Introduction to the module organization, structure and assignments.

Ways of understanding the origins of political attitudes, how and why people come to hold particular political attitudes.

Functions of political ideology in mass publics and nature of ideology as a useful construct in understanding political and social dynamics from a psychological perspective

Understanding how people make decisions in the political sphere, such as voting.

Effects of persuasion through mass media on people’s political opinions, preferences, and political behaviour

Approaching the onstructs of nationalism and patriotism and how they are defined and differentiated from a psychological perspective

Dynamics of racial attitudes and racial relations in politics. Gender and diversity

This week will explore the interaction of religion as an institution, religious beliefs, and political ideologies and behaviour

System justification theory and the mechanisms behind social stability and change, the people’s motivation to support the maintenance of a given social or political system and the boundary conditions of these processes

Dominance Orientation, and the Right Wing Authoritarianism – and how they work together in the political processes

Basic conceptualization and the differentiation of procedural justice.

This week will introduce some of the processes in collective action and in particular the psychological and social barriers to collective action.

Psychological approaches to understanding the global phenomenon of terrorism in terms of social processes, group dynamics, and individual motivations.

Summary of the module and preparation for final assigment

The aim of this integrative assignment is to assess students’ knowledge and understanding of the contents of the module and their ability to apply this knowledge to the analysis of modern political situations depicted in a film. The student is expected to use the materials covered in the Module (available in NEOlms), as well as to look for additional academic resources that can complement key ideas (e.g. books available at MIUC Library, resources located on the Internet). From the start of the module, students will be presented with the movies that they could use for this assessment. All of them are available at MIUC’s library. The analysis will be elaborated at home and submitted in Week 16 via NEOlms. During week 13 students can submit a draft to get valuable feedback from the module’s leader.