Revisiting State Personhood and World Politics: Identity, Personality, and the IR Subject
... Yet, the application of these insights extends beyond individuals to societal groups and the state, and is generally characterised by an implicit equation of rational behaviour with (psychological) health and sanity (Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier 2011). Given the range of behaviours that are not conventionally rational, that is, based on utility maximisation, the discipline has begun to make room for psychoanalytical approaches that take seriously 'schizophrenic' (Naude 2022) or 'narcissistic' state behaviour (Hagstr€ om 2021). Arguably, a recently popular research programme like Ontological Security Studies is entirely based on an equation of ontological security with a form of 'psychological well-being' (Mitzen and Larson 2017, 3), allowing it to explain 'neurotic and (physically) self-harming behaviour' (Klose 2020, 854), often by giving a diagnosis of ontological insecurity. ...
Critical scholarship has long pointed to the problematic ways in which mainstream International Relations (IR) takes Westphalian state politics to be universally applicable, yet existing analyses fall short of providing an alternative grounding for IR. Departing from the close relationship between medicine and politics, this article advances two arguments. First, Westphalian IR is based on a particular Western conception of biomedicine. Second, biomedicine is treated as the hallmark of modern science, which exacerbates the discipline’s gatekeeping against ‘alternative’ scholarship that does not look like this particular description of science. By mobilising the notion of ‘cosmology’, we suggest that East Asian medicine (EAM), informed by Daoist yin-yang dialectics, can help to rethink the alleged universality of IR’s biomedical metatheoretical foundations. Specifically, we illustrate how the Westphalian state body and its territorial politics are made possible by biomedical knowledge, and how EAM’s relational cosmology and method of employing creative images helps to conceive shared communal bodies and re-evaluate territorial conflicts. Ultimately, this article argues for the necessity of a plurality of cosmological viewpoints in IR to overcome exclusionary oppositions in both the practice and study of global politics.
... Charlotte Epstein (Epstein 2018) uses Hegel's slave-master dialectic and Lacan's notion of fantasy to portray a desiring subject that challenges the mainstream understanding of agency. In their works, Vamık Volkan (2014) and Bianca Naude (Naude 2021) used psychoanalysis to examine global politics, arguing that non-human collective structures have personalities and a collective consciousness similar to humans, and that these structures are worthy of research. In his article, Cash (2020) criticised the ontological security literature based on Giddens and argued that an analysis using psychoanalysis would yield a more comprehensive and coherent result. ...
Observers have noted that world politics is replete with shame. Whether they observe this concerning the apologies regarding past atrocities, the felt necessity for revenge after a humiliating defeat, the feelings that populist leaders find antithetical to the greatness of their nation, or the affective responses to the latter's election, shame seems to be ubiquitous. Vital to understanding the particular politics of this emotion is the concept of state shame. However, the origins, divergent effects, and social and moral roles of state shame are left obscure in International Relations (IR) scholarship, making the concept undertheorized and in need of further elaboration. The primary goal of this research is to (re)conceptualize state shame as a narrative on the social position of the state by building on insights developed by IR theory, sociology, and social psychology. Moreover, the article proposes four types of state shame narratives, namely situational shame, narcissistic shame, aggressive shame, and deferential shame, that can separately account for the divergent effects and social and moral roles that the emotion can be attributed with. These four types, and the politics that characterize them, aim to capture and explain lived practices and meanings that state shame can come to hold.
Order is a seemingly key concept in ontological security (OS). Yet work on “order” found in International Relations (IR) is often only treated tangentially (via anxiety, insecurity, and other more central referents) in ontological security studies (OSS). This article seeks to move the literature within OSS forward by taking on the challenge of acknowledging and speaking to its politics, and its ethics by centralizing the importance of order as a value. The article confronts criticisms against, and challenges of, OS by revisiting the pluralist versus solidarist debates in the “English School” of IR regarding order and justice. It then reads through recent work in OSS with these insights, examining the order versus justice tensions within several domains and topics in OSS. The article concludes that an ethics of OSS can confront and challenge inequalities and violence that follow from certain forms of order, and ordering, without concluding that one must resist all forms of order.
This chapter asks how we might think globally about (the study of) foreign policy. One of the most significant questions that arises is whether or not to assume difference in the way in which the international is experienced, understood and enacted in different parts of the world. After a brief overview of criticism of the Eurocentric biases and assumptions that have traditionally shaped both Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) and the broader study of foreign policy, the chapter turns to existing attempts at addressing Eurocentrism by outlining some of the different approaches taken by scholars. The final section applies a relational approach to understanding South Africa’s foreign policy, focusing in particular on the notion of relational circles, and reflects on questions and insights raised by this case.
Building on an earlier analysis (Smith, Braveboy-Wagner (ed), Diplomatic Strategies of Leading Nations in the Global South, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2016) of South Africa’s international relations in a rapidly evolving and fluid international order, this chapter reviews the foreign policy and diplomatic strategies and drivers of this global-regional power, now thirty years after the transition from apartheid to democracy. By highlighting patterns of continuity and change, it is argued that South Africa’s motivations for pursuing regional and global ambitions are based on a mix of instrumentalist and normative considerations. It also considers how successful these strategies have been, and outlines some of the challenges facing the country in achieving its national interests and influencing global governance. In addition to navigating the dynamics of a changing global order characterized by fragmentation and geopolitical shifts, South Africa’s domestic problems present perhaps the greatest challenge to its regional and global influence. In conclusion, the South African case indicates that while foreign policy ambiguity is often highlighted as a major impediment, it could also simply be understood as an inescapable outcome of foreign policymaking in a complex, multilateral international setting.
