Academic Review of Social Psychology and Policy Connections

The fundamental focus of the academic subject that is known as political psychology is the investigation of the ways in which social psychology may be applied to the study of political processes. On page 3, Sears, Huddy, and Jervis (2003) provide a description of political psychology as "the application of what is known about human psychology to the study of politics." This definition describes political psychology as "the study of how human psychology is applied to the study of politics." When it comes to the research that has been conducted in the discipline of political science, the branch of psychology known as social psychology has shown to be a far more useful starting place than any of the other subfields of psychology. The discoveries of social psychology have really been tremendously useful in the study of both the political conduct of political leaders and the political behavior of the general population. This has led to the study of a wide range of themes, including political socialization, public opinion, voting behavior, collective political action, ideology, prejudice, political campaigns, presidential performance, policy making, conflict resolution, terrorism, and genocide (see Jost and Sidanius, 2004). There have been initiatives made to modify unfavorable political attitudes and political conduct, such as racial prejudice, low voter participation, and political violence. These efforts depend on a variety of ideas into these topics in order to be successful. The obedience test that Stanley Milgram conducted in 1974 is a well-known illustration of this phenomenon. There is no connection between politics and a learning experiment in which participants are instructed to provide high-voltage electric shocks to other individuals. Emerging basic concepts, such as obedience by the majority of people when asked by an authority (experimenter in this example), are key to understanding political behavior, such as the devotion of public employees to political leaders. This is because political conduct is a product of the interactions between individuals. These realizations assist explain how the heinous atrocities that took place during the Holocaust, for example, may have taken place. The second kind of research is made up of studies that were carried out by psychologists who made the decision to center their attention on political concerns for the goal of conducting their research. An illustration of this may be seen in the research that Ajzen and Fishbein (1980) conducted on the concept of justifiable action, which will be further upon in the following paragraphs.