Social psychology and politics

Hi everybody, in this topic I'm going to talk about psychology ! Surprise

Everytime I will post something to explain you the link between psychology and politic !

xoxo, Vincent.

Hi everybody, before starting, I will explain why I choose this subject. It talks about the link between psychology and politics, and it can help us to understand things like social movements, protest and activism. So if you've ever wondered why people gone down the street, psychology may explain their motivations !

This analyse can help you to understand what is inter-individual differences. Something that's not relevant for you, it may be for an other people. We don't have to minimize social movements and try to understand the reason why. It's not because you're not concerned that you should not pay attention.

This is an introduction, stay online to learn more

Vincent Balthazar wrote:Hi everybody, before starting, I will explain why I choose this subject. It talks about the link between psychology and politics, and it can help us to understand things like social movements, protest and activism. So if you've ever wondered why people gone down the street, psychology may explain their motivations !

This analyse can help you to understand what is inter-individual differences. Something that's not relevant for you, it may be for an other people. We don't have to minimize social movements and try to understand the reason why. It's not because you're not concerned that you should not pay attention.

This is an introduction, stay online to learn more

Sounds interesting. I'm waiting for your next instalment with bated breath.

First of all, if I chose this subject it's because everybody know I'm an "activist", but I want to understand why I'm so involved in multiply causes. Why some subjects are interesting me a lot, and why these subjects doesn't matter for the others.


So I read my article, and today's subject is : Social psychology and the study of politics. It's an introduction to understand better what we are talking about. According to this course, their is 3 different social psychological approaches to explain political ideologies :

- Personality : Our ideologies are linked with who we are
- Social identity : Our ideologies are linked with who we want to be, to match to our social groups
- Social constructionist : Our ideologies are linked with our social environment

Next time, I will itemize the three approach ! After, I hope I will be able to understand better why people had voted for Trump

Hi ! I'm back ! Today I know more about the link between psychology and politics, especially the link between the personal and the political. First we are going to understand what is the concept of personality thanks to the social psychology. So according to my article researchers tried to understand how the behavior of each person is consistent and stable across situations and contexts, and why they act in different ways from each others and why these behaviors can predict to whom they would vote for.

Psychologist shown by a study that people who are voting for more right-wing political parties describe themselves as more orderly, conventional and organised and those who are voting for more left-wing political parties consider themselves as more open-minded and creative. So we can conclude that your personality is linked to your political opinions !

That's not surprising me because I already studied this fact, in my courses at the university, during my psychology degree I studied "Stereotypes, prejudices and discriminations" and it shows me that there is a link between discrimination and personality. So if some political parties have some bad stereotyped discourses, we can say that there is a link between some of bad stereotypes and personality.

I'm very motived ! My article is very powerful and it remains me psychology courses so I decided to continue my reading. Now we are going to talk about the second point : the social identity !

As a reminder social identity your ideologies, who you wanna be, often it's linked with the social groups you wanna be part of. You act to not be rejected by the group you think you match with. So in fact if politics match with personality, it also match with social groups. Let's see what my article says about it.

They talk about Social Identity Approach (SIA), it says that according to the precedent post we all have a personality and we act for us, and we implicitly vote in the way we see ourselves, but we also belong to a group and we act to match with them too. Moreover the will to be a part of THIS groupe is a part of your personality. It provide you a sense of your place in the world. You feel you exist. To sum up everybody has a personal identity and also social identities, but it a part of yourself.

Sometimes the social identities prevail on personal identity, and for exemple during a sport event you see yourself belonging to a new group, and you feel comfortable with those who support the same team as yours. Conversely you consider that all the person who support an other team is belonging to an other group. In this context, it is group memberships that determine how people behave towards others.

Next time we will see how it can be applicate to politics.

Vincent Balthazar wrote:Hi ! I'm back ! Today I know more about the link between psychology and politics, especially the link between the personal and the political. First we are going to understand what is the concept of personality thanks to the social psychology. So according to my article researchers tried to understand how the behavior of each person is consistent and stable across situations and contexts, and why they act in different ways from each others and why these behaviors can predict to whom they would vote for.

Psychologist shown by a study that people who are voting for more right-wing political parties describe themselves as more orderly, conventional and organised and those who are voting for more left-wing political parties consider themselves as more open-minded and creative. So we can conclude that your personality is linked to your political opinions !

That's not surprising me because I already studied this fact, in my courses at the university, during my psychology degree I studied "Stereotypes, prejudices and discriminations" and it shows me that there is a link between discrimination and personality. So if some political parties have some bad stereotyped discourses, we can say that there is a link between some of bad stereotypes and personality.

Am I misunderstanding? The psychologists here seem to be saying there is a link between how you see yourself and how you vote but your last paragraph seems to allude to that being a bad stereotype. So is it true or not? If it's true, how is it a bad stereotype?

Vincent Balthazar wrote:I'm very motived ! My article is very powerful and it remains me psychology courses so I decided to continue my reading. Now we are going to talk about the second point : the social identity !

As a reminder social identity your ideologies, who you wanna be, often it's linked with the social groups you wanna be part of. You act to not be rejected by the group you think you match with. So in fact if politics match with personality, it also match with social groups. Let's see what my article says about it.

They talk about Social Identity Approach (SIA), it says that according to the precedent post we all have a personality and we act for us, and we implicitly vote in the way we see ourselves, but we also belong to a group and we act to match with them too. Moreover the will to be a part of THIS groupe is a part of your personality. It provide you a sense of your place in the world. You feel you exist. To sum up everybody has a personal identity and also social identities, but it a part of yourself.

Sometimes the social identities prevail on personal identity, and for exemple during a sport event you see yourself belonging to a new group, and you feel comfortable with those who support the same team as yours. Conversely you consider that all the person who support an other team is belonging to an other group. In this context, it is group memberships that determine how people behave towards others.