The traditional Laing–Giddens paradigm views ontological insecurity as an unusual mental state triggered by critical situations and characterized by feelings of anxiety, disorientation and paralysis. However, theories inspired by Lacan suggest a different perspective, stating that ontological insecurity is not an exception but rather a regular state of mind. Similarly, ontological security is a fantasy stemming from the desire to fill the primordial lack, thus fuelling agency. While these Lacanian interpretations have introduced a fresh viewpoint into Ontological Security Studies (OSS), they have not fully incorporated one of the key concepts from Lacanian psychoanalysis – the object-cause of desire (French: objet petit a) – into international relations theory. In this article, we present a framework of how to conceptualize and empirically study the objects-cause of desire in world politics. Our arguments are exemplified in a case study of Serbia's resistance to Kosovo's UNESCO membership in 2015.
The complexities and scope of environmental issues have not only outpaced the capacities and responsiveness of traditional political actors but also generated new innovations, constituencies, and approaches to governing environmental problems. In response, comparative environmental politics (CEP) has emerged as a vibrant and growing field of scholarly inquiry, embracing new questions and methods even as it addresses enduring questions in the broader field of comparative politics. Utilizing a range of methodological approaches, The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Politics delves into more traditional forms of CEP--the political economy of natural resources and the role of corporations and supply chains--while also showcasing new trends in CEP scholarship, particularly the comparative study of environmental injustice and intersectional inequities.
Moving beyond the field's earlier work that focused on cross-national comparisons of political institutions, regulatory styles, and state-society relations, the Handbook includes approaches from political science, anthropology, sociology, geography, gender theory, law, human rights, and development studies. Moreover, the chapters highlight scholarship from a broader range of regions, and analyze the construction and diffusion of norms, rights, ethics, and ideology across the globe and through various social movements (with a focus on approaches from the Global South). Including 42 chapters, organized across 9 sections, The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Politics explores some of the most important environmental issues through the lens of comparative politics, including energy, climate change, food, health, urbanization, waste, and sustainability.
In our study, we investigated the relationship between collective narcissism and group-based moral exclusion. Since collective narcissists are motivated to see their group as unique and superior, and tend to show hostility towards outgroups threatening this presumed superiority, we hypothesized that perceived intergroup threat and social distance can mediate the relationship between collective narcissism and group-based moral exclusion. We tested this assumption in two intergroup contexts by investigating the beliefs of members of the Hungarian majority population about Muslim immigrants and Roma people. Our results showed that collective narcissism had a positive indirect effect on group-based moral exclusion in the case of both outgroups. Furthermore, both threat and social distance were significant mediators in the case of Muslim immigrants, but mostly social distance mediated the indirect effect of collective narcissism on moral exclusion of the Roma. These results indicate that collective narcissists tend to rationalize their intergroup hostility by the mechanism of motivated moral exclusion, and to find suitable justifications for doing so.
Emotion can result from interpreting group actions as reflecting on the self due to an association between the two. This volume considers the nature of collective guilt, the antecedent conditions necessary for it to be experienced, how it can be measured, as well as how collective guilt differs from other group based emotions. Research from Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, and the USA addresses critical questions concerning the who, when, and why of the experience of collective guilt. The political implications of collective guilt and forgiveness for the past are considered, and how those might depend on the national context. How collective guilt can be harnessed and used to create a more peaceful future for groups with a history of violence between then is emphasized.
Personality Theories: Critical Perspectives is the groundbreaking, final text written by Albert Ellis long considered the founder of cognitive behavioral therapies and Mike Abrams. The book provides students with supporting and contradictory evidence for the development of personality theories through time. Without condemning the founding theorists who came before him, Ellis builds on more than a century of psychological research to re-examine the theories of Freud, Jung, and Adler while taking an equally critical look at modern, research-based theories, including an expanded version of Albert Ellis's own theory.
Background:
Research into the personality trait of narcissism have advanced further understanding of the pathological concomitants of grandiosity, vulnerability and interpersonal antagonism. Recent research has established some of the interpersonal impacts on others from being in a close relationship with someone having such traits of pathological narcissism, but no qualitative studies exist. Individuals with pathological narcissism express many of their difficulties of identity and emotion regulation within the context of significant interpersonal relationships thus studying these impacts on others is warranted.
Method:
We asked the relatives of people high in narcissistic traits (indexed by scoring above a cut-off on a narcissism screening measure) to describe their relationships (N = 436; current romantic partners [56.2%]; former romantic partners [19.7%]; family members [21.3%]). Participants were asked to describe their relative and their interactions with them. Verbatim responses were thematically analysed.
Results:
Participants described 'grandiosity' in their relative: requiring admiration, showing arrogance, entitlement, envy, exploitativeness, grandiose fantasy, lack empathy, self-importance and interpersonal charm. Participants also described 'vulnerability' of the relative: contingent self-esteem, hypersensitivity and insecurity, affective instability, emptiness, rage, devaluation, hiding the self and victimhood. These grandiose and vulnerable characteristics were commonly reported together (69% of respondents). Participants also described perfectionistic (anankastic), vengeful (antisocial) and suspicious (paranoid) features. Instances of relatives childhood trauma, excessive religiosity and substance abuse were also described.
