ABSTRACT
In this concluding chapter, John Sullivan reflects on his career as well as the history of the field of political psychology within the University of Minnesota and in other institutions. The chapter details the numerous collaborative relationships that helped to shape his ongoing orientation toward research in political psychology and political science. The chapter also considers the development and importance of the creation of a formal PhD minor program in political psychology and a unique research center, the Center for the Study of Political Psychology. In addition, the chapter elaborates on a “village research tradition” that was built at the University of Minnesota, and that was at that time rare in political science. At Minnesota, we followed the psychology model of teamwork and collaboration. Graduate students offered their best ideas and efforts freely and used their astonishing expertise to make their professors’ research better. This particular lifetime of experience in the academy taught the author that the best research is often (though not always) a fully collaborative and cooperative endeavor, not a singular individual effort. Public credit for successful research tends to be focused more directly on a subset of individuals rather than where it actually belongs, on the village.
