Category Archives: Political Psychology

Why I Became a Political Psychologist

Posted on September 21, 2013 by hessd

I didn’t know it at the time, but I became a political psychologist so I could study stories like this from all different angles.  The top of this story is how the City of Portland (Oregon) is handling the question … Continue reading →

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The Putin Critique

Posted on September 16, 2013 by hessd

Every time I taught P.S. 102 at Portland State University, we studied the effect of the electronic media on American politics.  And every time we studied that, we discovered that “bias” was everywhere.  Everyone who cared enough about an issue … Continue reading →

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What Steven Pinker Should Have Said

Posted on August 24, 2013 by hessd

On August 6, The New Republic published “Science Is Not Your Enemy: An impassioned plea to neglected novelists, embattled professors, and tenure-less historians,” an essay by Steven Pinker.  It was an attempt to claim the word “scientism” for scientists and … Continue reading →

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Grants Pass (rhymes with Alas), Oregon

Posted on August 14, 2013 by hessd

For some time, I have been pitching a schema that relates society, economy, and polity.  The goal of this device is to explore ways of keeping issues away from the polity, as small government advocates have been proposing. In Grants … Continue reading →

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Saving Normal

Posted on May 30, 2013 by hessd

Being “normal” is a little bit of a challenge.  There are several reasons why this is so.  One is that knowing what is “normal” is not always easy.  Then too, being “normal” is not always what one aspires to.  Also, … Continue reading →

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Remembering Bonnie Zawacki, Part II

Posted on May 22, 2013 by hessd

In Part I, I passed along to you Bonnie Klein’s recollections of herself as a college student; Bonnie Zawacki, studying causal attribution with me at Westminster College.  The two of us—Bonnie and I—talked about building a new lens, a lens … Continue reading →

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Remembering Socrates

Posted on May 14, 2013 by hessd

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates.  I don’t think I would go quite that far, myself.  I do think I would say that in most cases, the properly examined life is “better” than the alternatives.  This comes … Continue reading →

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Remembering Bonnie Zawacki

Posted on May 13, 2013 by hessd

Beyond any question, the most exciting project of my fifty years of teaching was helping students understand causal attribution.  “Causal attribution” is just giving a reason why something happened—it is attributing a cause to an event.  This has been on … Continue reading →

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Why Social Services Fail

Posted on May 1, 2013 by hessd

It is a part of the malady of our time that we try to see everything as a question of having the necessary skills.  Somewhere in the middle of my grad school experience, at a time when everything seemed to … Continue reading →

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Gay Children with Anti-Gay Parents

Posted on April 19, 2013 by hessd

I am in Hawaii today because I am trying to illustrate to myself that I am no longer teaching at Portland State University–or anywhere else.  That being the case, be alert for present tense verbs that have to do with … Continue reading →

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