Conclusions:
These findings lend support to the importance of assessing the whole dimension of the narcissistic personality, as well as associated personality patterns. On the findings reported here, the vulnerable aspect of pathological narcissism impacts others in an insidious way given the core deficits of feelings of emptiness and affective instability. These findings have clinical implications for diagnosis and treatment in that the initial spectrum of complaints may be misdiagnosed unless the complete picture is understood. Living with a person with pathological narcissism can be marked by experiencing a person who shows large fluctuations in affect, oscillating attitudes and contradictory needs.
This article scrutinizes two concepts central to the ontological security framework, agency and anxiety. Its point of departure is the view that conceptions of agency are expressed in the attempt to become ontologically secure, which requires a more careful look at how humans try to satisfy the need for a ‘stable sense of Self’ by putting in place ‘anxiety controlling mechanisms’. This, in turn, raises the question what these mechanisms are supposed to control, which shifts attention to the concept of ‘anxiety’. Going back to Kierkegaard's original treatment and Heidegger's existential phenomenology, the article reviews the emergence of anxiety as a core feature of the human condition and highlights what it calls the ‘anxiety paradox’: the tendency of reflexive humans facing the freedom of being in time to attach themselves to constructs that provide a sense of temporal continuity, or certainty. The article argues that the existing ontological security literature is trapped in this paradox and therefore cannot account for radical forms of agency.
Research on national collective narcissism, the belief and resentment that a nation's exceptionality is not sufficiently recognized by others, provides a theoretical framework for understanding the psychological motivations behind the support for right‐wing populism. It bridges the findings regarding the economic and sociocultural conditions implicated in the rise of right‐wing populism and the findings regarding leadership processes necessary for it to find its political expression. The conditions are interpreted as producing violations to established expectations regarding self‐importance via the gradual repeal of the traditional criteria by which members of hegemonic groups evaluated their self‐worth. Populist leaders propagate a social identity organized around the collective narcissistic resentment, enhance it, and propose external explanations for frustration of self and in‐group‐importance. This garners them a committed followership. Research on collective narcissism indicates that distress resulting from violated expectations regarding self‐importance stands behind collective narcissism and its narrow vision of “true” national identity (the people), rejection and hostility toward stigmatized in‐group members and out‐groups as well as the association between collective narcissism and conspiratorial thinking.
The current use of social media platforms by active young users/creators of visual content provides an easy medium to achieve narcissistic goals of self-promotion and attention-seeking, and to socialize with self-objectification experiences. One of the most popular activities associated with social media use is selfie-sharing. Consequently, the global focus on online physical appearance approval could reinforce selfie-engagement as a specific body image-related behavior, potentially associated with selfie-marketing strategies for self-improvement, and problematic social media use. The present study evaluated the main direct effect of pathological narcissism, objectified body consciousness, and expectations toward selfies on young women’s and men’s selfie-engagement. A total of 570 young adults (66.8% females; mean age = 24.4 years, SD = 3.6) participated in an online survey study. Variables were assessed using the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (Fossati, Feeney, Pincus, Borroni, & Maffei, 2015), Objectified Body Consciousness Scale (Dakanalis et al., 2015), Selfie-expectancies Scale (Boursier & Manna, 2018), and a measure of selfie-engagement. Hierarchical regression analyses were performed on independent male and female subsamples. Results showed that body surveillance and positive selfie-expectancies are consistent selfie-behavior predictors, among both men (R² = 0.227; p < .001) and women (R² = 0.332; p < .001). Furthermore, findings confirm women’s involvement in appearance concerns and body-image related practices, even though men’s engagement in body-objectification deserve attention. The study provides novel findings in the field of self-objectification research as well as contributing to the ongoing debate concerning which psychological factors can be predictive of males’ and females’ selfie-engagement. The implications of these findings are also discussed in light of the debate on social media use and misuse.
What motivates selfie-posting on social media? Although several studies suggest that narcissistic traits predict online behaviors, different types of narcissism may influence specific online behaviors. In the existing literature, two types of narcissism are frequently considered, overt (externally directed) and covert (internally directed) narcissism, where overt narcissism is the better-known construct. The utility of using the broader construct of overt narcissism, as opposed to specific sub-components, is a matter of ongoing debate in the literature and little research has explored the factor structure of covert narcissism at all. The subcomponents of both types of narcissism are used to explore participants' motivations for selfie-posting, in addition to community membership (i.e. culture) and demographics. Therefore, the current study investigated whether selfie-posting could be predicted by narcissism, demographics, and community membership. Participants from the Midwest US (n = 194), Northeast US (n = 276), and the Lebanese Republic (n = 260) took an online survey. Results supported a two-component structure for covert narcissism, suggesting that this variable should be considered multidimensional in nature. Selfie-posting frequency was predicted by gender, geographic community, and grandiose narcissism. Participants who were female, from the Northeast, and reported more grandiose narcissism posted selfies more frequently. Findings suggest that selfie-posting is favored by those with more histrionic tendencies (grandiose narcissism) and that community norms, including those which shape gendered behavior, likely play a role in the active use of social media sites.
Background
Social inclusion is a human right for all people, including people with mental illness. It is also an important part of recovery from mental illness. In Timor-Leste, no research has investigated the social experiences of people with mental illness and their families. To fill this knowledge gap and inform ongoing mental health system strengthening, we investigated the experiences of social inclusion and exclusion of people with mental illness and their families in Timor-Leste.
