PSY 350 Social Psychology: Annotated Bibliography

Aronson, E., & Tavris, C. (2020). The Role of Cognitive Dissonance in the Pandemic. The
Atlantic.

In the article, The Role of Cognitive Dissonance in the Pandemic, the authors relate to the

followers of Heavens Gates, a religious cult, and how they are an example of cognitive

dissonance. The authors describe cognitive dissonance as a motivational mechanism that

underlies the reluctance to admit mistakes or accept scientific findings. Cognitive dissonance was

established in the 1950s, where it was described as a feeling where cognition and behavior

contradict one another. An example they included was how people who feel strongly for a

political party or leader are more likely to distort their thinking and ignore the evidence against

the idea. Due to the increasing polarization in the United States, Americans now see the life or

death decisions regarding the Coronavirus as political instead of medical. Americans have to

decide who to believe in deciding on how to live. Overall they conclude that cognitive

dissonance theory has many different roles and situations it can be used for, and that's why

understanding the idea is essential in making decisions.

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 Fiorina, M. P., & Abrams, S. J. (2008). Political Polarization in the American Public. Annual
Review of Political Science, 11(1), 563-588. doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.053106.153836

In the article, Political Polarization in the American Public, the authors discuss how political

scientists have debated the rise of polarization in the United States for the past two decades. The

authors mention how they are studying mass polarization because it had not received attention

until recently. In the article, they survey the literature on mass polarization, where they begin the

discussion of how polarization came to be. Then they consider the evidence used to study

polarization, which they concluded that most evidence poses a problem. The most predominant

evidence they examine is how citizens react to public policy issues and their positions on the

topic. They conclude that this topic shows little to no indication of increased polarization over

the past few decades. They also state that party sorting has occurred, an increased correlation

between policy views and partisan identification. Along with geographic polarization, which is

still an open question as this has mixed reviews. The authors also indicate that there is still no

conclusive evidence supporting polarization that has stimulated voters to polarize or withdraw

from politics.

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 Świątkowski, W., & Dompnier, B. (2017). Replicability Crisis in Social Psychology: Looking at
the Past to Find New Pathways for the Future. International Review of Social Psychology,
30(1), 111–124. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.66

In the article, Replicability Crisis in Social Psychology: Looking at the Past to Find New

Pathways for the Future, the authors discuss if psychological studies are generally replicable.

There have been plenty of debates on this topic which have originated from scientific misconduct

in the field and recent discoveries of weak replicability rates of published literature. The article

goes into detail about how they examine the issues on replicability within psychology. They

highlight the possible causes for this replicability crisis, which are discussed at length. The

authors include topics such as statistical power, questionable research practices, publication

standards, and hidden auxiliary assumptions of context-dependency of social psychological

theories. They conclude with their findings that social psychology could benefit from having

McGuire’s perspectivist approach to create more replicable studies.

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 Van Baar, J. M., & FeldmanHall, O. (2021). The polarized mind in context: Interdisciplinary
approaches to the psychology of political polarization. American Psychologist. Advance
online publication.

In the article, The polarized mind in context: Interdisciplinary approaches to the psychology of

political polarization, the authors discuss how the ideology of political polarization historically

has centered around two main approaches within psychology. They state that studying cognitive

traits will predict one's susceptibility to polarized beliefs and contextual influences that spread

and reinforce polarized attitudes. They argue that they believe there has been a new approach to

cognition and understanding how polarization arises. They discuss how recent developments in

neuroimaging have led them to discover that psychological processing steps, such as attention,

semantic understanding, and emotion, can be used to identify where polarization occurs. This

research has provided them with information that can be used against the political polarization

that disrupts many democracies worldwide.

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