Political Psychology, What is it?

"..............what distinguishes political psychology from other sorts of political science is that we explain political phenomena by taking a psychologicalperspective. We could instead, for example, adopt an economic perspective, attributing significant political events to economic forces, which are typically more easily observable via purchase behavior, interest rates, unemployment rates, and the like. But instead, we place our emphasis on unobservable psychological processes unfolding in the minds of political actors.

Perhaps making a distinction between psychological political science and political psychology will lead researchers to be a bit more self-conscious about whether their work at any given moment can be considered either or both. Although nearly all the research being published with the label “political psychology” appears to be primarily psychological political science, some of this work may also be of great use for basic psychological theory-building. If we all make efforts to identify those components or aspects of our work and portray them explicitly as such whenever possible, our research can eventually be seen as contributing both to political science and to psychology, and perhaps ultimately in even measure. Such a balancing would undoubtedly be highly desirable, because the support for our enterprise would then run wide and deep on both sides of the disciplinary fence."