Masters in Political Science
Overview
The Master of Arts in Political Science degree at Stony Brook University is an innovative
program that uses the lens of psychology to better understand politics. Small courses
taught by our full-time faculty focus on the psychology of public opinion, attitude
change, persuasion, and political behavior. The program builds on our successful,
internationally renowned PhD program in political psychology. The program teaches
advanced skills in political psychology, public opinion, political attitudes, and
mobilization. The Political Science M.A. program will introduce students to theories
that help to make sense of public attitudes and behavior, familiarize them with core
research on the dynamics of attitudes and opinions, and provide them with first-hand
experience on the major research methods used to study the dynamics of public opinion
and behavior. Students in the M.A. program also have the option to get involved in
a research study with one of the faculty in the department and through the department’s
two political psychology labs. The program may be completed in a calendar year by
full-time students and within 2 years by students who select a part-time schedule.
The Faculty
Stony Brook's highly regarded Department of Political Science offers M.A. program
students a world class instructional faculty. These faculty members include internationally
recognized scholars in the fields of political psychology, public opinion, and political
behavior who have all published extensively on these topics. M.A. program faculty
members include Professors
Stanley Feldman and
Leonie Huddy who were co-editors of the international journal Political Psychology. Professors
Huddy and Feldman were also recent presidents of the International Society of Political
Psychology. Professor Huddy's research focuses on intergroup relations, prejudice,
and emotions. Professor Feldman has published on the role of values and personality
in politics, prejudice and intolerance, and emotion. Professor
Gallya Lahav is an expert on immigration attitudes and policies, especially in Western Europe.
Professor
Jennifer Jerit studies public opinion, political psychology, and political communication. Professor
Jason Barabas is an expert on experimental methods and the relationship between public opinion
and public policy. Professor
Peter DeScioli's research focuses on the role of morality and cooperation in politics. Professor
Yanna Krupnikov has published extensively on partisanship, prejudice, negative advertising, and voting.
Professor
Andrew Delton uses principles of evolutionary psychology to study cooperation and generosity in
humans.
Opportunities for Students
The M.A. program is designed to benefit students with diverse interests and career
goals. It will help to prepare students who wish to enter a PhD program in political
science, communications, or social psychology. Students take graduate level courses
in political psychology along with the statistics and research training that is critical
for more advanced study. A number of our M.A. students have been admitted to top ranked
PhD programs including Stony Brook University, the University of Maryland, Florida
State University, the University of Houston, and the University of Pittsburgh.
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The program will also benefit students interested in the fields of political campaigns,
public relations, media, polling, or those who work for federal or local legislators
or not-for–profit organizations. Courses in the program will illuminate the techniques
that can be used to mobilize support for a specific political candidate, build support
for a particular issue position, or alter public behavior such as electricity usage
or the purchase of more energy efficient appliances. An internship opportunity gives
students the chance to get experience working for a not-for-profit organization or
a relevant business as preparation for the job market. M.A. students can take advantage
of our participation in the SUNY Washington Internship Program which organizes internships
with a wide range of major public, political, and not-for-profit organizations such
as: The Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, the Pew Research
Center, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Democratic and Republican
National Committees, the Congressional Research Service, and many others. The Washington
Internship Program also provides career advice, counseling and networking that can
help students find interesting jobs after they complete the program.
Tuition and Fees
Tuition and fees at Stony Brook, set by the State University of New York, are considerably
below those of comparable programs on Long Island and throughout the greater New York
metropolitan area. Please visit the
Bursar's Website
for a current listing of fees.
To apply for need-based aid, including student loans, students should complete and
submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
Courses
POL570: Moral Politics
Many political issues ranging from capital punishment to same-sex marriage to wealth
redistribution are moral issues. This course will use moral psychology to better understand
public opinion, political debates, and political behavior. We will examine how moral
judgement differs from judgments based on self interest and altruism. We will address
the role of moral condemnation in political debates and how moral accusations clash
with arguments based on non-moral considerations such as economics, group loyalty,
or authority. Topics include alternative moral frames, liberal-conservative differences,
moral metaphors, and moral emotions. We will apply these concepts to understand public
opinion about political issues surrounding property, fairness, sexuality, religion,
and violence.
POL567: Culture, Values, and Public Opinion
This course investigates the evolution of values, cleavages, political space, and
issues in cross-national perspective (with particular focus on the advanced industrialized
countries of the US, Europe, Israel, Japan, and Australia). We begin our study with
the analysis of traditional socio-economic cleavages in determining issue positions,
and the ‘end of ideology’ theses propounded by comparative political scientists, such
as Daniel Bell and Francois Fukuyama, and elaborated by scholars of the behavioral
revolution such as Inglehart, Dalton, and Franklin. We then explore the strengths
and weaknesses of paradigm shifts to values, buttressed by public opinion data. Bringing
in cultural and neo-institutional explanations of political behavior and change, the
course weds individual level analysis and group behavior theories with rigorous empirical
testing. We will look at cross-national and longitudinal data sets to examine the
evolving political space stemming from new politics, identity politics, immigration,
and ‘new security’ threats in a global era. Finally, the course will conclude by looking
at how different levels of analyses (individual, group, and institutions) contribute
to explain contentious politics, ‘boundary-making (‘us’ and ‘them’), and the ‘politics
of difference’ across cultures.