Methods
Eighty-five participants from the following stakeholder groups across multiple locations in Timor-Leste were interviewed: (1) people with mental illness and their families; (2) mental health and social service providers; (3) government decision makers; (4) civil society members; and (5) other community members. Framework analysis was used to analyse interview transcripts.
Results
People with mental illness in Timor-Leste were found to face widespread, multi-faceted sociocultural, economic and political exclusion. People with mental illness were stigmatised as a consequence of beliefs that they were dangerous and lacked capacity, and experienced instances of bullying, physical and sexual violence, and confinement. Several barriers to formal employment, educational, social protection and legal systems were identified. Experiences of social inclusion for people with mental illness were also described at family and community levels. People with mental illness were included through family and community structures that promoted unity and acceptance. They also had opportunities to participate in activities surrounding family life and livelihoods that contributed to intergenerational well-being. Some, but not all, Timorese people with mental illness benefited from disability-inclusive programming and policies, including the disability pension, training programs and peer support.
Conclusions
These findings highlight the need to combat social exclusion of people with mental illness and their families by harnessing local Timorese sociocultural strengths. Such an approach could centre around people with mental illness and their families to: increase population mental health awareness; bolster rights-based and culturally-grounded mental health services; and promote inclusive and accessible services and systems across sectors.
This article proposes a new theoretical framework for the reviewed state‐of‐the‐art research on collective narcissism—the belief that the ingroup’s exceptionality is not sufficiently appreciated by others. Collective narcissism is motivated by the investment of an undermined sense of self‐esteem into the belief in the ingroup’s entitlement to privilege. Collective narcissism lies in the heart of populist rhetoric. The belief in ingroup’s exceptionality compensates the undermined sense of self‐worth, leaving collective narcissists hypervigilant to signs of threat to the ingroup’s position. People endorsing the collective narcissistic belief are prone to biased perceptions of intergroup situations and to conspiratorial thinking. They retaliate to imagined provocations against the ingroup but sometimes overlook real threats. They are prejudiced and hostile. Deficits in emotional regulation, hostile attribution bias, and vindictiveness lie behind the robust link between collective narcissism and intergroup hostility. Interventions that support the regulation of negative emotions, such as experiencing self‐transcendent emotions, decrease the link between collective narcissism and intergroup hostility and offer further insights into the nature of collective narcissism.
Collective personalities refer to temporally consistent behavioral differences between distinct social groups. This phenomenon is a ubiquitous and key feature of social groups in nature, as virtually every study conducted to date has documented repeatable between-group differences in collective behavior, and has revealed ongoing selection on these traits in both the laboratory and field environments. Five years ago, foundational reviews by Bengston and Jandt pioneered this topic and delimited the present knowledge on collective personality. Here, we update these reviews by summarizing the recent works conducted in the field’s most prominent model systems: social spiders and eusocial insects. After presenting how these recent works helped scientists to better understand the determinants of collective personality, we used a trait-by-trait format to compare and contrast the results and thematic trends obtained in these taxa on 10 major aspects of collective personality: division of labor, foraging, exploration, boldness, defensive behavior, aggressiveness, decision-making, cognition, learning, and nest construction. We then discuss why similarities and dissimilarities in these results open the door to applying numerous theories developed in evolutionary behavioral ecology for individual traits (e.g., life history theory, game theory, optimal foraging theory) at the colony level, and close by providing examples of unexamined questions in this field that are ripe for new inquiries. We conclude that collective personality, as a framework, has the potential to improve our general understanding of how selection acts on intraspecific variation in collective phenotypes that are of key importance across arthropod societies and beyond.
The behavioural composition of a group and the dynamics of social interactions can both influence how social animals work collectively. For example, individuals exhibiting certain behavioural tendencies may have a disproportionately large impact on the group, and so are referred to as keystone individuals, while interactions between individuals can facilitate information transmission about resources. Despite the potential impact of both behavioural composition and interactions on collective behaviour, the relationship between consistent behaviours (also known as personalities) and social interactions remains poorly understood. Here, we use stochastic actor-oriented models to uncover the interdependencies between boldness and social interactions in the social spider Stegodyphus dumicola We find that boldness has no effect on the likelihood of forming social interactions, but interactions do affect boldness, and lead to an increase in the boldness of the shyer individual. Furthermore, spiders tend to interact with the same individuals as their neighbours. In general, boldness decreases over time, but once an individual's boldness begins to increase, this increase accelerates, suggesting a positive feedback mechanism. These dynamics of interactions and boldness result in skewed boldness distributions of a few bold individuals and many shy individuals, as observed in nature. This group behavioural composition facilitates efficient collective behaviours, such as rapid collective prey attack. Thus, by examining the relationship between behaviour and interactions, we reveal the mechanisms that underlie the emergence of adaptive group composition and collective behaviour.
Over the past few years, social networking site usage has increased rapidly, in particular as concerns photo-sharing and self-portrait photographs (so-called selfies). In the academic literature, some studies have recently analyzed the psychological antecedents of selfie posting behavior to better understand its underlying mechanism. Generally, scholars consider the use of selfies as a means of online self-presentation. In the present research, the effects of two personality traits known to impact self-presentation (i.e. narcissism and self-esteem) are investigated, considering the mediation effects of four selfie posting motives: attention-seeking, communication, archiving, and entertainment. Results on 237 participants show that selfie posting motives, narcissism and self-esteem are differently linked to frequencies depending on the type of selfie posted online (whether own, group, or partner). Moreover, the path analysis model shows that, even if positively correlated between them, self-esteem and narcissism have different motives underlying the use of selfies. In particular, narcissistic people engage in selfie posting behaviors because of a search for the attention of others and the urge to escape from boredom. Contrariwise, these are the two motives for which people with high self-esteem do not get involved in selfie-posting behaviors.
