Marcus Holmes
Biographic Data
| ID | 3876725 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marcus Holmes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marcus |
| FAMILY NAME | Holmes |
| SIGNATURE | HOLMES M |
| AFFILIATIONS | William & Mary |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5491-4463 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 250 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
New Perspectives on Trust in International Conflicts
This forum proposes to rethink the specific conditions and dynamics under which trust can endogenously emerge in international conflicts. Traditionally, International Relations (IR) scholars have viewed trust and conflict as opposites or antagonists, with trust being seen as essential to overcoming conflict, and conflict seen as corrosive of trust. However, this framing is of limited use when it comes to understanding the complex role of trust in…
High-Level Leader Visits: A Promising Area of Study in IR
Once deemed a “nearly impossible” area of study, high-level leader visits—one of the most visible and consequential practices in global politics—have recently attracted renewed scholarly attention. This resurgence stems from the growing recognition of leader visits as a valuable lens for addressing foundational questions in international relations, including why states act as they do, the consequences of their actions, and how their behavior shap…
Diplomacy by committee: Assessing resolve and costly signals in group settings
Assessing resolve and interpreting costly signals are crucial tasks for leaders engaging in international diplomacy. However, leaders rarely make these decisions in isolation, relying on advisers to help assess adversary intentions. How do group dynamics change the way costly signals are interpreted? We field a large‐scale group experiment to examine how assessments of resolve vary across group settings. We find groups make significantly higher i…
Digital Diplomacy: Projection and Retrieval of Images and Identities
Digital diplomacy provides opportunities for states to manage the image they project to broad audiences. This occurs through dual processes of identity projection and audience response retrieval. Through digital tools, states are able to craft and refine their projections based on the response to those projections by diverse audiences. This chapter applies Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical theory to digital diplomacy and theorizes the ways in which …
The role of artificial intelligence in nuclear crisis decision making: A complement, not a substitute
This article explores the nuanced interplay between artificial intelligence (AI) and human decision making in the high-stakes arena of nuclear crisis management. We argue that AI, despite its lack of emotional intelligence and experiential learning, presents unique opportunities to enhance decision-makers' ability to navigate the complexities of nuclear crises. By juxtaposing AI's data-driven insights with human intelligence's depth in emotional …
Malicious Motives or Innocent Intentions? How Moral Reactions to “Collateral Damage” Shape Perceptions of Intent in Wartime Conduct
The laws of war prohibit intentional attacks on civilians, a fact that reflects the widely held view that intentional killings are particularly egregious, far more so than incidental killings or pure accidents. Yet, recent scholarship in moral psychology shows that the relationship between intention-understanding and moral judgments can also go the other way, that is, that judgments about whether an action is right or wrong can influence the degr…
Overcoming the Four Horsemen of Reassurance Diplomacy: Explaining Variation in Face-to-Face Engagement
The decision to engage in face-to-face diplomacy aimed at reassuring an adversary is one of the most salient ones a state leader will have to make. However, often leaders choose not to engage in such diplomacy because they follow those scholars and pundits who are skeptical of the reassurance value of interpersonal face-to-face diplomacy. This creates an important puzzle. Why do leaders sometimes choose to promote reassurance through meeting pers…
Hawkish Biases and Group Decision Making
How do cognitive biases relevant to foreign policy decision making aggregate in groups? Many tendencies identified in the behavioral decision-making literature—such as reactive devaluation, the intentionality bias, and risk seeking in the domain of losses—have been linked to hawkishness in foreign policy choices, potentially increasing the risk of conflict, but how these “hawkish biases” operate in the small-group contexts in which foreign policy…
The Logic of Negative Appeals: Graphic Imagery, Affective Empathy, and Foreign Development Aid
The use of negative visual imagery of the poor to conjure feelings of pity, guilt, and empathy (also called “poverty porn”) is premised on an emotional mechanism that is supposed to elicit compassion and giving behavior, and yet the very emotional nature of the response to this kind of negative imagery can have the exact opposite effect by evoking compassion fatigue and psychological numbing. Our study interrogates this puzzle. Leveraging origina…
