During the last thirty years or so, political psychologists have turned out a great deal of empirical research and theory of which we can be quite proud. In the midst of this productive enterprise, we have occasionally taken time out to lobby other scholars outside our circles to make use of the theories and methods that we find most useful (e.g., Kinder and Palfrey 1993). Less often, we have taken a step back from our empirical work to don a self-critical hat and ask whether we are going about our enterprise in as constructive a fashion as we might (see, e.g., Kuklinski, Luskin, and Bolland 1991).

One purpose of this book is to do so quite deliberately. Other chapters address the questions of whether political psychology is sufficiently theoretical and whether it is sufficiently political, two matters on which we have been criticized by political scientists who take different approaches. In this chapter, I will address a different question, asking whether political psychology is sufficiently psychological.

My goal is to be controversial in raising philosophical issues about political psychology as an enterprise that may deserve more explicit consideration than they currently receive. In short, I will suggest that two very different sorts of political psychology are being carried on, sometimes within the same research project or even within the same paper.