Narcissism scores are higher in individualistic cultures compared with more collectivistic cultures. However, the impact of sociocultural factors on narcissism and self-esteem has not been well described. Germany was formerly divided into two different social systems, each with distinct economic, political and national cultures, and was reunified in 1989/90. Between 1949 and 1989/90, West Germany had an individualistic culture, whereas East Germany had a more collectivistic culture. The German reunification provides an exceptional opportunity to investigate the impact of sociocultural and generational differences on narcissism and self-esteem. In this study, we used an anonymous online survey to assess grandiose narcissism with the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) and the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI) to assess grandiose and vulnerable aspects of narcissism, and self-esteem with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSE) in 1,025 German individuals. Data were analyzed according to age and place of birth. Our results showed that grandiose narcissism was higher and self-esteem was lower in individuals who grew up in former West Germany compared with former East Germany. Further analyses indicated no significant differences in grandiose narcissism, vulnerable narcissism or self-esteem in individuals that entered school after the German reunification (≤ 5 years of age in 1989). In the middle age cohort (6–18 years of age in 1989), significant differences in vulnerable narcissism, grandiose narcissism and self-esteem were observed. In the oldest age cohort (> 19 years of age in 1989), significant differences were only found in one of the two scales assessing grandiose narcissism (NPI). Our data provides empirical evidence that sociocultural factors are associated with differences in narcissism and self-esteem.
What is the role of ontological security in the constitution and mainte-
nance of security communities? Traditionally, security community members are
seen to maintain dependable expectations of peaceful change , rooted in mutual trust
and a sense of ‘we-ne ss’. Thus, they seem ontologically secure in their collective
identity. I argue, however, that security communities need not only to reinforce a
sense of ‘we-ness’ but also to recognise members’ distinctiveness. Denying this
recognition threatens the self, undermining trust and eroding ‘we-ness’, while
intersubjective expectations and practices that routine ly legitimise members’ dis-
tinctiveness allow for a stable sense of self within the community. Th us, processes
of (de)legitimation of distinctiveness vis-a`-vis a collec tive identity constitut e and
maintain communities or explain their breakdown. The paper makes three main
contributions: First, with regard to the ontological security literature, it highlights
that routinising relations with others is an ongoing struggle for recognition, a pro-
cess that may in fact be highly conflictual. Second, with regard to the security
community literature, it theorises the overlap and tension between members’ sense
of self and their collective identity. Third, it argues that focusing on struggles for
recognition and different layers of identity provides better purchase for under-
standing challenges to cohesion in security communities.
Narcissists often pursue leadership and are selected for leadership positions by others. At the same time, they act in their own best interest, putting the needs and interests of others at risk. While theoretical arguments clearly link narcissism and leadership, the question whether leader narcissism is good or bad for organizations and their members remains unanswered. Narcissism seems to have two sides, a bright and a dark one. This systematic literature review seeks to contribute to the ongoing academic discussion about the positive or negative impact of leader narcissism in organizations. Forty-five original research articles were categorized according to outcomes at three levels of analysis: the dyadic level (focusing on leader-follower relationships), the team level (focusing on work teams and small groups), and the organizational level. On this basis, we first summarized the current state of knowledge about the impact that leader narcissism has on outcomes at different levels of analysis. Next, we revealed similarities and contradictions between research findings within and across levels of analysis, highlighting persistent inconsistencies concerning the question whether leader narcissism has positive or negative consequences. Finally, we outlined theoretical and methodological implications for future studies of leader narcissism. This multi-level perspective ascertains a new, systematic view of leader narcissism and its consequences for organizations and their stakeholders. The article demonstrates the need for future research in the field of leader narcissism and opens up new avenues for inquiry.
Intrinsic motivation refers to people’s spontaneous tendencies to be curious and interested, to seek out challenges and to exercise and develop their skills and knowledge, even in the absence of operationally separable rewards. Over the past four decades, experimental and field research guided by self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan and Deci, 2017) has found intrinsic motivation to predict enhanced learning, performance, creativity, optimal development and psychological wellness. Only recently, however, have studies begun to examine the neurobiological substrates of intrinsic motivation. In the present article, we trace the history of intrinsic motivation research, compare and contrast intrinsic motivation to closely related topics (flow, curiosity, trait plasticity), link intrinsic motivation to key findings in the comparative affective neurosciences, and review burgeoning neuroscience research on intrinsic motivation. We review converging evidence suggesting that intrinsically motivated exploratory and mastery behaviors are phylogenetically ancient tendencies that are subserved by dopaminergic systems. Studies also suggest that intrinsic motivation is associated with patterns of activity across large-scale neural networks, namely, those that support salience detection, attentional control and self-referential cognition. We suggest novel research directions and offer recommendations for the application of neuroscience methods in the study of intrinsic motivation.
This paper provides a primer for researchers seeking an introduction to quantitative narrative research methods. It represents a consensus document of most common practices used by the co-authors. Key elements of conducting narrative research (e.g., asking narrative questions, designing narrative prompts, collecting narratives, coding narratives) are discussed, along with limitations to this approach and future directions.
