Reddit reviews The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology: Second Edition (Oxford Handbooks)

Sure, but it's not exactly easily accessible for the layman.

Check out the Polisci teams at UCLA and U Mich Ann Arbor, they do some of the best work in this stuff.

Try reading some books by David O. Sears. That's probably the easiest way to get into this stuff.

Or, if you want the closest thing to a survey overview, but still probably pretty dense and made for post-undergraduates, try the Oxford Handbook.

Political psychology, although typically considered a subfield, covers a wide range of variables (e.g., personality, decision-making, behavior, beliefs, emotion, conflict) from multiple levels of analysis (e.g., individual, group, state, system). Given that your thesis will inevitably consume a great deal of your time and effort, you'll want to focus on an area of political psychology that you find particularly interesting. Here are some resources that can help you pinpoint a topic:

• Political Psychology (the most prominent academic journal dedicated to political psychology)
• Political psychology (Wikipedia) [the list of prominent political psychologists toward the bottom of the page provides a decent starting point]
• The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology (Huddy, Sears, & Levy)
• Introduction to Political Psychology (Cottam, Dietz-Uhler, Elena Mastors, & Preston)
• Political Psychology: Neuroscience, Genetics, and Politics (Marcus)

However, it occurs to me that providing you a few links and telling you to "read!" might not be the most helpful approach, since I'm pointing you toward a forest when you eventually need to locate a specific tree. Does your college/university offer any courses that relate to political psychology? If so, I would consider taking them (or at least reaching out to the professors that offer them). [Note: Even if there aren't classes dedicated to the subject, your university likely has related courses (e.g., American politics, social psychology) that might be useful]. In my opinion, taking courses or talking to professors will likely benefit you even more than independent reading.

And lastly, since you asked, here are some specific areas of research (that I find intriguing), along with relevant recent publications (that I have enjoyed):

• The structure and determinants of political ideologies: 1, 2, 3, 4
• Personality characteristics in the political domain 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
• The dynamics of political information processing: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
• The efficacy of biological and neuroscientific explanations of political behavior: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Maybe one the aforementioned topics will interest you. If not, there are plenty other research foci out there (you might have noticed that I failed to include a topic related to foreign policy, a literature to which I haven't paid much attention recently). Best of luck!

I just so happen to be studying under a couple of authors within the Intro to PoliPsych book mentioned by /u/zaval, so I'm deep into this. If I'm going to be effective in providing some help, though, I need a few more details from you:

First, what topic within political psychology interests you? Are you interested in American politics or international politics? Group behavior or elite decision-making? Psychology of voters?

Second, is your thesis just a review of the field in general? If so, why do you need only recent publications? Much of the stuff being done right now has its roots much further back, so you'll likely need to cite at least a few sources from as far back as the 70s.

Finally, if I had to make some recommendations blind, I'd definitely second the suggestion of the textbook and Haidt. I'd also add the "Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology" and the International Society of Political Psychology's journal, "Political Psychology".