Social Psychology is another area of psychology that can pose bold questions for diplomacy. On September 12, this blog showcased five broad psychology paradigms: Psychoanalysis, Behaviorism, Humanism, Cognitivism, and Evolutionary Psychology. Social Psychology is not a paradigm per se, but a sub-field in psychology. It focuses on human beings in groups. Social Psych is similar to Sociology, in that it studies human social behavior, but its focus is on the mind when it is engaged in thinking or feeling about the social world, versus the social world itself. Some key topics in Social Psych are: prejudice, discrimination, gender, culture, attitudes, persuasion, attraction, the self, altruism, violence, aggression, leadership, and conflict resolution. (Prominent social psychologists include: Stanley Milgram, Philip Zimbardo, Walter Mischel, Albert Bandura, Roy Baumeister, Robert Cialdini, and Hazel Markus.) If we think in terms of PsyDip questions, at the nexus of Social Psychology and diplomacy, there are a lot of possibilities, because diplomacy is largely a social endeavor aimed at resolving conflict between human minds.
At the diplomacy level, a Social Psychologist might ask: to what extent do nations, leaders, and citizens (including our own) think, feel, and act as a result of how they view their social (and cultural) environments? What are the ways in which their beliefs, attitudes, and stereotypes can be understood to cause their behavior? What sort of pressures do they respond to in terms of their social groups? How individualistic versus collectivistic are they? What does it take to persuade them? How do they process, remember, and distort information about their social worlds? Is it fruitful to know any of these dynamics in constructing an approach to engaging with these nations/leaders/people? Can we categorize a nation’s or a people’s social prejudices to predict how they will react to social forces in the future? Can we use what we know about them to alter the way they will view us and others? Can we better understand and work with other nations and their leaders and citizenry by looking into how they see their own social group and others?
Some possible topics at the Psychological Diplomacy interface include: discrimination, civil rights, anti-Semitism, exchanges, racism, religious freedom, summits, web chats, arbitration, citizenship, visas, immigration, agreements, treaties, gay rights, border security, democracy, human rights, dissent, dual citizenship, fellowships, Middle East Peace, nonproliferation, political prisoners, political unrest, scams, sex trafficking, weapons, women’s issues, leadership, warnings, masculinity and aggression, etc.
Additional reading...
10 Brilliant Social Psychology Studies:
175 web-based Social Psychology experiments, surveys, and studies:
Some famous Social Psychology experiments:
Very thoughtfull post on leadership. It should be very much helpfull.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Karim - Mind Power