Local and Geographical Aspects of Political Psychology

在博士课程中，我将研究地理心理学和政治心理学的交叉领域。在与行业伙伴和政治竞选专家DataPraxis的合作下，我将调查心理现象的空间分布，以及它如何影响政治结果，特别是在选举地理方面。第一个研究项目将探讨政治心理学文献中“传统智慧”发现的可复制性。在个人和地区层面上，五大人格特征与政治结果之间都有很好的相关模式。类似的研究关注道德基础和投票行为之间的关系，尽管这项研究仅限于个人层面。然而，这项研究的大部分集中在美国和英国的样本上，这两个国家在政治文化上有很强的相似性，特别是在选举制度、经济结构和突出的政策问题方面。因此，通过检验这些相关结构存在于政治格局更为多样化的其他国家的假设，可以作出重要贡献。第二个研究领域涉及这些政治预测心理现象的空间分布。在这里，文献有力地证明了五大人格特征在美国和英国的分布，但同样缺乏国际上的佐证。此外，关于道德基础的空间分布也没有大量的文献。在绘制空间分布时，有三个特征值得关注：单位内同质性、单位间异质性以及单位层面与其他现象（如政治、经济、社会和卫生结果）的相关性。这一部分的研究将试图得出关于人格和道德基础在这三个方面的分布的结论。

Over the course of the PhD, I will work at the intersection of geographical and political psychology. In collaboration with industry partner and political campaigning experts DataPraxis, I will investigate the spatial distribution of psychological phenomena and how that affects political outcomes, particularly in terms of electoral geography. The first research project will address the replicability of 'conventional wisdom' findings in the political psychology literature. There are well established correlational patterns between the Big Five personality traits and political outcomes, at both the individual and regional level. Similar research concerns the association between Moral Foundations and voting behaviour, though this research is confined to the individual level. However, the bulk of this research is focused on samples from the US and UK - states with strong similarities in political culture, especially in terms of electoral system, economic structure, and salient policy issues. An important contribution, therefore, can be made by testing the hypothesis that these correlational structures exist in other countries with more diverse political landscapes. A second research area concerns the spatial distribution of these politics-predicting psychological phenomena. Here, the literature is strong for the distribution of Big Five personality traits in the US and UK, but again it lacks international corroboration. Furthermore, there is no substantial literature on the spatial distribution of Moral Foundations. Three features are of interest in mapping spatial distributions: within-unit homogeneity, between-unit heterogeneity, and unit-level correlations with other phenomena (e.g. political, economic, social, and health outcomes). This part of the research will attempt to draw conclusions about the distribution of personality and moral foundations in terms of each of these three measures.