This book explores a range of issues related to the development, application and enforcement of international criminal justice within Africa and on Africa. Written by experts from Africa, and adopting African perspectives, this book seeks to understand the scope and reach of these issues, nationally, regionally and globally. Africa's Role and Contribution to International Criminal Justice engages in theoretical and policy discourses on the substantive and procedural features of criminal law and justice in the African context. A range of topical issues are examined by the contributors, such as the ways in which African states have dealt with issues of universal jurisdiction and how victims are treated, as well as controversial questions concerning how courts function and should function in dealing with these issues. The ideas, themes, institutions, practices, concepts and patterns of convergence of criminal justice systems in Africa are also explored. This book aims to establish a greater understanding of international criminal justice and its relation to Africa, and beyond. Further, it seeks to expand the conversation beyond the narrow topics that are so commonly discussed when matters of African criminal justice are considered. PROF DR JEREMY SARKIN is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Nova University of Lisbon (Portugal) and Research Fellow at the University of the Free State (South Africa). DR ELLAH T. M. SIANG'ANDU is Lecturer and Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Zambia and Research Fellow at the Southern African Institute for Policy and Research (SAIPAR).
Emotion can result from interpreting group actions as reflecting on the self due to an association between the two. This volume considers the nature of collective guilt, the antecedent conditions necessary for it to be experienced, how it can be measured, as well as how collective guilt differs from other group based emotions. Research from Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, and the USA addresses critical questions concerning the who, when, and why of the experience of collective guilt. The political implications of collective guilt and forgiveness for the past are considered, and how those might depend on the national context. How collective guilt can be harnessed and used to create a more peaceful future for groups with a history of violence between then is emphasized.
Set against the broad context of philosophical arguments about group and state personality, Pluralism and the Personality of the State tells, for the first time, the history of political pluralism. The pluralists believed that the state was simply one group among many, and could not therefore be sovereign. They also believed that groups, like individuals, might have personalities of their own. The book examines the philosophical background to political pluralist ideas with particular reference to the work of Thomas Hobbes and the German Otto von Gierke. It also traces the development of pluralist thought before, during and after the First World War. Part Three returns to Hobbes in order to see what conclusions can be drawn about the nature of his Leviathan and the nature of the state as it exists today.
Research on ontological security in world politics has mushroomed since the early 2000s but seems to have reached an impasse. Ontological security is a conceptual lens for understanding subjectivity that focuses on the management of anxiety in self-constitution. Building especially on Giddens, IR scholars have emphasized how this translates to a need for cognitive consistency and biographical continuity – a security of ‘being.’ A criticism has been its so-called ‘status quo bias,’ a perceived tilt toward theorizing investment in the existing social order. To some, an ontological security lens both offers social theoretic foundations for a realist worldview and lacks resources to conceptualize alternatives. We disagree. Through this symposium, we address that critique and suggest pathways forward by focusing on the thematic of anxiety. Distinguishing between anxiety and fear, we note that anxiety manifests in different emotions and leaves room for a range of political possibilities. Early ontological security scholarship relied heavily on readings of Giddens, which potentially accounts for its bias. This symposium re-opens the question of the relationship between anxiety and subjectivity from the perspective of ontological security, thinking with and beyond Giddens. Three contributions re-think anxiety in ontological security drawing on existentialist philosophy; two address limitations of Giddens' approach.
When ontological insecurity looms, what comes next? Is chaos the sole alternative to the maintenance of established role-identities and routines? Or is there a more complex set of possible responses to the dread threat of ontological insecurity? The principal approach to ontological security in International Relations (IR) relies unduly on Giddens' account. Consequently, this approach fails to adequately capture both the variety of ways in which coherent and continuous identities can be maintained and the variety of ways in which the available cultural repertoire can support ontological security differently when challenged. Typically, ontological security is re-established, prior to collapse, through re-balancing of the cultural repertoire to give broader scope to an alternative cultural form and the qualitatively different practices it organizes. Due to misrecognition, this reorganization may proceed without disturbing the ontological security of states-in-interaction. Unconscious processes, encoded into cultural forms, are integral to such variable defenses against ontological insecurity. A re-conceptualization that regards Wendt's cultures of anarchy, and their qualitatively different modes of relating, as dynamically co-present within cultural repertoires, but with potentially variable weightings, complements this approach to ontological in/security.
Questions of consciousness pervade the social sciences. Yet, despite persistent tendencies to anthropomorphize states, most International Relations scholarship implicitly adopts the position that humans are conscious and states are not. Recognizing that scholarly disagreement over fundamental issues prevents answering definitively whether states are truly conscious, I instead demonstrate how scholars of multiple dispositions can incorporate a pragmatic notion of state consciousness into their theorizing. Drawing on recent work from Eric Schwitzgebel and original supplementary arguments, I demonstrate that states are not only complex informationally integrated systems with emergent properties, but they also exhibit seemingly genuine responses to qualia that are irreducible to individuals within them. Though knowing whether states possess an emergent ‘stream’ of consciousness indiscernible to their inhabitants may not yet be possible, I argue that a pragmatic notion of state consciousness can contribute to a more complete understanding of state personhood, as well as a revised model of the international system useful to multiple important theoretical debates. In the article's final section, I apply this model to debate over the levels of analysis at which scholarship applies ontological security theory. I suggest the possibility of emergent state-level ontological insecurity that need not be understood via problematic reduction to individuals.
