The “Hero‐Protector Narrative”: Manufacturing Emotional Consent for the Use of Force

How do political leaders manufacture collective emotions to justify the use of force? This article introduces the “hero‐protector narrative” as a conceptual model to analyze how political leaders try to manufacture specific collective emotions to encourage their audience to perceive violence as the only morally acceptable course of action. In our model, we formalize a set of distinctive narrative structures (roles and sequences), which are combined to activate compassion and moral anger as well as identification with “heroic” behavior. Furthermore, we argue that the resonance of this narrative draws on values of hyper‐masculinity in patriarchal societies. As such this narrative is to be found across different types of actors (state/nonstate) and culturally diverse settings. To test our model, we use a computer‐assisted QDA approach. We compare systematically discourses produced by political actors legitimizing the use of force versus actors opposing the use of force. We find that discourses supporting the use of force, such as those produced by George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden in the context of the Iraq war, share the structural characteristics of the hero‐protector narrative. In this regard, they differ remarkably from violence‐opposing discourses, regardless of their cultural background.     

‘Too black or not black enough’: Social identity complexity in the political rhetoric of Barack Obama

The election of the first African‐American President of the United States, Barack Obama, has been widely recognised as an extraordinary milestone in the history of the United States and indeed the world. With the use of a discursive psychological approach combined with central theoretical principles derived from social identity and self‐categorisation theories, this paper analyses a corpus of speeches Obama delivered during his candidacy for president to examine how he attended to and managed his social identity in his political discourse. Building on a social identity model of leadership, we examine specifically how Obama mobilises political support and social identification by building an identity for himself as a prototypical representative of the American people, notwithstanding the protracted public debate within both the White and Black American communities that had questioned and contested Obama's identity. Moreover, we demonstrate how Obama managed the dilemmas around his identity by actively crafting an in‐group identity that was oriented to an increasingly socially diverse America—a diversity that he himself exemplified and embodied as a leader. As an ‘entrepreneur’ of identity, Obama's rhetorical project was to position himself as an exceptional leader, whose very difference was represented as ‘living proof’ of the widely shared collective values that constitute the ‘American Dream’. Drawing on social identity complexity theory, we suggest that by providing more inclusive and complex categories of civic and national identity, Obama's presidency has the potential to radically transform what it means to be a prototypical in‐group member in America. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interpreting President Barack Obama's Facial Displays of Emotion: Revisiting the Dartmouth Group

Charismatic presidents like John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and now Barack Obama have been able to overcome stereotype‐based barriers to political power by connecting emotionally with viewers, particularly through their nonverbal skills. In this study we focus on the facial displays of emotion by President Obama and how participants interpret them. This study builds upon the pioneering research of the Dartmouth Group concerning response to displays of happiness‐reassurance by political leaders. It will first replicate and extend upon existing research by using Ekman and Friesen's Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to characterize facial displays by President Obama, specifically three neutral displays and three different types of smiles. Second, this study replicates research carried out over two decades ago concerning individual differences in sex, ethnicity, and age cohort on response to political candidates culturally defined as Black. Video focusing on the head and torso were FACS coded and presented in a web‐based experiment to 79 participants working at a southern institution of higher education. The participants identified the emotions felt by President Obama on a scale ranging from “not at all” to “extremely” focusing on the basic emotion terms of: “Happy” and “Playful” (happiness‐reassurance) and “Angry” and “Disgusted” (anger‐threat). Findings suggest participants differentiate between subtle facial‐display differences and that there are differences based upon ethnicity and support for President Obama when they interpret his facial displays of emotion.     

Positive weighing of the other's collective narrative among Jewish and Bedouin‐Palestinian teachers in Israel and its correlates

Teachers play a pivotal role in the educational discourse around collective narratives, and especially the other's narrative. The study assumed that members of groups entangled in a conflict approach the different modules of the other's narrative distinctively. Jewish and Palestinian teachers, Israeli citizens, answered questionnaires dealing with the narrative of the other, readiness for interethnic contact, negative between‐group emotions and preferences for resolutions of the Israeli–Palestinian (I–P) conflict. Positive weighing of the other's narrative among Jewish teachers correlated with high levels of readiness for interethnic contact and low levels of negative between‐group emotions, across the various modules of the Palestinian narrative. Preferences for a peaceful resolution of the I–P conflict and rejection of a violent one were noted in two of the modules. Among Palestinian teachers, positive weighing of the other's collective narrative was exclusively noted for the Israeli narrative of the Holocaust, and this stance negatively related to negative between‐group emotions and preference for a violent solution of the I–P conflict, and positively related to readiness for interethnic contact and preference of a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Practical implications of these findings for peace education are discussed.     

Immigration and Democratic Principles: On Carens’ Ethics of Immigration

Carens has done more than any other political theorist or philosopher to develop the normative perspective of prospective migrants from within the liberal democratic tradition, but he has not sufficiently engaged with the other side of the argument – in particular, with the value of political community and the principle of collective self‐determination. What is at stake for the immigrant‐receiving country that might justify its claim to control immigration? I first examine Carens’ theory of social membership and its connection to political community. I then discuss his method of ‘political theory from the ground up’ and his interpretation of democratic principles. I conclude with a discussion of the principle of collective self‐determination.     

