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"What shapes political behavior more: the situations in which individuals find themselves, or the internal psychological makeup--beliefs, values, and so on--of those individuals? This is perhaps the leading division within the psychological study of politics today. Political Psychology: Situations, Individuals, and Cases, 2nd edition, provides a concise, readable, and conceptually organized introduction to the topic of political psychology by examining this very question. Using this situationism--dispositionism framework--which roughly parallels the concerns of social and cognitive psychology--this book focuses on such key explanatory mechanisms as behaviorism, obedience, personality, groupthink, cognition, affect, emotion, and neuroscience to explore topics ranging from voting behavior and racism to terrorism and international relations. The new edition includes a new chapter on the psychology of the media and communication. Houghton has also updated the text to analyze recent political events such as the 2012 election, and to include up-and-coming research in the areas of neuroscience, behavioral economics, and more. Students and instructors will both benefit from the inclusion of new suggested readings, PowerPoints, and test banks available on the book's companion website."--

1. The fiasco factory : a Frank Drebin school of American foreign policy? -- 2. Don't know much about history : what's the difference between Iran and Iraq, again? -- 3. Republicans or democrats, and leadership in general : does it make a difference? -- 4. The trouble with congress -- 5. Special interests : how special are they? -- 6. Making foreign policy by image, sound bite, and opinion poll? -- 7. See no evil, hear no evil -- 8. Conclusions.

Hostage crises almost always involve a tradeoff between the "national honor"—bound up with national identity and a sense of self-esteem—and the desire to get hostages back safely and without loss of life. This was certainly the case in 1968, as President Lyndon Johnson and his advisers agonized over the crew of the USS Pueblo, which had been seized by North Korea while on an intelligence-gathering mission at the height of the Cold War. Such episodes also commonly lead to a frantic search for historical analogies and policy options that will attain one objective or another. Various historical analogies influenced the deliberations of U.S. policymakers as they looked beyond cases involving the seizure of intelligence-gathering ships to other types of hostage incident involving U.S. helicopters and spy planes. They gradually pieced together a solution to the problem at hand, much as one would a jigsaw puzzle.

In general, perceptions of Ruhollah Khomeini in the West can be divided into three distinct phases. In the first-from early to late 1978-he was fundamentally underestimated as a Figure of Irrelevance, a marginal religious personality of no real significance in a modern polity without a tradition of rule by the clergy. In the second, toward the end of 1978, he transformed into a Figure of Benevolence, a supporter of democratic rule over politics and whose intentions toward the United States and his own country were pure and benign. Lastly, after the seizure of the embassy had been accorded Khomeini's blessing in late 1979, he became a Figure of Malevolence, a ruthless dictator whose intentions were now the very opposite of those that many observers had originally conceived. He became the very basis of the 'Mad Mullah' stereotype which remains popular in the West today. Adapted from the source document.