As the world heads into the 21st century, the spread and operation of democracy around the world is on the minds of political leaders and citizens of many nations. Some countries are just embarking on democratic government for the first time; others are in the early years of implementing such government; and still other nations that had been practicing democracy for centuries are facing new challenges (e.g., concerns about public confidence in the electoral process in the U.S. and other nations). In order for leaders in governments and outside to make wise choices in managing the democratic process in all such nations, it is vital for them to understand how citizens think about politics, understand their responsibilities, choose when and how to take action in the political sphere, how and when groups of citizens come together to organize collective efforts to influence the course of history, and much more. At their core, all of these questions are matters of social psychology - they involve issues of how people think about themselves, their relations to other individuals, and their relations to the collectivities in which they exist. So to help government and private sector leaders understand their nations and constituents, study of the social psychology of politics is terrifically valuable, because it will help leaders to anticipate how the public will respond to their actions and to world, national, and regional events and how to pursue the best interests of the nation.
This grant will enhance the study of the social psychology of politics by training and energizing a new generation of scholars to work on these problems, both inside and outside of government. The Summer Institute in Political Psychology (SIPP) is a summer training program that lasts three weeks and brings together a group of 60 people from around the world to interact with some of the world's leading experts on the psychology underlying the political thinking and behavior of political leaders and ordinary citizens. To be held at Stanford University, SIPP will involve full days of lectures by faculty from Stanford and other universities and meetings of discussion groups to elaborate on the material covered in the lectures. In addition, participants will present their own ongoing research projects to their fellows to get feedback and suggestions. Additional sessions will describe job opportunities for political social psychologists in government and the private sector.
Since 1991, when SIPP was founded, it has been held 16 times and has attracted growing numbers of applicants from top colleges and universities around the nation and the world, many more than can be accommodated each year. SIPP participants have always included research personnel from federal agencies (e.g., the CIA, the DIA), from private sector organizations that help the US government carry out its work, from NGOs, and from the academic world (undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty) who wish to help and inform government as it carries out its work.
