Pol Psych

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND RATIONAL CHOICE

Robert Jervis

*Political psychology and rational choice are not entirely incompatible.

*Political psychology may be necessary to provide the beliefs and perceptions of rational choice models.

*In trying to determine how states infer how others will behave in the future from how they have behaved in the past we cannot ignore either psychological theory or empirical evidence.

*Political psychology’s commitment to diversity, complexity, and historically grounded empirical research provides firm foundations for a rich and powerful social science.

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY

-Humans are heterogeneous

-Different individuals will behave differently in different situations.

-Cultural differences are considered.

-Belief in diversity of people’s responses so simple stimulus-response models are insufficient because people differ in the extent to which they value various kinds of rewards.

-Explores diverse ways in which people think they can reach their goals.

-Stress the importance of development, change, and history; individuals and states have arrived in certain situations through some historical path which influenced their hopes, beliefs, fears, and expectations.

-Committed to detailed empirical work (necessary for scholarly understanding and adequate public policy), abstract theorizing, and should examine many cases.

-Predisposes us not to take facts as they are rather to explore the diverse yet patterned ways that people develop and pursue their goals, perceive and act in their environments, and make sense of their lives.

-ex. Philip Treiseman’s work on why many black students do badly in college math classes; Schelling, unlike game theorists, made clear the importance of the concepts of reputation and credibility.

RATIONAL CHOICE

-Can accommodate individual and cultural differences but it is analytically more convenient to regard all people and all...