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Political psychology has greatly benefited from work that together addresses the enormous variety of political problems faced by people around the world, including those that are universal (e.g., how one gains access to basic needs, how power should be governed) and problems that confront people in particular situations (e.g., transitions of governmental forms, war, group exclusion, rapid economic change, decolonization, external intervention, national dominance). Adopting multiple standpoints and research agendas is necessary for us collectively to make our work useful to publics and to further the work each of us does. Another strength of our discipline is to employ the assumptions of multiple disciplines and of a variety of research methods. I will illustrate these points with research examples from several ISPP members and discuss ways that those in our discipline try to confront the difficulties that lack of commonality in theory, standpoint, methods, and epistemological assumptions can pose. Finally, I will summarize some of the work that various ISPP members have done to promote the development of political psychology and our society this year and invite further suggestions and contributions from members in how we can serve one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In three surveys of adults in five nations, we investigated how shared beliefs about the political system motivate individuals' political engagement. Specifically, we tested whether individuals' beliefs that the political context is fair, noncorrupt, and their belief that they could influence politics motivates political engagement to a higher extent for higher‐ compared to lower‐status group members. In a novel use of social dominance theory, we theoretically conceived of these political beliefs as legitimizing ideologies, so that we predicted that people with higher social dominance orientation endorse these beliefs, which in turn enhance the motivation to engage in politics to support current social hierarchical systems. Moreover, we expected that these relationships would be stronger for higher‐ compared to lower‐status groups. These hypotheses were tested considering different levels of group status: wealth status within a country (Study 1), political‐regional differences within a country (Study 2), and international status (i.e., between countries; Study 3), and they were largely supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]