By Theodoros Apostolos Koutsoumpas
As here in Greece we were going once more through an uneasy summer facing wildfires and drought, I can’t help but recalling the waves of positive feelings expressed by the people who fought at the first line of these phenomena or had suffered physical and material damages, at the event of foreign aid. Firefighters and rescue groups from other countries were greeted with gratitude, admiration and relief. Subsequently, the opinions of people benefited from or being present at these actions of foreign aid was (at least in the short run) affected regarding the perception of the countries from which the aid came. And this made me wonder: how does a great outside event (for example an earthquake, a wildfire, a terrorist attack or a war) affect the way people shape their political beliefs about domestic and foreign political actors (e.g. the government, other countries, international organizations, companies and individuals)? Naturally, I found psychology to be of critical importance in order to try to answer this question.
First of all, in order to start scratching below the surface of such a tricky relationship, one has to define what a great event is. A broader approach would lead us to the conclusion that a great event is a major outside event whose consequences affect considerably, in a direct or indirect way, the life of a group or a community. Therefore under this definition we can assume that such an event could be of a wide range: a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, massive migration, a war etc. The impact of phenomena like these could be quite influential in formulating people’s understanding and political attitudes regarding who is politically responsible for the event concerned (whether the national government or a foreign entity). Think of the importance of 9/11 attacks in shaping American (and Western) public’s political perceptions of the Middle East.
Despite their potential implications in the study of political science and International Relations (IR), though, focus on the impact of major events has often been neglected inside both fields. For decades political science was limiting itself in the concept of public opinion, narrowing the analysis to the perceptions of the governed, based on multiple factors. Furthermore, most of the IR classic works talking about the importance of personality and psychological drives behind foreign policy formulation and action were positioned the other way around: they examined the impact of a person’s beliefs and emotions into the creation of great events and not vice versa (Kertzer & Tingley, 2018). However, this is no longer the case. As political science and IR have become more eclectic theoretically during the last twenty years, psychology has been able to offer meaningful insights for understanding the importance such great outside events hold in shaping and enforcing political sense- and decision-making. I will come to them briefly below.
A first wave (though not in a time order) of psychological research focusing on the effects of major events in political perception and action is constituted of historical, societal and phenomenon-based analyses. In other words they are, in their majority, case-studies around specific events in a specific time and place and definite societal dynamics (for example the implications of a genocide in a certain African community). As a consequence, they offer a wide array of such great events happening in different contexts. Cases of war (Blattman, 2009), terrorism (Saurette, 2006), mass deportation (Rozenas, et al., 2017), migration, genocide (Canetti, et al., 2017) and more are frequently encountered among pieces of research of this sort. However, these analyses are by no means proponents of a larger theoretical school, they use various methods and they do not constitute a unified approach in studying the psychological and political impact of major outside events. Being still in their infancy as a trend though, they offer valuable standpoint knowledge taking at the same time a more holistic approach.
A second strand of psychological research which might be of use in trying to figure out the psycho-political effects of great events is situated in the emotions literature, and especially the so-called “collective emotions”. Although this concept has attracted criticism as being difficult or impossible to prove, it can, nevertheless, provide a better understanding of emotionally charged common situations and experiences. According to the aforementioned theories, a collective emotion is an emotion that is experienced simultaneously or quasi-simultaneously by two or more people. How exactly this is happening is the point where these theories vary. Some of them are using contagion models (Parkinson & Simons, 2009) while others are highlighting the role of social perceptions (Smith, et al., 2007), norms and identity (Mercer, 2014) in formulating and experiencing an emotion like that. Regardless of their transmission, the outbreak of collective emotions may be accompanied with serious political consequences. A notable example here is the protests that led to major political changes during the Arab Spring. Under this frame of analysis, a major outside event constitutes an input which triggers emotional reactions from the members of a group or society. This happens exactly because this event is of a particular interest to the group due to its implications. As social psychology theories have long shown, the individuals belonging to the group are especially oriented to the group’s survival for different reasons. This is the stage where the group becomes the extension of its members’ bodies and the collective emotion the metamorphosis of their emotions. The emotion born by the need of protecting the group is strengthened by its transmission: it becomes a norm of the group, a way to behave, to think and react, producing, when concerned, political outcomes (output) (Mercer, 2014; Hutchison, 2016).