Geographical psychology is an area of research aimed at mapping the spatial organization of psychological phenomena, identifying the mechanisms responsible for their organization, and understanding how individual characteristics, social entities, and physical features of the environment contribute to their organization. Investigations of geographical variation in personality have revealed geographical differences in personality between and within nations. Three mechanisms that contribute to geographical variation are selective migration, social influence, and ecological influence. Results from studies in North America and Europe indicate that regional differences in personality are linked to political, economic, and health indicators. More work is necessary to understand the causal nature of the links between personality and macro-level outcomes, as well as the scale and impact of person-environment associations over time.
Article published in The Conversation:
https://theconversation.com/narcissism-and-the-various-ways-it-can-lead-to-domestically-abusive-relationships-116909
For constructivists, a state's identity implies its preferences, interests, and resultant actions in international affairs, which is why constructivists expect democracies to support human rights internationally. This study examines South Africa's record on civil and political rights at the UN Human Rights Council. While there is an element of anti-imperialism in South Africa's identity that might help explain some of its actions, human rights remain important in South Africa's self-understanding. Despite the presence of human rights in South Africa's identity, at the Human Rights Council, South Africa's actions have ranged from failing to uphold civil and political rights to supporting their restriction. A bifurcated national identity therefore diminishes the predictive power of a constructivist national identity approach.
Pride, shame, and guilt color our highest and lowest personal moments. Recent
evidence suggests that these self-conscious emotions are neurocognitive
adaptations crafted by natural selection. Specifically, self-conscious emotions
solve adaptive problems of social valuation by promoting the achievement of
valued actions and characteristics to increase others’ valuations of the individual
(pride); limiting information-triggered devaluation (shame); and remedying
events where one put insufficient weight on the welfare of a valuable other
(guilt). This adaptationist perspective predicts a form–function
fit: a correspondence between the adaptive function of a self-conscious emotion and its
information-processing structure. This framework can parsimoniously explain
known facts about self-conscious emotions, make sense of puzzling
findings, generate novel hypotheses, and explain why self-conscious emotions have
their characteristic self-reflexive phenomenology.
US foreign policy on AIDS assistance in Africa has gone through many shifts in resource investment and focus, reflecting the politics of the culture war in the United States. Because AIDS cannot be addressed without consideration of sexuality, these shifts have resulted in very different sets of recommendations in African countries on sexual behavior and values. Because they are dependent on the United States for material and technological resources, African countries have been incorporated into this cultural debate as a form of sexual and cultural neocolonialism.
Resumen: La política exterior de Estados Unidos en lo que respecta a la ayuda para combatir el sida en África ha experimentado muchos cambios en materia de inversión en recursos y alcance, lo cual refleja las ideas políticas de la guerra cultural en Estados Unidos. Dado que el sida no puede abordarse sin tener en cuenta la sexualidad, dichos cambios han dado lugar a distintas recomendaciones sobre comportamiento y valores sexuales en los países africanos. Además, debido a que dependen de Estados Unidos en lo que se refiere a materiales y recursos tecnológicos, dichos países africanos han sido incorporados a este debate cultural en la forma de neocolonialismo sexual y cultural.
This article reviews historical contributions to the conceptualisation of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), including its evolution as a clinical diagnosis within the DSM classification of mental disorders. It discusses the epidemiology and aetiology of NPD, noting that empirical studies of both are limited. The challenges of managing patients with prominent narcissistic traits are presented, and the psychological therapies specifically designed for the treatment of patients with NPD are summarised.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Understand different models of narcissism
• Understand the epidemiology, comorbidity and theories of aetiology of NPD
• Know how to manage and treat patients with pathological narcissism and NPD
DECLARATION OF INTEREST
None.
I propose a relational understanding of ontological security, based on a synthesis of pragmatist philosophy and relational sociology. This relocates the referent of ontological security from the self to the social arrangements where action takes place. It implies that actors seek not to secure the coherence and stability of self in particular, but rather of their broader social context. By taking this relational approach, international relations scholars may avoid methodological difficulties in accessing or defining the cognitive or affective processes shaping certain actors, while honing in on the social embeddedness of action. I outline three causal mechanisms for theorizing ontological security in particular cases: refereeing, performative deference, and obstructive resistance. I do so with reference to prominent methodological frameworks in relational sociology- namely, those based on fields and on figurations, respectively. Finally, I connect this new approach to theorizing ontological security to existing trends in relational international relations research. I argue that it provides a theoretical architecture more sensitive to action and agency than is offered by many existing relational approaches, and is especially well suited to the study of precarious forms of transnational life. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. All rights reserved.
Political psychology in international relations (IR) has undergone a dramatic transformation in the past two decades, mirroring the broader changes occurring in IR itself. This review examines the current state of the field.Webegin by offering a data-driven snapshot analyzing four years of manuscript classifications at a major IR journal to characterize the questions that IR scholars engaged in psychological research are and are not investigating. We then emphasize six developments in particular, both present-day growth areas (an increased interest in emotions and hot cognition, the rise of more psychologically informed work on public opinion, a nascent research tradition we call the first image reversed, and the rise of neurobiological and evolutionary approaches) and calls for additional scholarship (better integration of the study of mass and elite political behavior and more psychological work in international political economy). Together, these developments constitute some of the directions in which we see the next generation of scholarship heading. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Political Science Volume 21 is May 11, 2018. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
In this commentary, I provide an historical perspective on the methodological and conceptual issues that are raised by the papers in this volume, with a focus on the idea of narrative identity as it relates to autobiographical memory. Referring back to the emergence of the concept of narrative identity in the 1980s, I consider old and new ideas regarding the form and function of narrative identity and methodological challenges that arise in efforts to measure and code psychologically important features of life-narrative accounts.