Assessing the Renaissance of Individuals in International Relations Theory
The study of microfoundations, especially individuals, is enjoying a renaissance in international relations (IR) scholarship. Yet, this rise is more difficult to find in publication data. Using the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) journal-article database, we show that only 13.7% of IR articles in 12 leading journals use the first image. This proportion remains approximately the same from 1980 through 2018. Interrogating the da…
The strength of weak bonds: Substituting bodily copresence in diplomatic social bonding
One of the central puzzles in the study of diplomacy is why some interactions between leaders result in positive social bonds, while others are mired in distrust and hostility. Recent research in the field of microsociology, the study of everyday interactions, most notably the pioneering research of American sociologist Randall Collins, suggests several critical ingredients for a successful interaction, including bodily copresence. In this articl…
Inferring Intentions from Consequences: How Moral Judgments Shape Citizen Perceptions of Wartime Conduct
How people interpret the intentions of others is fundamental to politics. This article examines intention understanding in the domain of how citizens evaluate wartime conduct. Drawing on recent work in moral psychology, it argues that people are more likely to attribute intentionality to wartime actions that produce morally bad consequences than otherwise identical actions that produce morally good consequences. We test this theory with two vigne…
Feeling their pain: Affective Empathy and Public Preferences for Foreign Development Aid
Bringing together psychological approaches to empathy with research on public preferences for foreign development aid, we shed light on the role empathy plays in global helping behavior. We argue individuals combine their affective empathic responses with situational factors when forming foreign aid preferences. Testing our theory with two novel experiments embedded in a national survey of US citizens, we find that affective empathy not only pred…
Measuring Without a Ruler: Assessing Compliance with Calculative International Norms
Measuring compliance with international norms is usually taken to be a relatively straightforward exercise. To determine whether a state is compliant, scholars typically measure the level of conformity between their behavior and “the letter of the law.” IR theorists often disagree over whether compliance tells us anything meaningful about the causal effects of international norms, but most believe that it can at least be measured. We argue that, …
Social bonding in diplomacy
It is widely recognized among state leaders and diplomats that personal relations play an important role in international politics. Recent work at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and sociology has highlighted the critical importance of face-to-face interactions in generating intention understanding and building trust. Yet, a key question remains as to why some leaders are able to ‘hit it off,’ generating a positive social bond, whil…
Who Fights for Reputation: The Psychology of Leaders in International Conflict
Each of the last several years, I have taught an undergraduate senior seminar on the political psychology of international security. Over the course of the semester, we cover many of the canonical texts in the field. Keren Yarhi-Milo’s work is increasingly taking up more real estate on the syllabus. Her most recent book, as the students picked up on, is in one sense the logical extension of her previous work on the role of individuals, and the in…
Face-to-Face Diplomacy: Social Neuroscience and International Relations
Face-to-face diplomacy has long been the lynchpin of world politics, yet it is largely dismissed by scholars of International Relations as unimportant. Marcus Holmes argues that dismissing this type of diplomacy is in stark contrast to what leaders and policy makers deem as essential and that this view is rooted in a particular set of assumptions that see an individual's intentions as fundamentally inaccessible. Building on recent evidence from s…
Pivotal Countries, Alternate Futures: Using Scenarios to Manage American Strategy
On 8 November 2016, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, surprising many (if not most) analysts, pundits, pollsters, and scholars. As Nate Silver, one of the more influential forecasters in the United States (and quoted in this book), put it, this is “the most shocking political development of my lifetime.” Many policymakers around the world reacted similarly. The wager of Oppenheimer’s book is that policymakers would be bette…
