La psicologia politica

[Autom. eng. transl.] Political psychology aims to understand the multiple phenomena that occur in the political sphere by applying the knowledge that emerged from research in social psychology. The chapter first focused on a definition of political ideology consolidated within psychology, reporting some differences that characterize conservatives and progressives / liberals. Overall, the differences refer to two main nuclei relating to the attitude of greater or lesser acceptance of social inequalities and change. These differences arise from two different world views: world seen as a competitive jungle or as particularly threatening. Furthermore, ideology is also described as functional to the individual to respond to epistemic, relational and existential needs. From this point of view, ideology is something that manifests itself in everyday life and is not only linked to the pure political sphere. Another area of research presented within the chapter concerns the processes by which a person (a voter, in this specific case) forms an opinion about a specific topic or candidate. An important element appears to be the face of the candidate and the competence perceived by the face itself. In addition to this aspect linked to non-verbal communication, the political environment is suitable for studying multiple types of verbal messages, including negative campaigns, or attacks on the political counterpart. The literature in this regard investigated the effects both on the source and on the target of the attack, suggesting a possible danger of boomerang effect for the source. However, the effects depend on many factors. The policy also deals with persuading people about certain contents and values, so we have seen how it is useful in this case to consider how a certain phenomenon is framed to meet the values and opinions of people.