Psychology in Policy (eBook)

This book takes an insider perspective of the psychological issues of creating policy. Instead of considering what the products of policy are - often the case in psychological and political science work - this book examines the individual processes present in proposing and engaging with policy. The individual who engages with the policy and its meanings, the individual who resists the policy through conformity, and the individual who writes the policy for their own ideological purposes are all political actors in a psychological system.

This book puts forward a cultural political psychology as the psychological study of the process of values, policy, and power dynamics. Through exploring public policy through private policy generation and individual interaction, this book pushes theoretical understandings of policy and activism in new ways. Centering on an individual's own values in facing various policy restrictions from governments, parents, or peers, the importance of examining collective actions and also collective inactions of individuals is noted and expanded on in the text.

The book provides applications of its arguments through examining the processes of unionization and actualized democracy. It seeks to point out new research avenues, including the hypogeneralization of values, one's exclusion through activism, and everyday revolutions. This book addresses the centrality of the individual and meaning-making systems when considering where policy, politics, and psychology intersect.

This book is primarily addressed to psychologists and political scientists interested in how to make change in public policy. While the experiences within the book are United States-centric, the thoughts and theories behind them are meant to be applicable to a wide variety of political systems. As there is currently very little literature on the topic, this book seeks to fill the gap and offer concise information on such an important dimension of cultural and political psychology. It is expected that the book will be of great interest for researchers in these areas, as well as for graduate-level students. In particular, this book will be relevant to researchers and students working on political psychology, public policy, development, community psychology, social representations, semiotics, activism, and social movements, to name a few.

KEVIN R. CARRIERE is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, PA. He was the James Marshall Public Policy Postdoctoral Fellow for the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, working as a Policy Advisor for then Congresswoman Deb Haaland of New Mexico's 1^st District. His portfolio covered immigration, foreign policy, criminal justice, and labor. His research interests include increasing intergroup contact through disrupting meta-perceptions, effects of intergroup threat and perceived control on restricting human rights, the motivations and identity formation of collective action, and the perception and reactions to performative and structural activism. His edited books include Where culture and mind meet: Principles for a dynamic cultural psychology and Imagining collective futures: Perspectives from social, cultural, and political psychology. He is the Editorial Director of Culture & Psychology, Editor of the Virtual Series Issues for the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and an Associate Editor of Current Psychology.