You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression? First Encounters and Face-Based Threat Perception
Journal Article You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression? First Encounters and Face-Based Threat Perception Get access Marcus Holmes Marcus Holmes Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Global Security Studies, Volume 1, Issue 4, November 2016, Pages 285–302, https://doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ogw015 Published: 18 November 2016
Theorizing Diplomacy as Agency
Almost twenty years ago, Paul Sharp (1999, 34) made the following observation in this very journal: “... we might think that students of international relations would pay a great deal of attention to diplomacy, but they do not. The study of diplomacy remains marginal to and almost disconnected from the field.” Close to two decades later, the study of diplomacy, firmly planted within the discipline of international relations, is in much healthier …
Anarchy: An International Relations Perspective
In the context of international politics, “anarchy” designates the absence of a sovereign authority above that of nation‐states in the international system. The assumption of anarchy is often the starting point for theories of international politics. In the context of international relations, anarchy does not necessarily imply a lack of order or chaos inherent in the system, indeed the international system exhibits a tremendous amount of routine …
The Psychological Logic of Peace Summits: How Empathy Shapes Outcomes of Diplomatic Negotiations: Table 1
Why do some peace summits succeed while others fail? We offer an explanation that highlights the importance of empathy between leaders. Studies in negotiations and psychology show that empathy—the ability to take the perspective of others and understand their cognitive and affective states without necessarily sympathizing with them—is critical in overcoming biases, transcending long-held enmities, and increasing the likelihood of cooperation. We …
Digital Diplomacy: Theory and Practice
Fight-or-Flight or Tend-and-Befriend? Stress and the Political Psychology of Crisis Diplomacy
Diplomacy after Policymaking: Theorizing Hyper-Empowered Individuals
Journal Article Diplomacy after Policymaking: Theorizing Hyper-Empowered Individuals Get access Diplomatic Afterlives. Edited by Cooper Andrew F. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2015. 206 pp., $24.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6199-5). Marcus Holmes Marcus Holmes Reviewer Department of Government, The College of William & Mary Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Review, Volume 17, Issue 4, …
The Force of Face-to-Face Diplomacy: Mirror Neurons and the Problem of Intentions
Face-to-face diplomacy has long been the lynchpin of international politics, yet it has largely been dismissed as irrelevant in theories of cooperation and conflict—as “cheap talk” because leaders have incentives to dissemble. However, diplomats and leaders have argued for years that there is often no substitute for personally meeting a counterpart to hash out an agreement. This article argues that face-to-face diplomacy provides a signaling mech…
Mixed Emotions: Beyond Fear and Hatred in International Conflict
Social bonding in diplomacy
It is widely recognized among state leaders and diplomats that personal relations play an important role in international politics. Recent work at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and sociology has highlighted the critical importance of face-to-face interactions in generating intention understanding and building trust. Yet, a key question remains as to why some leaders are able to ‘hit it off,’ generating a positive social bond, whil…
Hawkish Biases and Group Decision Making
How do cognitive biases relevant to foreign policy decision making aggregate in groups? Many tendencies identified in the behavioral decision-making literature—such as reactive devaluation, the intentionality bias, and risk seeking in the domain of losses—have been linked to hawkishness in foreign policy choices, potentially increasing the risk of conflict, but how these “hawkish biases” operate in the small-group contexts in which foreign policy…
Feeling their pain: Affective Empathy and Public Preferences for Foreign Development Aid
Bringing together psychological approaches to empathy with research on public preferences for foreign development aid, we shed light on the role empathy plays in global helping behavior. We argue individuals combine their affective empathic responses with situational factors when forming foreign aid preferences. Testing our theory with two novel experiments embedded in a national survey of US citizens, we find that affective empathy not only pred…
The Psychological Logic of Peace Summits: How Empathy Shapes Outcomes of Diplomatic Negotiations: Table 1
