Drawing on the 2024 scholarly article ID fusion and authorism Martel PolPsy 2024 prepare a short op-ed piece of no more than 750 words addressing at least one of the three political phenomena discussed in our course, drawing on at least one of the three psychological perspectives covered in class thus far. You may find the notes Applications of Attribution Theory to be useful in drawing some connections among topics and approaches.

Please note that this assignment is now due on Saturday June 15th rather than the 14th as originally scheduled.

This second paper, like the first, is to be short, no more than 750 words. Again it should take the form of an op-ed or guest essay of the sort found in major newspapers.

Again similar to the first paper, the goal of the paper is to demonstrate how a basic psychological approach can be an effective tool in analyzing contemporary populism, authoritarianism or political polarization either alone or in combination.

Rather than choose one of the classical approaches as in the first paper, this time you are to use one of the approaches covered in second part of the course. Therefore the choices on offer are: post war personality theory; social psychology of conformity & obedience; and social cognition.. Keep in mind citations should be sparing as this is again to be essentially a thought piece, not a research paper.

As with the first paper simple description of both the psychological approach and political phenomenon should be kept to the absolute minimum. Your focus is to be on analysis and synthesis. So identify the essential aspects of your psychological approach and how it sheds specific light on the politics of populism/authoritarianism or polarization. An excellent paper must provide strong evidence of a nuanced understanding of the psychological approach selected (analysis) and its specific application in understanding an instance of contemporary political life (synthesis). Of course, your paper should be well written.

As always, an excellent paper must be well written and organized with clear indications of originality.

Detail on grading standards are available here and through a link on the evaluation page.