Undergraduate Module Descriptor

POC3148: Political Psychology and Society

This module descriptor refers to the 2023/4 academic year.

Please note that this module is only delivered on the Penryn Campus.

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:

An Introduction to Political Psychology & Mass Decision-Making
Key concepts in political psychology
Political Socialization
Where do political attitudes come from?
How stable are political attitudes?
Obedience and Authoritarianism
The Milgram experiments
Theories of authoritarianism and their implications for democratic citizenship
Atrocities
From Norman atrocities to the present day. What makes ordinary people participate in atrocities?
Terrorism
Is there a ‘terrorist personality’?
Racism
How can political psychologists measure racism?
What causes racism?
Stereotype threat and the effects of racism on its targets
Tolerance
Theories of political tolerance and the implications of intolerance
Affect and Emotion
Traditional views of the detrimental effects of affect on decision-making
Contemporary views of ‘affective intelligence’ and the role of emotion in rational decision-making
Media
How do individuals process information from media?
What are the effects of media? Looking at agenda setting, priming, and framing. Misinformation.
Participation, Deliberation and Influence of Peers
Deliberative polls, explanation of their effects, and what they imply
Why people vote and the influence of social pressure
Neuroscience and Genetics
The neuroscientific turn in political psychology. The promise and limitation of fMRI
Contemporary research into genetic influences on political attitudes and behaviours and its implications for political psychology

This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:

Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities	Guided independent study	Placement / study abroad
22	128	0

...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:

Category	Hours of study time	Description
Scheduled Learning and Teaching	22	11 x 2 hour seminar
Guided Independent Study	128	Private study reading and preparing for seminars (around 6 hours of reading and note-taking per seminar); researching and writing essay (around 45 hours researching, planning and writing each essay). Around 17 hours researching, planning, and describing the experiment.

This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).