Why do some peace summits succeed while others fail? We offer an explanation that highlights the importance of empathy between leaders. Studies in negotiations and psychology show that empathy—the ability to take the perspective of others and understand their cognitive and affective states without necessarily sympathizing with them—is critical in overcoming biases, transcending long-held enmities, and increasing the likelihood of cooperation. We …
Who Fights for Reputation: The Psychology of Leaders in International Conflict
Each of the last several years, I have taught an undergraduate senior seminar on the political psychology of international security. Over the course of the semester, we cover many of the canonical texts in the field. Keren Yarhi-Milo’s work is increasingly taking up more real estate on the syllabus. Her most recent book, as the students picked up on, is in one sense the logical extension of her previous work on the role of individuals, and the in…
Believing This and Alieving That: Theorizing Affect and Intuitions in International Politics
Rationalist models of decision making typically follow the general form of desire + belief = action. But determining an actor's beliefs and desires often proves challenging. One set of theories turns to psychology—and in particular emotions—to uncover how emotions help to shape and strengthen beliefs. Some of this work establishes a fit between emotions and the rationalist paradigm. It holds that emotions account for more than irrational behavior…
The Logic of Negative Appeals: Graphic Imagery, Affective Empathy, and Foreign Development Aid
The use of negative visual imagery of the poor to conjure feelings of pity, guilt, and empathy (also called “poverty porn”) is premised on an emotional mechanism that is supposed to elicit compassion and giving behavior, and yet the very emotional nature of the response to this kind of negative imagery can have the exact opposite effect by evoking compassion fatigue and psychological numbing. Our study interrogates this puzzle. Leveraging origina…
The strength of weak bonds: Substituting bodily copresence in diplomatic social bonding
One of the central puzzles in the study of diplomacy is why some interactions between leaders result in positive social bonds, while others are mired in distrust and hostility. Recent research in the field of microsociology, the study of everyday interactions, most notably the pioneering research of American sociologist Randall Collins, suggests several critical ingredients for a successful interaction, including bodily copresence. In this articl…
Inferring Intentions from Consequences: How Moral Judgments Shape Citizen Perceptions of Wartime Conduct
How people interpret the intentions of others is fundamental to politics. This article examines intention understanding in the domain of how citizens evaluate wartime conduct. Drawing on recent work in moral psychology, it argues that people are more likely to attribute intentionality to wartime actions that produce morally bad consequences than otherwise identical actions that produce morally good consequences. We test this theory with two vigne…
International Politics at the Brain's Edge: Social Neuroscience and a New “Via Media”
Journal Article International Politics at the Brain's Edge: Social Neuroscience and a New "Via Media" Get access Marcus Holmes Marcus Holmes Fordham University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Perspectives, Volume 15, Issue 2, May 2014, Pages 209–228, https://doi.org/10.1111/insp.12012 Published: 02 May 2014
The role of artificial intelligence in nuclear crisis decision making: A complement, not a substitute
This article explores the nuanced interplay between artificial intelligence (AI) and human decision making in the high-stakes arena of nuclear crisis management. We argue that AI, despite its lack of emotional intelligence and experiential learning, presents unique opportunities to enhance decision-makers' ability to navigate the complexities of nuclear crises. By juxtaposing AI's data-driven insights with human intelligence's depth in emotional …
Overcoming the Four Horsemen of Reassurance Diplomacy: Explaining Variation in Face-to-Face Engagement
The decision to engage in face-to-face diplomacy aimed at reassuring an adversary is one of the most salient ones a state leader will have to make. However, often leaders choose not to engage in such diplomacy because they follow those scholars and pundits who are skeptical of the reassurance value of interpersonal face-to-face diplomacy. This creates an important puzzle. Why do leaders sometimes choose to promote reassurance through meeting pers…
You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression? First Encounters and Face-Based Threat Perception
Journal Article You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression? First Encounters and Face-Based Threat Perception Get access Marcus Holmes Marcus Holmes Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Global Security Studies, Volume 1, Issue 4, November 2016, Pages 285–302, https://doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ogw015 Published: 18 November 2016