Finally, evolutionary and neurobiological theories may be enlightening when we are examining the impact of major outside events in political sense-making and subsequent behavior. The core notion underneath them lies in the perpetuity of the interaction between environmental inputs (e.g. weather conditions, stressful situations etc.) and behavioral outputs with the intermediary role of human internal physical systems (mostly nervous system). For evolutionary psychology, human behavior is channeled through psychological mechanisms created during the evolution process as a product of repeatedly present dangers and needs (Lopez, et al., 2011). As the shape of human environment has been transforming through the centuries, many of these mechanisms are undergoing slow (albeit ongoing) modifications. On the other hand, the key premise of neuroscience lies in the role of genes, hormones and neurons in the formation of human behavior (McDermott & Hatemi, 2014). These three factors, although strongly determined by birth, are quite sensitive to environmental conditions. Consequently, great events can play a major role in a person’s political perceptions and actions via their internal physical implications. They impose changes in the systems functioning (e.g. rise of blood pressure, sharpened senses, hormone abundance or lack), resulting in modifications and interruptions of procedural thinking, whether emotional or cognitive (Johnston & Edwards, 2002; Frazzetto, et al., 2007; Van Vugt & Spisak, 2008). So, depending on the intensity and frequency of major outside events, the latter can absolutely influence the way a person thinks and acts politically through their intervention in their organism.
All that said, two things should be clear by now: that great events play a prominent role in the development of political thinking and acting, whether in domestic or international level; and that much of this happens because and through psychological mechanisms. So, employing psychology to understand and analyze the interplay between major events and political sense- and decision-making is not only a well-suited track to follow but a necessary one.
References
Blattman, C., 2009. From Violence to Voting: War and Political Participation in Uganda. American Political Science Review, 103(2), pp. 231-247.
Canetti, D. και συν., 2017. Collective Trauma From the Lab to the Real World: The Effects of the Holocaust on Contemporary Israeli Political Cognitions. Political Psychology, 39(1), pp. 3-21.
Frazzetto, G. και συν., 2007. Early Trauma and Increased Risk for Physical Aggression during Adulthood: The Moderating Role of MAOA Genotype. PLoS ONE, 2(5), pp. 486-492.
Hutchison, E., 2016. Affective Communities in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Johnston, T. D. & Edwards, L., 2002. Genes, Interactions, and the Development of Behavior. Psychological Review, 109(1), p. 26–34.
Kertzer, J. D. & Tingley, D., 2018. Political Psychology in International Relations: Beyond the Paradigms. Annual Review of Political Science, Τόμος 21, p. 319–339.
Lopez, A. C., McDermott, R. & Petersen, M. B., 2011. States in Mind: Evolution, Coalitional Psychology and International Politics. International Security, 36(2), pp. 48-83.
McDermott, R. & Hatemi, P. K., 2014. The Study of International Politics in the Neurobiological Revolution: A Review of Leadership and Political Violence. Millennium – Journal of International Studies, 43(1), pp. 92-123.
Mercer, J., 2014. Feeling like a state: social emotion and identity. International Theory, 6(3), pp. 515-535.
Parkinson, B. & Simons, G., 2009. Affecting Others: Social Appraisal and Emotion Contagion in Everyday Decision Making. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(8), pp. 1071-1084.
Rozenas, A., Schutte, S. & Zhukov, Y., 2017. The Political Legacy of Violence: The Long-Term Impact of Stalin’s Repression in Ukraine. The Journal of Politics, 79(4), p. 1147–1161.
Saurette, P., 2006. You dissin me? Humiliation and post 9/11 global politics. Review of International Studies, Τόμος 32, p. 495–522.
Smith, E. R., Seger, C. R. & Mackie, D. M., 2007. Can Emotions Be Truly Group Level? Evidence Regarding Four Conceptual Criteria. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(3), p. 431–446.
Van Vugt, M. & Spisak, B., 2008. Sex Differences in the Emergence of Leadership during Competitions within and between Groups. Psychological Science, 19(9), pp. 854-858.