Next time we will see how it can be applicate to politics.

What about people who don't vote? Are they being influenced by their group?

Hi Vincent,

I don't really understand the link between Psychology and Politics ?
Can you explain in a simpler way?

Hi Vincent !
Your subjet is very interesting, I can't wait your next post.
As john asked before, I think people who don't vote belong to an other group, they are poeple who Don't recognize themselves in the others group such as the new right and left. Maybe you have a comment on the subject!

Admin wrote:

Vincent Balthazar wrote:Hi ! I'm back ! Today I know more about the link between psychology and politics, especially the link between the personal and the political. First we are going to understand what is the concept of personality thanks to the social psychology. So according to my article researchers tried to understand how the behavior of each person is consistent and stable across situations and contexts, and why they act in different ways from each others and why these behaviors can predict to whom they would vote for.

Psychologist shown by a study that people who are voting for more right-wing political parties describe themselves as more orderly, conventional and organised and those who are voting for more left-wing political parties consider themselves as more open-minded and creative. So we can conclude that your personality is linked to your political opinions !

That's not surprising me because I already studied this fact, in my courses at the university, during my psychology degree I studied "Stereotypes, prejudices and discriminations" and it shows me that there is a link between discrimination and personality. So if some political parties have some bad stereotyped discourses, we can say that there is a link between some of bad stereotypes and personality.

Am I misunderstanding? The psychologists here seem to be saying there is a link between how you see yourself and how you vote but your last paragraph seems to allude to that being a bad stereotype. So is it true or not? If it's true, how is it a bad stereotype?

Hello John, I hope I understood you comment ! In fact you see you define yourself as conventional you are more likely to vote for right-wing. But if you vote right-wing, often it's because you are agree with the ideologies spread by republicans. So, I don't know much about politics but right-wing always have stereotyped ideas about minorities. I think, their is a link between bad stereotypes, and personality for those who vote for right-wings parties, and this is why it's so hard to change their mind (about stereotyped ideas), because it's a part of themselves. I hope I managed to answer to your question, if I didn't succeed, can you ask me the question differently please.

Admin wrote:

Vincent Balthazar wrote:I'm very motived ! My article is very powerful and it remains me psychology courses so I decided to continue my reading. Now we are going to talk about the second point : the social identity !

As a reminder social identity your ideologies, who you wanna be, often it's linked with the social groups you wanna be part of. You act to not be rejected by the group you think you match with. So in fact if politics match with personality, it also match with social groups. Let's see what my article says about it.

They talk about Social Identity Approach (SIA), it says that according to the precedent post we all have a personality and we act for us, and we implicitly vote in the way we see ourselves, but we also belong to a group and we act to match with them too. Moreover the will to be a part of THIS groupe is a part of your personality. It provide you a sense of your place in the world. You feel you exist. To sum up everybody has a personal identity and also social identities, but it a part of yourself.

Sometimes the social identities prevail on personal identity, and for exemple during a sport event you see yourself belonging to a new group, and you feel comfortable with those who support the same team as yours. Conversely you consider that all the person who support an other team is belonging to an other group. In this context, it is group memberships that determine how people behave towards others.

Next time we will see how it can be applicate to politics.

What about people who don't vote? Are they being influenced by their group?

In my opinion, people who don't vote follow the same logic as those who vote. If you don't vote it's linked to your personality, and I guess that if we try to ask to those who don't vote to define themselves, they probably will describe themselves differently than those who vote for right-wings or left-wings. And I'm sur that we will discover that they all define themselves with the same adjectives (aproximatly).

Moreover I think we all are influenced by our group, but the reason why we vote or not, left, right is linked to our personality.

joachim natali wrote:Hi Vincent,

I don't really understand the link between Psychology and Politics ?
Can you explain in a simpler way?

Hello Joachim ! I'm going to explain you in two sentences :

Psychologists think that people who vote for right-wings define themselves differently than left-wings, and these description permit to psychologists to see that all those who vote for right-wings belong to the same groupe. So people define themselves as conventional for exemple, but in fact almost everyone in this group define themselves like this, so they are a part of a group.

This is what I'm saying when I say their is two kind of identities : social identities and personal identity, but in fact this is the same personne with his identity. They are different but not really at all.

Clémence Giraud wrote:Hi Vincent !
Your subjet is very interesting, I can't wait your next post.
As john asked before, I think people who don't vote belong to an other group, they are poeple who Don't recognize themselves in the others group such as the new right and left. Maybe you have a comment on the subject!

Yes I agree with that, and they define themselves differently than those who are voting for right-wings and left-wings. It's an other kind of group.

Hi Clémence, Joachim and John, I know you impatiently waiting for my next post ! Today I'm going to talk about the consequences of the crowd on our social identities.

As we know all the political changements had been accepted by collective requests ! Nothing would have changed if people had stayed at home. And, most changes are caused by people who gone down from the street. So the important notion here, is the "effect of the group" explaning this sentence from my article "people using mass protest as a method of demanding political changes".

So I'm going to explain why do some events remain peaceful and others turn conflictual ?


According to my article, if an a crowd events turn conflictual, for exemple for the "Gilets Jaunes". You may heard about what they done last week at the "Champs-Elysées", they destroyed the floor of the street. So my theory is that because of the increasing of the gasoil, taxes and other things... the purchasing power (for poor people) is decreasing. So we assist to interactions between two groups : those who are not really impacted (because they have "enough money") and those who are very impacted. From this moment, all the individual person who don't have much money become a crowd of protesters and develop a shared ‘anti-rich’ identity. So they destroyed a symbol of luxury : the Champs-Elysées.

If you have question I might be happy to answer it <3