New Perspectives on Trust in International Conflicts
This forum proposes to rethink the specific conditions and dynamics under which trust can endogenously emerge in international conflicts. Traditionally, International Relations (IR) scholars have viewed trust and conflict as opposites or antagonists, with trust being seen as essential to overcoming conflict, and conflict seen as corrosive of trust. However, this framing is of limited use when it comes to understanding the complex role of trust in…
High-Level Leader Visits: A Promising Area of Study in IR
Once deemed a “nearly impossible” area of study, high-level leader visits—one of the most visible and consequential practices in global politics—have recently attracted renewed scholarly attention. This resurgence stems from the growing recognition of leader visits as a valuable lens for addressing foundational questions in international relations, including why states act as they do, the consequences of their actions, and how their behavior shap…
Diplomacy by committee: Assessing resolve and costly signals in group settings
Assessing resolve and interpreting costly signals are crucial tasks for leaders engaging in international diplomacy. However, leaders rarely make these decisions in isolation, relying on advisers to help assess adversary intentions. How do group dynamics change the way costly signals are interpreted? We field a large‐scale group experiment to examine how assessments of resolve vary across group settings. We find groups make significantly higher i…
Assessing the Renaissance of Individuals in International Relations Theory
The study of microfoundations, especially individuals, is enjoying a renaissance in international relations (IR) scholarship. Yet, this rise is more difficult to find in publication data. Using the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) journal-article database, we show that only 13.7% of IR articles in 12 leading journals use the first image. This proportion remains approximately the same from 1980 through 2018. Interrogating the da…
Diplomacy after Policymaking: Theorizing Hyper-Empowered Individuals
Journal Article Diplomacy after Policymaking: Theorizing Hyper-Empowered Individuals Get access Diplomatic Afterlives. Edited by Cooper Andrew F. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2015. 206 pp., $24.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6199-5). Marcus Holmes Marcus Holmes Reviewer Department of Government, The College of William & Mary Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Review, Volume 17, Issue 4, …
Culture without the State? Reinvigorating Ukrainian Culture with Diasporic Efforts
This article explores the efforts of diaspora groups to reinvigorate culture. Cultural policy studies tend to focus on efforts of the state to fund and support the maintenance, enhancement, and preservation of national culture(s). This article contributes to this area of research by noting the effects of diaspora groups in achieving many of the same ends as official cultural policy through unofficial means. Using Ukraine as an interpretive case s…
Culture without the State? Reinvigorating Ukrainian Culture with Diasporic Efforts
This article explores the efforts of diaspora groups to reinvigorate culture. Cultural policy studies tend to focus on efforts of the state to fund and support the maintenance, enhancement, and preservation of national culture(s). This article contributes to this area of research by noting the effects of diaspora groups in achieving many of the same ends as official cultural policy through unofficial means. Using Ukraine as an interpretive case s…
International Politics at the Brain's Edge: Social Neuroscience and a New “Via Media”
Journal Article International Politics at the Brain's Edge: Social Neuroscience and a New "Via Media" Get access Marcus Holmes Marcus Holmes Fordham University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Perspectives, Volume 15, Issue 2, May 2014, Pages 209–228, https://doi.org/10.1111/insp.12012 Published: 02 May 2014
The Force of Face-to-Face Diplomacy: Mirror Neurons and the Problem of Intentions
Face-to-face diplomacy has long been the lynchpin of international politics, yet it has largely been dismissed as irrelevant in theories of cooperation and conflict—as “cheap talk” because leaders have incentives to dissemble. However, diplomats and leaders have argued for years that there is often no substitute for personally meeting a counterpart to hash out an agreement. This article argues that face-to-face diplomacy provides a signaling mech…
The social brain paradigm and social norm puzzles
The use of neuroscience in political science inquiry has steadily increased over the last decade, yet many remain skeptical regarding its usefulness in explaining outcomes and solving puzzles. In this article we develop ramifications of the neuroscientific paradigm of the ‘social brain’ and critically assess its utility for political science. We argue that this model has promise in three distinct areas of research: challenging assumptions, clarif…