POL 566: The Psychology of Voting
The course examines the key motivations, attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs that
guide voters in the process of making up their minds in choosing candidates in elections,
including the decision to turn out at all in elections. The list of topics includes
party identification (acquisition, genetic basis, development over the life cycle,
and historic change); opinions about policy issues and the conceptualization of politics
in ideological terms; the impact of valence issues (the economy and national security);
perceptions of candidates (personal as well as political qualities); group influence
on individual decisions, particularly racial attitudes; and the impact of the campaign
(media ads, debates etc.) on vote choices.
POL565: Persuasion and Propaganda
Politics at its core is about persuasion. It is about argumentation and debate, and
about bringing citizens to a particular way of thinking about an issue, candidacy,
or event. Given its centrality in the political process, understanding the dynamics
of political persuasion should be a high priority for the discipline. In a more theoretical
vein, the concept of “attitude” is among the most indispensable in the social sciences.
This course is intended to provide a survey of contemporary theory and research on
attitude formation and change. It is not intended to be a general course on the mass
media, but rather is concerned only with mass media research as it pertains to individual-level
political attitude processes. The course is divided into the following three sections:
(1) A consideration of basic concepts (e.g., what is an “attitude”), methodological
challenges, and recent developments (e.g., the distinction between implicit and explicit
attitudes); (2) An overview of major psychological theories of persuasion that attempt
to answer Harold Lasswell’s classic question: Who says what, in which channel, to
whom, with what effect? (3) An examination of the major agents of political persuasion
– the mass media, political elites, social context, and interpersonal processes.
POL564: Social Influence
In studying public opinion, people often focus on the arguments, information, and
overt attempts to persuade. In doing so, we neglect the impact of the social environment
in which an individual is situated. Friends, family, and aspects of the broader social
environment all deeply influence the attitudes people hold, the tenacity with which
they hold them, and the political behaviors they engage in. Rather than focusing
on direct persuasion, this course emphasizes the effect social context can have upon
people's opinions even without overt argumentation or even information exchange. Students
will learn about the influence of 1) other individuals (e.g. socialization, social
network influence), 2) social roles (e.g. power, obedience) 3) societal influence
(e.g. normative influence, conformity, deviance & rejection), and 4) influence from
other environmental sources (e.g. priming).
POL563: Thinking and Emotion in Public Opinion
This course reviews recent research in cognitive, social, and political psychology
on the interplay between cognition and emotion in explaining social and political
behavior. Traditionally, political science has viewed thinking as a conscious cognitive
process of intentional deliberation. Emotions and other feelings have been ignored
or seen as interfering with rational thought. Moreover, until recently there has
been almost no consideration of what psychologists call implicit or unconscious thought
processes in understanding public opinion. Psychologists and communications researchers
now understand that implicit events and processes (e.g., symbol or music cues in political
advertising) can have profound effects on how citizens evaluate political candidates,
groups, and issues. We will examine the traditional approach to political cognition
and consider how this recent research may alter our understanding of the formation
of public opinion.
POL562: Passionate Politics: Mobilization, Interest Groups and Social Movements
This course discusses political mobilization: the factors that motivate political
involvement and the consequences high levels of public engagement have on elections
and the development of public policy. The course begins with several high profile
examples of citizen engagement that have had noticeable impact on American politics.
This first section also includes a discussion of the various ways in which Americans
can be mobilized from involvement in election campaigns to the distribution of political
information via social networks. The course then shifts focus to cover the psychology
of political mobilization in detail, including the importance of group memberships
and identities, emotions, and values. An entire unit of the course is devoted to the
psychology of group membership in which the mobilizing power of identities and the
role of politically motivating emotions are discussed at length. Finally the last
section of the course is devoted to specific examples of political mobilization in
the U.S. including the environmental /green movement, issue groups such as the right-to-life
movement, racial politics, and highly polarized partisan politics. Overall, the course
is designed to illuminate the psychology of political mobilization and apply these
principles to contemporary American politics.
POL561: Dynamics of Public Opinion
This course provides an overview of the literature on public opinion. The course will
start by considering the micro-foundations of opinions and the psychology of opinion
holding. How much do people know about politics and other aspects of the social world?
What are the consequences of differences in knowledge and attitude strength? Building
from there, we will discuss the structure of attitudes and opinions, specifically,
the nature of political ideology. Research on the determinants of public opinion will
be considered, including theories of ideology. A number of determinants of opinions
will be discussed including values and personality. Finally, the course will examine
the dynamics of attitudes and opinions and their relationship to government policy
and larger social trends.
POL504: Research Design
This course will cover a variety of research methods that can be used to study attitudes
and opinions: Experimental methods (in laboratory and field settings), quasi-experimental
designs, surveys and questionnaires, and methods for studying various psychological
characteristics of attitudes such as reaction time and lexical decision tasks.
GRADUATE ADMISSIONS INFORMATION - MA
Political Science Graduate Admissions - MA
Graduate School online application
