Master of Arts in Political Psychology

Our Program

The majority of your courses will be taught by our full-time research faculty.

Below you can find a brief example of our curriculum, followed by short biographies of our faculty and information about their classes.

An Example of Our Curriculum

Our program is full-time and takes one calendar year to complete.

Fall Semester: 4 courses

- Introductory Statistics (POL 501)
- Research Methods (POL 504)
- Passionate Politics: Mobilization, Interest Groups, and Social Movements (POL 562)
- Behavioral Economics and Public Policy (POL 521)

Spring Semester: 4 courses

- Intermediate Statistics (POL 502)
- Dynamics of Public Opinion (POL 561)
- Moral Politics (POL 571)
- Culture, Values, and Public Opinion (POL 567)

Summer Semester: A capstone project
One of the following:

- Master’s Thesis (POL 568) (recommended for those intending to pursue doctoral study)
- Internship in MA in Political Science (POL 569) (recommended for all other students)

Our Faculty and Classes

Leonie Huddy

Leonie Huddy Teaches about Passionate Politics

Dr. Huddy is our department chair and a SUNY Distinguished Professor. She is a pioneer in creating the modern field of political psychology. For more on Dr. Huddy and her research, go here. Here’s what Dr. Huddy had to say about her course:

“In my Passionate Politics course, we’ll see how people’s social identities – their attachments to important groups in their lives – mobilize them to vote and be politically active. We’ll also look at the role of emotions like anger and anxiety in our political lives.”

This course discusses political mobilization: the factors that motivate political involvement and the consequences that high levels of public engagement have on elections and the development of public policy. The course begins with several high profile examples of citizen engagement that have had noticeable impact on American politics. This first section also includes a discussion of the various ways in which Americans can be mobilized from involvement in election campaigns to the distribution of political information via social networks. The course then shifts focus to cover the psychology of political mobilization in detail, including the importance of group memberships and identities, emotions, and values. An entire unit of the course is devoted to psychology of group membership in which the mobilizing power of identities and the role of politically motivating emotions are discussed at length. Finally the last section of the course is devoted to specific examples of political mobilization in the U.S. including the environment/green movement, issue groups such as the right-to-life movement, racial politics, and highly polarized partisan politics. Overall, the course is designed to illuminate the psychology of political mobilization and apply these principles to contemporary American politics.

Peter DeScioli teaches about Moral Politics

Dr. DeScioli is an Associate Professor. He studies how our moral minds lead us to create laws and politics. For more on Dr. DeScioli and his research, go here. Here’s what Dr. DeScioli had to say about his course:

“In my Moral Politics course, we’ll see how moral outrage can make citizens and legislators refuse to compromise. Our moral convictions can grind negotiations to a halt, leaving everyone worse off.”

Many political issues ranging from capital punishment to same-sex marriage to wealth redistribution are moral issues. This course will use moral psychology to better understand public opinion, political debates, and political behavior. We will examine how moral judgement differs from judgments based on self interest and altruism. We will address the role of moral condemnation in political debates and how moral accusations clash with arguments based on non-moral considerations such as economics, group loyalty, or authority. Topics include alternative moral frames, liberal-conservative differences, moral metaphors, and moral emotions. We will apply these concepts to understand public opinion about political issues surrounding property, fairness, sexuality, religion, and violence. Semesters offered- Fall and Spring Must be a student in POLMA program

Brian Guay Brian Guay teaches about the Dynamics of Public Opinion

Dr. Guay is an Assistant Professor. He studies misinformation and political polarization. For more on Dr. Guay and his research, go here. Here’s what Dr. Guay had to say about his course:

“In my Public Opinion course, we'll explore how people form beliefs and attitudes about the political world around them, and how this can lead to a strong democracy or the type of widespread polarization we see in the U.S. today.”

This course provides an overview of the literature on public opinion. The course will start by considering the micro-foundations of opinions and the psychology of opinion holding. How much do people know about politics and other aspects of the social world? What are the consequences of differences in knowledge and attitude strength? Building from there, we will discuss the structure of attitudes and opinions, specifically, the nature of political ideology. A number of determinants of opinions will be discussed including values and personality. Finally, the course will examine the dynamics of attitudes and opinions and their relationship to government policy and larger social trends.

Reuben Kline teaches about Behavioral Economics

Dr. Kline is an Associate Professor. His research uses insights from economics to make sense of politics, including topics like artificial intelligence and climate change. For more on Dr. Kline and his research, go here. Here’s what Dr. Kline had to say about his course:

“In my course on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy, we will see how policymakers can use our understanding of human psychology to design and implement better public policies. We’ll also learn the latest techniques for evaluating the effectiveness of a policy.”

Gallya Lahav teaches about Culture and Values

Dr. Lahav is a Professor in our department. She studies migration and integration in democracies. For more on Dr. Lahav and her research, go here. Here’s what Dr. Lahav had to say about her course:

“In my course on Culture, Values, and Public Opinion, we’ll see how democracies are affected by and react to culture, ideology, socio-economic cleavages, identity, and xenophobia. We’ll also go in depth with important, world-wide surveys such as the World Values Survey.”

This course investigates the evolution of values, cleavages, political space, and issues in cross-national perspective (with particular focus on the advanced industrialized countries of the US, Europe, Israel, Japan, and Australia). We begin our study with the analysis of traditional socio-economic cleavages in determining issue positions, and the `end of ideology¿ theses propounded by comparative political scientists, such as Daniel Bell and Francois Fukuyama, and elaborated by scholars of the behavioral revolution such as Inglehart, Dalton, and Franklin. We then explore the strengths and weaknesses of paradigm shifts to values, buttressed by public opinion data. Bringing in cultural and neo-institutional explanations of political behavior and change, the course weds individual level analysis and group behavior theories with rigorous empirical testing. We will look at cross-national and longitudinal data sets to examine the evolving political space stemming from new politics, identity politics, immigration, and "new security" threats in a global era. Finally, the course will conclude by looking at how different levels of analyses (individual, group, and institutions) contribute to explain contentious politics, `boundary-making ("us" and "them"), and the `politics of difference across cultures.

Andrew Delton teaches about Research Methods

Dr. Delton is the director of the MA in Political Psychology and an Associate Professor. He studies rationality and emotions in politics, including their role in the politics of climate change and social welfare. For more on Dr. Delton and his research, go here. In addition to running the MA program, Dr. Delton also teaches in it. Here’s what he had to say about his course:

“In my Research Design course, we’ll learn about the techniques that political scientists use to understand the world, including how to design surveys and experiments.”

This course will cover a variety of research methods that can be used to study attitudes and opinions: Experimental methods (in laboratory and field settings), quasi-experimental designs, surveys and questionnaires, and methods for studying various psychological characteristics of attitudes such as reaction time and lexical decision tasks.

Andrew Engelhardt teaches Statistics

Dr. Engelhardt is an Assistant Professor. He studies inclusion and group-based inequality in multi-racial democracies. For more on Dr. Engelhardt and his research, go here. Dr. Engelhardt teaches our course on Intermediate Statistics and this is what he had to say about it:

“In my Statistics course, we’ll learn how to use state-of-the art stats programs to analyze the data that political scientists collect.”

These courses acquaints students with statistics. They begins with the basics of applied statistical analysis, including probability and hypothesis testing, and builds to simple regression analysis. Intermediate statistics utilizes multivariate regression analysis and explores violations of the linear model.

*Please note that although this is a typical curriculum and set of faculty members, courses and professors may change based on department needs. The current course bulletin, with all graduate political science courses, can be found here.