Digital Diplomacy: Theory and Practice
Fight-or-Flight or Tend-and-Befriend? Stress and the Political Psychology of Crisis Diplomacy
Diplomacy after Policymaking: Theorizing Hyper-Empowered Individuals
Journal Article Diplomacy after Policymaking: Theorizing Hyper-Empowered Individuals Get access Diplomatic Afterlives. Edited by Cooper Andrew F. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2015. 206 pp., $24.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6199-5). Marcus Holmes Marcus Holmes Reviewer Department of Government, The College of William & Mary Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Review, Volume 17, Issue 4, …
Mixed Emotions: Beyond Fear and Hatred in International Conflict
Believing This and Alieving That: Theorizing Affect and Intuitions in International Politics
Rationalist models of decision making typically follow the general form of desire + belief = action. But determining an actor's beliefs and desires often proves challenging. One set of theories turns to psychology—and in particular emotions—to uncover how emotions help to shape and strengthen beliefs. Some of this work establishes a fit between emotions and the rationalist paradigm. It holds that emotions account for more than irrational behavior…
You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression? First Encounters and Face-Based Threat Perception
Journal Article You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression? First Encounters and Face-Based Threat Perception Get access Marcus Holmes Marcus Holmes Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Global Security Studies, Volume 1, Issue 4, November 2016, Pages 285–302, https://doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ogw015 Published: 18 November 2016
Theorizing Diplomacy as Agency
Almost twenty years ago, Paul Sharp (1999, 34) made the following observation in this very journal: “... we might think that students of international relations would pay a great deal of attention to diplomacy, but they do not. The study of diplomacy remains marginal to and almost disconnected from the field.” Close to two decades later, the study of diplomacy, firmly planted within the discipline of international relations, is in much healthier …
Anarchy: An International Relations Perspective
In the context of international politics, “anarchy” designates the absence of a sovereign authority above that of nation‐states in the international system. The assumption of anarchy is often the starting point for theories of international politics. In the context of international relations, anarchy does not necessarily imply a lack of order or chaos inherent in the system, indeed the international system exhibits a tremendous amount of routine …
The Psychological Logic of Peace Summits: How Empathy Shapes Outcomes of Diplomatic Negotiations: Table 1
Why do some peace summits succeed while others fail? We offer an explanation that highlights the importance of empathy between leaders. Studies in negotiations and psychology show that empathy—the ability to take the perspective of others and understand their cognitive and affective states without necessarily sympathizing with them—is critical in overcoming biases, transcending long-held enmities, and increasing the likelihood of cooperation. We …
Pivotal Countries, Alternate Futures: Using Scenarios to Manage American Strategy
On 8 November 2016, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, surprising many (if not most) analysts, pundits, pollsters, and scholars. As Nate Silver, one of the more influential forecasters in the United States (and quoted in this book), put it, this is “the most shocking political development of my lifetime.” Many policymakers around the world reacted similarly. The wager of Oppenheimer’s book is that policymakers would be bette…
Face-to-Face Diplomacy: Social Neuroscience and International Relations
Face-to-face diplomacy has long been the lynchpin of world politics, yet it is largely dismissed by scholars of International Relations as unimportant. Marcus Holmes argues that dismissing this type of diplomacy is in stark contrast to what leaders and policy makers deem as essential and that this view is rooted in a particular set of assumptions that see an individual's intentions as fundamentally inaccessible. Building on recent evidence from s…
Measuring Without a Ruler: Assessing Compliance with Calculative International Norms
Measuring compliance with international norms is usually taken to be a relatively straightforward exercise. To determine whether a state is compliant, scholars typically measure the level of conformity between their behavior and “the letter of the law.” IR theorists often disagree over whether compliance tells us anything meaningful about the causal effects of international norms, but most believe that it can at least be measured. We argue that, …
