Mailing Address
Psychology Department
N218 Elliott Hall
75 East River Road
Minneapolis, MN
55455-0344

Map/Directions

Main Office
Phone: 612-625-2818
Fax: 612-626-2079

 


Department Intranet

Christopher M. Federico

Associate Professor
Psychology and Political Science
N385 Elliott Hall, (612) 626-0560
federico@umn.edu

Education

Ph.D., 2001, UCLA
M.A., 1996, UCLA
B.A., 1995, UC Berkeley

 federico

Current Research Projects

Vita

Recent Courses

Introduction to Social Psychology
Analysis of Psychological Data
The Social Psychology of Prejudice and Intergroup Relations

Links

Center for the Study of Political Psychology
Department of Political Science

Statement of Interests

As a researcher and theorist, my interests fall primarily within the domain of political psychology. More precisely, I am interested in how a number of factors — namely, people's values and beliefs, the structural characteristics of their social environments, and their ability and willingness to use political information — interact to shape perceptions of the political world and attitudes toward objects in it. Currently, my research is centered on three specific topics: (1) the organization of whites' racial attitudes, with a particular focus on the role of educational attainment; (2) the cognitive and motivational antecedents of attitude and belief-system structure; and (3) moderators of the relationship between epistemic, existential, and relational motivations, and political attitudes.

Selected Publications

Books:

  • Borgida, E., Federico, C. M., & Sullivan, J. L. (in press). The political psychology of democratic citizenship. New York: Oxford University Press.

Journal Articles:

  • Federico, C. M. (2007). Expertise, evaluative motivation, and the structure of citizens' ideological commitments. Political Psychology, 28, 535-562.

  • Federico, C. M. (2006b). Ideology and the affective structure of whites' racial perceptions. Public Opinion Quarterly, 70, 327-353.

  • Federico, C. M. (2006a). Race, education, and individualism revisited. Journal of Politics, 68, 600-610.

  • Federico, C. M. (2005). Racial Perceptions and Evaluative Responses to Welfare: Does Education Attenuate Race-of-Target Effects? Political Psychology, 26, 683-698.

  • Federico, C. M. (2004a). Predicting Attitude Extremity: The Interactive Effects of Schema Development and the Need to Evaluate - and Their Mediation by Evaluative Integration. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1281-1294.

  • Federico, C. M. (2004b). When do welfare attitudes become racialized? The paradoxical effects of education. American Journal of Political Science, 48, 374-391.

  • Federico, C. M., Golec, A., & Dial, J. (2005). The Relationship Between Need for Closure and Support for Military Action Against Iraq: Moderating Effects of National Attachment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 621-632.

  • Federico, C. M., & Holmes, J. W. (2005). Education and the interface between racial attitudes and criminal-justice attitudes. Political Psychology, 26, 47-76.

  • Federico, C. M., & Schneider, M. (2007). Political expertise and the use of ideology: Moderating effects of evaluative motivation. Public Opinion Quarterly, 71, 221-252.

  • Federico, C. M., & Sidanius, J. (2002). Racism, ideology, and affirmative action, revisited: The antecedents and consequences of 'principled objections' to affirmative action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 488-502.

  • Golec, A., & Federico, C. M. (2004). Understanding responses to political conflict: Interactive effects of the need for closure and salient conflict schemas. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 750-762.

  • Golec de Zavala, A., Federico, C. M., Cislak, A., & Sigger, J. (2008). Need for closure and conflict-strategy preferences: Experimental evidence for the moderating role of salient conflict schemas. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 84-105.

Other Publications:

  • Federico, C. M., & Goren, P. (in press). Motivated social cognition and ideology: Is attention to elite discourse a prerequisite for epistemically motivated political affinities? In J. T. Jost, A. C. Kay, and H. Thorisdottir (Eds.), Social and psychological bases of ideology and system justification. New York: Oxford University Press.

  • Jost, J. T., Federico, C. M., & Napier, J. L. (in press). Ideology: its structure and functions. Annual Review of Psychology.

Current Research Materials

Ability, Motivation, and the Use of Ideology: Study 1
Ability, Motivation, and the Use of Ideology: Study 2
Ability, Motivation, and the Use of Ideology: Study 3a
Ability, Motivation, and the Use of Ideology: Study 3b