In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling (2nd ed.)

“WHAT can men do, what do they do, and what do they want to do ?”—these are the uestions that Prof. Thorndike seeks to answer in a very comprehensive and elaborate treatise. His undertaking is inspired by the belief that man has the possibility of almost complete control of his fate if only he will be guided by science, and that his failures are attributable to ignorance or folly. The main approach is through biological psychology, but all the social sciences are appealed to and utilized in an effort to deal with the human problem as a whole. The relative immaturity of the sciences dealing with man is continually stressed, but it is claimed that they provide a body of facts and principles which are “far above zero knowledge”, and that even now they are capable of affording valuable guidance in the shaping of public policy. Human Nature and the Social Order By E. L. Thorndike. Pp. xx + 1020. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1940.) 18s. net.

Human Nature and the Social Order

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Why Men Rebel was first published in 1970 on the heels of a decade of political violence and protest not only in remote corners of Africa and Southeast Asia, but also at home in the United States. Forty years later, the world is riveted on uprisings in the Middle East, and the United States has been overtaken by a focus on international terrorism and a fascination with citizen movements at home and abroad. Do the arguments of 1970 apply today? Why Men Rebel lends new insight into contemporary challenges of transnational recruitment and organization, multimedia mobilization, and terrorism.

Why Men Rebel

When objective group membership and subjective ethnic identification don’t align, which has a greater impact on how people feel towards the groups they affiliate with, and why? Deprived of many dis...

When objective group membership and subjective ethnic identification don’t align: How identification shapes intergroup bias through self-enhancement and perceived threat

The Taiwan Strait is heating up, as Mainland Chinese netizens, generals, and politicians increasingly talk about ‘forceful’ rather than ‘peaceful’ reunification. While Xi Jinping and Chinese nation...

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Taiwan’s perilous futures: Chinese Nationalism, the 2020 Presidential Elections, and U.S.-China Tensions Spell Trouble for Cross-strait Relations

Chinese Nationalism and U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century

A growing literature demonstrates that ideology shapes international relations. But just how does ideology have its effect? This article develops an integrated model of mediators and moderators of the impact of ideology on foreign policy. Specifically, it hypothesizes that ideologically motivated perceptions of threat and national power sequentially mediate the impact of individual-level ideologies on foreign policy preferences, and that in/out-group social categorization processes moderate the relationship. We interrogate these propositions with three plausibility probe case studies. The conclusion discusses which aspects of the model were best supported by the plausibility probes—and suggests hypotheses for future causal testing.

Beyond Power Politics: How Ideology Motivates Threat Perception—and International Relations

OBJECTIVES This study investigated the interaction of parental socialization about discrimination and social dominance orientation (SDO) in predicting the cultural identity and intergroup attitudes of the Minnanese, an ethnic group in Taiwan that faced systematic discrimination during the early decades of Chinese Nationalist rule. Because high SDO individuals tend to support group-based dominance, we hypothesized that under high preparation for bias, which may reinforce narratives that place the historically disadvantaged Taiwanese in a subordinate position, Minnanese high in SDO would identify less with Taiwanese and more with Chinese (the historically high-status outgroup) compared with their low SDO counterparts. METHOD We examined our hypotheses using a sample of Minnanese (N = 365; 183 women, 182 men; average age = 44.35) who participated in a nationally representative survey of Taiwanese adults. RESULTS As predicted, among Minnanese exposed to high levels of preparation for bias, those with high SDO expressed greater levels of Chinese identification and more favorable attitudes toward Chinese than their low SDO counterparts (no difference was found in attitudes toward Taiwanese). Among Minnanese exposed to low levels of preparation for bias, SDO predicted neither Chinese nor Taiwanese identity. Moreover, the interaction effect of preparation for bias and SDO on attitudes toward Chinese was mediated by Chinese identity. CONCLUSION Using a unique, non-Western sample, this study demonstrated the role that parental socialization about past discrimination, in combination with belief in group-based dominance, plays in the construction of group identity and intergroup attitudes among members of historically disadvantaged ethnic groups. (PsycINFO Database Record

Peter Hays Gries

Papers

When objective group membership and subjective ethnic identification don’t align: How identification shapes intergroup bias through self-enhancement and perceived threat

Taiwan’s perilous futures: Chinese Nationalism, the 2020 Presidential Elections, and U.S.-China Tensions Spell Trouble for Cross-strait Relations

Chinese Nationalism and U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century

Beyond Power Politics: How Ideology Motivates Threat Perception—and International Relations

Linking parental socialization about discrimination to intergroup attitudes: The role of social dominance orientation and cultural identification.