Social bonding in diplomacy
It is widely recognized among state leaders and diplomats that personal relations play an important role in international politics. Recent work at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and sociology has highlighted the critical importance of face-to-face interactions in generating intention understanding and building trust. Yet, a key question remains as to why some leaders are able to ‘hit it off,’ generating a positive social bond, whil…
Who Fights for Reputation: The Psychology of Leaders in International Conflict
Each of the last several years, I have taught an undergraduate senior seminar on the political psychology of international security. Over the course of the semester, we cover many of the canonical texts in the field. Keren Yarhi-Milo’s work is increasingly taking up more real estate on the syllabus. Her most recent book, as the students picked up on, is in one sense the logical extension of her previous work on the role of individuals, and the in…
Inferring Intentions from Consequences: How Moral Judgments Shape Citizen Perceptions of Wartime Conduct
How people interpret the intentions of others is fundamental to politics. This article examines intention understanding in the domain of how citizens evaluate wartime conduct. Drawing on recent work in moral psychology, it argues that people are more likely to attribute intentionality to wartime actions that produce morally bad consequences than otherwise identical actions that produce morally good consequences. We test this theory with two vigne…
Feeling their pain: Affective Empathy and Public Preferences for Foreign Development Aid
Bringing together psychological approaches to empathy with research on public preferences for foreign development aid, we shed light on the role empathy plays in global helping behavior. We argue individuals combine their affective empathic responses with situational factors when forming foreign aid preferences. Testing our theory with two novel experiments embedded in a national survey of US citizens, we find that affective empathy not only pred…
The Logic of Negative Appeals: Graphic Imagery, Affective Empathy, and Foreign Development Aid
The use of negative visual imagery of the poor to conjure feelings of pity, guilt, and empathy (also called “poverty porn”) is premised on an emotional mechanism that is supposed to elicit compassion and giving behavior, and yet the very emotional nature of the response to this kind of negative imagery can have the exact opposite effect by evoking compassion fatigue and psychological numbing. Our study interrogates this puzzle. Leveraging origina…
Assessing the Renaissance of Individuals in International Relations Theory
The study of microfoundations, especially individuals, is enjoying a renaissance in international relations (IR) scholarship. Yet, this rise is more difficult to find in publication data. Using the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) journal-article database, we show that only 13.7% of IR articles in 12 leading journals use the first image. This proportion remains approximately the same from 1980 through 2018. Interrogating the da…
The strength of weak bonds: Substituting bodily copresence in diplomatic social bonding
One of the central puzzles in the study of diplomacy is why some interactions between leaders result in positive social bonds, while others are mired in distrust and hostility. Recent research in the field of microsociology, the study of everyday interactions, most notably the pioneering research of American sociologist Randall Collins, suggests several critical ingredients for a successful interaction, including bodily copresence. In this articl…
Overcoming the Four Horsemen of Reassurance Diplomacy: Explaining Variation in Face-to-Face Engagement
The decision to engage in face-to-face diplomacy aimed at reassuring an adversary is one of the most salient ones a state leader will have to make. However, often leaders choose not to engage in such diplomacy because they follow those scholars and pundits who are skeptical of the reassurance value of interpersonal face-to-face diplomacy. This creates an important puzzle. Why do leaders sometimes choose to promote reassurance through meeting pers…
Hawkish Biases and Group Decision Making
How do cognitive biases relevant to foreign policy decision making aggregate in groups? Many tendencies identified in the behavioral decision-making literature—such as reactive devaluation, the intentionality bias, and risk seeking in the domain of losses—have been linked to hawkishness in foreign policy choices, potentially increasing the risk of conflict, but how these “hawkish biases” operate in the small-group contexts in which foreign policy…
Political science (29 works) · Law (20 works) · Psychology (20 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Politics (18 works) · Social Psychology (16 works) · Diplomacy (13 works) · Social Psychology (13 works) · Epistemology (11 works)