ABSTRACT
There are a number of ways to approach deWning political psychology. For a very long time, humans have inquired about their nature, seeking to reconcile their political beliefs and aspirations with what they took to be their underlying essence. It has been a common presumption that whatever this essence is, and however it might be stretched by growth or stunted by deprivation, we must begin with a sound understanding of human psychology. Aristotle, Plato, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Descartes, Hume, Hobbes, Locke, and Madison are just some of the most obvious who began in this fashion.1
Speculations about the “state of nature,” wherein the true, uncontaminated nature of humans would be revealed, abound in Western political philosophy.2 Additionally, “human nature” is taken to be at the heart of explaining how people, as organized in nations or communities, interact. When Herodotus and Thucydides wrote the earliest histories of the Greeks and of the wars that engaged them among the various city-states and between the
