ABSTRACT
Most academic disciplines are marked both by distinctive core missions and by joint enterprises with adjacent disciplines. Psychology and political science are no exceptions. Psychology seeks to develop theories and knowledge about the determinants of individual behavior, whereas political science is more focused on aggregate outcomes. For example, a psychologist might be interested in the determinants of an individual head of state’s preferences, such as confrontation or compromise, whereas a political scientist would normally be more concerned with the determinants of relations between nations, such as wars or trade policies. Or a psychologist might focus on the determinants of individual voting behavior, such as the voter’s standing party preference or current employment situation, whereas a political scientist might be more concerned with what swings an election outcome to one side or the other, such as the strength of the economy, the success of an ongoing war, or prior scandals.
