Peter Hays Gries

Bio: Peter Hays Gries is an academic researcher from University of Oklahoma. The author has contributed to research in topics: China & Nationalism. The author has an hindex of 25, co-authored 72 publications receiving 1883 citations. Previous affiliations of Peter Hays Gries include University of Manchester & University of Colorado Boulder.

The East Is Red…Again! How the Specters of Communism and Russia Shape Central and Eastern European Views of China

Abstract: During the past decade, China has rapidly emerged as a major player in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Will it divide Europe? Might these formerly communist countries align themselves again with a communist superpower to their east? Or does their past experience of Russia and communism generate suspicions of China? This article explores what public opinion data from a fall 2020 survey of six CEE countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Serbia, and Slovakia) can teach us about the drivers of CEE attitudes toward China. It suggests that China has become a “second Eastern power” beyond Russia against which many people in the CEE have come to define themselves. Although there are large differences between CEE publics in their views of China, individual-level self-identifications with the East or West, and attitudes toward the communist past and communism today consistently shape views of both Russia and China. Russia looms large for all in the CEE, but especially for Latvia and Poland, whose views of China appear to be almost completely mediated through attitudes toward their giant Russian neighbor. We conclude with thoughts on the implications of these findings about the structure of CEE public opinion toward China for the future of the “16+1” mechanism and CEE-China relations more broadly.

Thinking fast and slow.

Abstract: 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.

Human Nature and the Social Order

Abstract: “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.

Why Men Rebel

Abstract: 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.