Editor's Introduction (Part Two)

Abstract

As readers will recall from the previous issue of Political Psychology (April 2004), the special issue on prospect theory in political science and political psychology has been broken into two parts. substantive introduction to this topic and to the papers in the first part of the special issue appeared in April. This second commentary introduces the final three papers in this special issue. William Boettcher's article The Prospects for Prospect Theory: An Empirical Evaluation of International Relations Applications of Framing and Loss Aversion presents both an experimental test and a methodological critique of prospect theory as it has been used in political science. In particular, Boettcher notes, in line with Kahneman's (2000) argument, that political scientists confront unique challenges in seeking to apply the findings from laboratory experiments to realworld problems in international relations. Boettcher calls for a careful consideration of the signal differences between laboratory domains and those presented by real-world decision-making, which obviously present a whole host of pressures, constraints, and demands that would be impossible and unethical to simulate in a laboratory. As a result, the issues of external validity and generalizability remain open and subject to further empirical tests, validations, and/or discounting. Boettcher's article also reports the results of three experiments designed to examine the difference between domains in explicitly political contexts involving group decision-making. Like framing, group decision-making remains a fruitful area for the expansion and development of prospect theory in political science. Because few political decisions rest on one person's choice alone, and most political decisions involve some kind of group decision-making process, advances in the use of prospect theory in group interactions remain a crucial component of broader applicability for the model within political science. Boettcher's first experiment finds little support for the impact of framing on group polarization. second and third experiments suggest stronger support for predicted findings in the area of preference reversals, especially when the context of framing effects