailey/Will Super Smart Artificial Intelligences Keep Humans Around As Pets?/Reason/September 11, 2007
"By 2030, or by 2050 at the latest, will a super-smart artificial intelligence decide to keep humans around as pets? Will it instead choose to turn the entire Earth, including the messy organic bits like us, into computronium? Or is there a third alternative?"

Recommended Readings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix
The Matrix-Links To Reviews & Commentaries/brothersjudd.com

2. Erich Fromm - Escape From Freedom
Readings:
Fromm, Escape From Freedom Chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, & Appendix.
Lakshmi Chaudry/Mirror, Mirror On the Web/The Nation/January 29, 2007
Note Chaudry's observations on fame.

Recommended
The Erich Fromm Society
http://www.erich-fromm.de/e/index.htm

C. George Boeree/On Erich Fromm's View Of Personality & Society/1997
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/fromm.html

Daniel Burston/The Legacy Of Erich Fromm
http://www.duq.edu/facultyhome/burston/legacy.html
Burston's essay is based on his book Daniel Burston/The Legacy Of Erich Fromm(Harvard Univ.Press 1991)

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VIII.  Edelman - Symbols, Symbolic Reassurance, And Political Quiescence
Recommended:
Murray Edelman/Symbols & Political Quiescence (1993)
Murray Edelman/Symbols and Political Quiescence/The American Political Science Review, Vol. 54, No. 3, September, 1960, pp. 695-704.  This is a link to the citation and the first page of the article.  The full text of this article is accessible @ Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library with a valid Texas StateUniversity User Name and password. (See JStor.)
For a view that suggests a current example of the manipulation of symbols designed to induce political quiescence, see: Patrick Basham/Put Out This Tobacco Bill/NYT August 03, 2007.

Ward Sutton/Reading Tea Leaves and Campaign Logos/slideshow/OPART/NYT Sunday, November 18, 2007
Candidates on the 2008 presidential campaign trail work hard to project a certain kind of image to the public.

Mike McIntire/Nuclear Leaks And Response Tested Obama/NYT February 03, 2008
"
When residents in Illinois voiced outrage two years ago upon learning that the Exelon Corporation had not disclosed radioactive leaks at one of its nuclear plants, the state’s freshman senator, Barack Obama, took up their cause.
... Mr. Obama scolded Exelon and federal regulators for inaction and introduced a bill to require all plant owners to notify state and local authorities immediately of even small leaks.
... He has boasted of it on the campaign trail, telling a crowd in Iowa in December that it was the only nuclear legislation that I’ve passed.
'I just did that last year', he said, to murmurs of approval.
... A close look at the path his legislation took tells a very different story. While he initially fought to advance his bill, even holding up a presidential nomination to try to force a hearing on it, Mr. Obama eventually rewrote it to reflect changes sought by Senate Republicans, Exelon and nuclear regulators. The new bill removed language mandating prompt reporting and simply offered guidance to regulators, whom it charged with addressing the issue of unreported leaks.
... Those revisions propelled the bill through a crucial committee. But, contrary to Mr. Obama’s comments in Iowa, it ultimately died amid parliamentary wrangling in the full Senate.
... Asked why Mr. Obama had cited it as an accomplishment while campaigning for president, the campaign noted that after the senator introduced his bill, nuclear plants started making such reports on a voluntary basis. The campaign did not directly address the question of why Mr. Obama had told Iowa voters that the legislation had passed.
... But eventually, Mr. Obama agreed to rewrite the bill, and when the environment committee approved it in September 2006, he and his co-sponsors hailed it as a victory.
... In interviews over the past two weeks, Obama aides insisted that the revisions did not substantively alter the bill. In fact, it was left drastically different.
... In place of the straightforward reporting requirements was new language giving the nuclear commission two years to come up with its own regulations. The bill said that the commission “shall consider” — not require — immediate public notification, and also take into account the findings of a task force it set up to study the tritium leaks. ...
... The rewritten bill also contained the new wording sought by Exelon making it clear that state and local authorities would have no regulatory oversight of nuclear power plants.
... In interviews last week, representatives of Exelon and the nuclear commission said they were satisfied with the revised bill. The Nuclear Energy Institute said it no longer opposed it but wanted additional changes.
... The revised bill was never taken up in the full Senate, where partisan parliamentary maneuvering resulted in a number of bills being shelved before the 2006 session ended.
... Still, the legislation has come in handy on the campaign trail. Last May, in response to questions about his ties to Exelon, Mr. Obama wrote a letter to a Nevada newspaper citing the bill as evidence that he stands up to powerful interests.
... 'When I learned that radioactive tritium had leaked out of an Exelon nuclear plant in Illinois,' he wrote, 'I led an effort in the Senate to require utilities to notify the public of any unplanned release of radioactive substances.'
... Last October, Mr. Obama reintroduced the bill, in its rewritten form."  (boldface added)

Mark Greif/The Hard Sell/NYT Sunday Book Review December 30, 2007 - an essay on the publication of a new edition of: The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard (1957).
For excerpts from the book, see: http://www.ditext.com/packard/toc.html and Chapter 17 - Politics and the Image Builders.


Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro/Politicians Don't Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness (University of Chicago Press, 2000)/Excerpt from pp. xi-xx.
Alvaro Vargas llosa, "The Killing Machine" (On Che Guevara), The New Republic, July 11 2005This essay is directly accessible @ http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1535.
This essay is also accessible @
Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library with a valid Texas StateUniversity User Name and password.

IX. The Paranoid Style & Conspiracy Thinking
1. The Paranoid Style In American Politics: Richard Hofstadter
Readings:
Richard Hofstadter/The Paranoid Style In American Politics, Introduction & pp.  3-92.
Richard Hofstadter/The Paranoid Style In American Politics (An essay which addresses a number of the themes in his book)/Harper's/November 1964
For background on Hofstadter and his work, see:
David Greenberg/Richard Hofstadter: The pundits' favorite historian/slate.com/June 7, 2006

On conspiracy thinking, see: Michael Barkun/Conspiracy Theory/americanheritage.com/October 2005 Vol. 56 Issue 5 and his book
Michael Barkun/A Culture Of Conspiracy (University of California Press 2003)
See Chapter Five of Michael Barkun's book: "UFO Conspiracy Theories, 1975-1990"

2. "The Manchurian Candidate"
Susan L. Carruthers," 'The Manchurian Candidate' (1962) & The Cold War Brainwashing Scare", Historical Journal Of Film, Radio & Television, March1998
.
The classic film on conspiracy thinking referred to by both the left and the right. "Brainwashed" Americans held as prisoners of war by the North Koreans and others during the Koran War of 1950-1953 return to America where one of them has been programmed to commit assassination.  See this
review of the film "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962).  This article by Susan L. Carruthers is highly recommended.  It is accessible @ Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library with a valid Texas StateUniversity User Name and password.

Film: The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
For background information on this film, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manchurian_Candidate_%281962_film%29

3. "The Crucible" - A Favorite Of Many Secondary School Teachers, (& Of The Left)
Video:
The Crucible (1996)
Arthur Miller, "Why I Wrote The Crucible: An Artist's Answer to Politics", The NewYorker, October 21, 1996.
Miller's essay can be accessed @
this location and also @ this site.

Midge Decter, "The Witches Of Arthur Miller", Commentary, March 1997
The Miller and Decter articles can be accessed @ Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library A valid Texas State University User Name and Password are required.
Interested students may wish to look at these materials related to "The Crucible" and conspiracy thinking.
Arthur Miller's The Crucible: (1952) The Play & The Movie

Linnda R. Caporael/Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem? (Convulsive ergotism may have been a physiological basis for the Salem witchcraft crisis in 1692)/Science Vol. 192/April 02.1976
For more on Linnda Caporael's thesis, see:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_salem/about.html
SeeAlso:
Alan Taylor/Crucibles (Review Of Mary Beth Norton, In The Devil's Snare:The Salem Witchcraft Crisis Of 1692)/The New Republic/November 11, 2003

The Taylor article can be accessed @
Locating Periodicals @ Texas State University Library  A valid Texas State University User Name and Password are required. See also:
The Salem Witch Trials Of 1692/Various Links
Sandra Miesel/Who Burned The Witches?/Crisis/October 2001
Margo Burns, "Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible"' Fact & Fiction" (Oct. 24, 2003) @
http://www.17thc.us/docs/fact-fiction.shtml
"The American 1950s"  - Links to materials for the period most discussed in relation to "The Crucible".

Recommended
Sharon LaFraniere/African Crucible: Cast as Witches, Then Cast Out/NYT November 15, 2007

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X.  The Psychology Of Empire
1. Mannoni: Dependence & Inferiority

2. American Empire:  Real Or Falsely Accused?

Readings:

O. Mannoni/Prospero & Caliban:The Psychology Of Colonization

http://www.press.umich.edu:80/titleDetailDesc.do?id=9316

Video:  A Passage To India (1985)
Based on the novel  E. M. Forster/A Passage To India (1924)

Recommended Article

Niall Ferguson/America: An Empire In Denial/The Chronicle Of Higher Education/March 28, 2003

Recommended Book

For an interesting example of early 20th century European fiction which reflects images of the Orient see: Louis Couperus,(Revised & Edited by E.M.Beekman-Translated From Dutch)/The Hidden Force (Univ. Of Mass. 1985)   In Beekman's introduction to this novel written in 1900 about the Dutch colonial experience in Indonesia, he quotes the Dutch author, Couperus, a romantic of his time who believed in supernatural forces: "I believe that benovolent and hostile forces float around us right through our ordinary, everyday existence.  I believe that the Oriental, no matter where he comes from can command more power over these forces than the Westerner who is absorbed by his sobriety, business and making money." 

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RESOURCES FOR POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY
  International Bulletin of Political Psychology

   University Programs In Political Psychology
   Center For Study of Political Psychology/University of Minnesota
   The Elliott School of International Affairs/GeorgeWashingtonUniversity/Graduate Certificate in Political Psychology
  Politcal Psychology/ George Washington University
  Political Psychology Minor/Lewis&Clark
  UC Irvine/ Graduate Program in Political Psychology
   Law & Psychology
   American Psychology - Law Society
    Law & Psychology University Of Alabama
   Psychology and the Law Syllabus/University Of Delaware
   For issues related to law and psychology, see the new journal: Law & Psychology @ http://www.ssrn.com/link/Law-Psychology.html
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