When a neurologist called Freud presented his findings on hysteria in 1895, his suggestion that it was caused by childhood sexual trauma met with angry disbelief among his colleagues. Over the next ten years he decided that the traumas must have been fantasies, and proposed a set of psychic mechanisms to explain the creation and subsequent concealment of these fantasies. The rest is history, or rather psychoanalysis.
This special issue of Postcolonial Studies takes as its point of departure the historical trajectories of modernity and globalisation, as they have impacted on colonial and postcolonial pasts and on the postcolonial present and its potential futures. In particular, it is focused on the emerging ontological insecurities that are manifest in the (re)bordering of identities, cultures, communities and states. These ontological insecurities are spurred by global processes of free trade and augmented capital flows as well as by new technologies of communication, information and travel and not least by current crises and political uncertainties at all levels of analysis. Of importance is how such emerging ontological insecurities can be understood in terms of social and political change, dislocation, hybridity and impermanence and how they typically generate a search for ontological security and stability that affects contemporary political identities in one way or another. Here we highlight not only the securitising aspects of identity stability but also the opening up of these processes in terms of refusing or resisting contemporary narratives of closure and essentialisation. Hence, the special issue deals with critical aspects of bordering, territory and the rewriting of the state in postcolonial terms. It also takes seriously the psychic and cultural processes through which identities are organised, reiterated and/or reorganised. The articles in this special issue cover a broad range of sites and concerns regarding ontological security and postcolonial bordering. These include the relationship between human security and ontological security and the role of postcolonial Sikh identities; violent cartographies of ontological insecurities in postcolonial Russia and Ukraine; the performance of citizenship rituals in postcolonial Canada; the interplay between postcolonial expressions of religious social formations in response to ontological insecurities in postcolonial South Asia; the Green Line in Cyprus as a circulating symbol of ontological insecurity; the practice of drone warfare and the re-inscription of specific power relations of ontological insecurity in postcolonial Pakistan, and finally; the dilemmas of ontological insecurity in a postcolonising Northern Ireland.
Emotions underpin how political communities are formed and function. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in times of trauma. The emotions associated with suffering caused by war, terrorism, natural disasters, fam- ine and poverty can play a pivotal role in shaping communities and orien- tating their politics. But until recently the political roles of emotions have received only scant attention.
This book contributes to burgeoning literatures on emotions and inter- national relations by investigating how “affective communities” emerge after trauma. Drawing on several case studies and an unusually broad set of interdisciplinary sources, the book examines the role played by rep- resentations – from media images to historical narratives and political speeches. Representations of traumatic events are crucial, the book argues, because they generate socially embedded emotional meanings, which, in turn, enable direct victims and distant witnesses to share the injury – as well as the associated loss – in a manner that af rms a particular notion of collective identity. While ensuing political orders often re-establish old patterns, traumatic events can also generate new “emotional cultures” that genuinely transform national and transnational communities.
In this chapter, I describe a model of shame and guilt development that highlights the importance of these emotions for regulation of both the individual's transactions with the environment and the individual's development of self. The model is described in terms of seven basic principles.
Principle 1: Shame and guilt are "social emotions." As such, they are (1) socially constructed, (2) invariably connected with (real or imagined) social interaction, (3) endowed with significance by social communication and/or relevance to desired ends (see below), and (4) associated with appreciations (appraisals) regarding others, as well as the self.
Principle 2: Shame and guilt serve important functions. The shame "family" and the guilt "family," like other emotion "families" (groups of related emotions), are defined in terms of the intrapersonal-, interpersonal-, and behavior-regulatory functions they serve for the individual. Shame reflects and organizes different transactions between individuals and environment more than guilt does. Moreover, the differences in functions served by shame versus guilt are observable. For example, shame functions to distance the individual from the social environment; guilt functions to motivate reparative action.
Principle 3: Shame and guilt are associated with particular appreciations (appraisals), and these appreciations are different for shame than they are for guilt. Appreciations are intimately connected to the functions that the emotions serve for the individual in the environment.
Principle 4: Shame and guilt each are associated with particular action tendencies, which make sense given the appreciations and functions they involve. Shame is associated with avoidance and withdrawal Guilt, on the other hand, is associated with outward movement, aimed at reparation for a wrongdoing.
Principle 5: Shame and guilt aid in the development of a sense of self. Shame and guilt experiences contribute in important ways to the child's development of a sense of self. Such experiences highlight the importance and consequences of a child's behavior, including successes and failures. As a result, they highlight the kind of behaviors the child can (or cannot) and does (or does not) do. In addition, such experiences highlight how others view the child and his or her behavior, which also helps the child to learn how to evaluate himself or herself.
Principle 6: Cognitive understandings do not determine the emergence of shame and guilt. Broad cognitive understandings, such as of "the categorical self," standards and rules for behavior, or personal responsibility for behavior are neither necessary nor sufficient for the emergence of guilt nor shame. Such understandings do, however, contribute to the nature of shame and guilt experiences as well as the conditions under which these emotions can occur.
Principle 7: Socialization is crucial to the development of shame and guilt. Socialization experiences play a major role in the development of shame and guilt. Socialization causes the child to care about the opinions of others, making the child want to follow social standards. It teaches the child about rules and standards for behavior, and endows particular standards with significance. All of these are central to the development of shame and guilt.