Universität Wien

210066 SE BAK10 Humans in Politics or Politics in Humans? An Introduction to Political Psychology (2024W)

8.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 21 - Politikwissenschaft
Continuous assessment of course work

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We 13.11. 09:45-11:15 Hörsaal 2 (H2), NIG 2.Stock

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 25 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

  • Wednesday 09.10. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 2 (H2), NIG 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 16.10. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 2 (H2), NIG 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 23.10. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 2 (H2), NIG 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 30.10. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 2 (H2), NIG 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 06.11. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 2 (H2), NIG 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 20.11. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 2 (H2), NIG 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 27.11. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 2 (H2), NIG 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 04.12. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 2 (H2), NIG 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 11.12. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 2 (H2), NIG 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 08.01. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 2 (H2), NIG 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 15.01. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 2 (H2), NIG 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 22.01. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 2 (H2), NIG 2.Stock
  • Wednesday 29.01. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 2 (H2), NIG 2.Stock

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

This course combines two of the most exciting things there are politics and psychology. It will provide you with an understanding of people’s attitudes, personality, information-processing, emotions, and social background and why that all matters to politics. Moreover, you will enhance your understanding of political psychological methods and communication, as well as skills that matter for political scientists and citizens more broadly. Welcome, everyone, to this course!

This course has three aims:
To develop your knowledge of, and ability to critically evaluate theories of and evidence in political psychology. This includes how people’s personality, attitudes, emotions, social background, and everyday life affects humans’ political behavior and society.
To develop your ability to find, process, and evaluate information on historic and current political phenomena. Why do citizens act the way they do, what can and should they do? What information is reliable and how can different sources of information be combined?
To develop your reading, writing, presentation, and social skills. These skills matter for political psychologists, political scientists, and citizens in society and the work life.

General overview:
We’re living in exciting, busy, and sometimes worrying times. Politics––the who gets what, when, and how in society––is meant to steer these times. The largest group of actors in politics are citizens, and political theory asks citizens to monitor politics, evaluate information, and punish politicians who perform poorly. But citizens are also human beings. And human beings feel, get tired, have children, get distracted, have personalities, and social identities. How do these human beings participate in politics, how do they understand and feel about it? Do they even notice what’s going on?
In this course, we will discuss some of the central concepts of political psychology. We will depart from a general overview of political psychology and its methods, discuss ordinary conceptions of attitudes, and study how we may come to hold these attitudes. We then consider emotions and an individual’s personality and moral values. After that, we ask how group memberships and social identities influence people’s political behavior. Next, we take evolution into account and ask whether our very past influences the present. Finally, we talk about the (currently very polarized but sometimes nice) present. We will close by discussing research topics you and your fellow students identified as interesting.
Your participation will be assessed on a combination of oral participation, short class presentations, weekly reflection papers, and a final research paper. With this class, I hope that you learn more about the theories, methods, evidence, and unanswered questions that political psychology has to offer.

Assessment and permitted materials

This course comes as 13 single meetings. I have assigned readings for each meeting. For each meeting, you will be asked to read the assigned readings and produce a reflection paper in advance. Please be sure to read the first two readings assigned for each session. The readings marked as optional are... optional (but often fun!). In each seminar, we will kick off with a 10-minute presentation by one or several students, followed by a general discussion. Depending on the session, we may add additional exercises you don’t need to worry about them, that’s my task.
It is crucial that you have closely read the assigned literature and written the reflection paper. This matters for your grade, but more importantly, it will help you and your peers learn and have fun. Think about your view, whether you believe a theory or results, what you like or dislike about a certain method, or how you would follow-up on this. If you struggle to understand a paper, write down your question and ask it in class very often, we struggle on similar things, and if you voice your question in class, you will most probably help many students to understand.

You are required to attend classes and be punctual. Always notify me in advance if you cannot attend a session. Attendance in the first session is mandatory and I have to deregister students who miss the first class. You will fail the class if you miss more than two sessions.

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Course components: You will be assessed based on four course components:
1. Reflection papers (40% of the final grade)
2. Provocative Presentation (10% of the final grade)
3. Oral participation (10%)
4. Final Research Paper (40%)

Assessment scale: For each assignment, you can get the grades: 1 (Excellent), 2 (Good), 3 (Satisfactory), 4 (Sufficient), 5 (Insufficient/fail). I’ll round the grades (e.g., 3.0-3.4 or lower will become a 3, 3.5-3.9 will become a 4). To receive the final course grade, I’ll weight the rounded grades for the four course components. This will result in the following final course grades:
1 (Excellent),
2 (Good),
3 (Satisfactory),
4 (Sufficient),
5 (Insufficient/fail).
To pass the course, you must pass all the single components. That is, if you fail on one of the assignments, you will fail the entire course.

Examination topics

Please see the course syllabus for more information.

Reading list

Please see the course syllabus for more information.

Association in the course directory

Last modified: Mo 09.09.2024 12:08