Racial Attitudes Predicted Changes in Ostensibly Race‐Neutral Political Attitudes Under the Obama Administration

Past research demonstrated that racial prejudice played a significant role in the 2008 presidential election, but relatively less is known about the relationship between prejudice and public opinion throughout the Obama administration. In the present research, we examined not only whether racial attitudes were associated with evaluations of Mr. Obama and his administration, but also whether they may have influenced the development of more general political attitudes during the early years of the Obama administration. We investigated this question using panel data from a nationally representative sample of Americans interviewed between September 2008 and July 2010. Racial attitudes measured prior to the election predicted early disapproval of President Obama's handling of important issues. Early disapproval of President Obama's performance, in turn, predicted later perceptions of whether the state of the nation was improving. Further, the divergence between high‐prejudice and low‐prejudice individuals in their perceptions of the state of the nation became greater over time, consistent with the idea that racial attitudes were more powerfully expressed in political judgments as time passed.     

Exploring the Context-Sensitivity of Collective Action Motivations and the Mobilizing Role of Social Media: A Comparative Interview Study With Activists in Germany and Turkey

Western scholarship has underlined the relevance of social identity, perceived efficacy, emotions, and cost–benefit assessments as central catalysts of collective action. Little has been done to understand the context-sensitivity of these catalysts by means of cross-culturally comparative designs. The current study explores their context-sensitivity. It aims to find out whether existing opportunity structures in a democratic, nonrepressive country like Germany produce catalysts of collective action different from those produced in an autocratic, repressive country like Turkey. It also aims to understand the role of social media in mobilizing people in these two contexts. Semistandardized interviews with activists were carried out in both countries (n = 18 in Germany and n = 15 in Turkey) and analyzed by means of a cross-culturally comparative inductive coding procedure including initial and focused coding. Results show that collective action is related to different configurations of collective-action catalysts in the two countries. Solidarity concerns at the face of existential risks are more pronounced in Turkey, whereas political-change concerns are more important in Germany. The role of social media accordingly differs, adhering to the different activist goals. Theoretical implications for the role of context in studying collective action are discussed.     

Is Xunzi a utilitarian? Revisiting a disagreement

ABSTRACT

In Chinese scholarship, Xunzi is often regarded as an eclectic Confucian master who accepted some form of utilitarian thoughts (e.g. Fung Yu-lan, Mou Zongsan and Xu Fuguan). This characteristic was also observed by some western scholars such as Benjamin I. Schwartz. In a recent study, I argued that the basic character of Xunzi’s philosophy is utilitarianism in a broad sense based on an examination on his intellectual criticism and political criticism. Xunzi asserts that humans are innately driven by self-interested desires, and he evaluates all intellectual works and political behaviours by their utility. However, he does not limit utility to only basic animal desires such as food and sex. In Xunzi’s view, humans also have innate emotions; hence, these emotions should also be accounted for in their utility. This is similar to John Stuart Mill’s redefinition of Bentham’s concept of utility. Are Xunzi’s and Mill’s concepts of utility exactly the same? This question has yet to be examined. This article is a comparative study between utilitarianism and Xunzi’s philosophy which especially explores the compatibility of these two philosophies.     

Revoking a leader's “license to fail”: downgrading evaluations of prototypical in‐group leaders following an intergroup failure

Drawing on the social identity theory of leadership, we examined how leadership as an identity function alters perceptions and evaluations of in‐ and out‐group political leaders over time. Participants responded to two online questionnaires, before and after the 2012 U.S. Presidential election between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney. We assessed respondents' strength of party identification, perceptions of each candidate's prototypicality, and evaluations of each candidate. Results supported the hypothesis: after his loss, Romney was presumably perceived as less prototypical of the Republican Party among strong identifiers, who symbolically revoked Romney's “license to fail.” Weakly identified Republicans were unaffected by his defeat, granting him a “license to fail.” Unexpectedly, Democrats and Republicans following his electoral success evaluated Obama more harshly.     

Narrative congruence between populist President Duterte and the Filipino public: Shifting global alliances from the United States to China

This research examines what happened when the populist Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte reversed his country's global alliance, switching loyalties away from the United States towards China. We use the lens of narrative congruence, to see if political storylines of a populist president are accompanied by similar shifts in storylines among his followers. Our data corpus consists of text from Duterte's speeches and from comments on partisan Facebook pages, representing supporters and opponents of the president. We time‐bound our data corpus to text produced around the time President Duterte announced his realignment towards China. We use text mining and network analysis to identify overlaps among words used by the different social actors. Our findings show that when Duterte switched alliances, Facebookers—regardless of partisanship—accepted this alliance shift. However, our results likewise reveal an imperfect congruence. Duterte's followers move on to a story criticizing Duterte's domestic political enemies, whereas anti‐Duterte Facebookers talk about monetary deals and drug issues in the Philippines' newfound friendship with China. We discuss our findings in the light of a psychology of populism, the use of a discursive social networks approach to study macropsychological phenomena, and discursive resistance in a populist state.     

A Muslim President? Misperceptions of Barack Obama's Faith in the 2008 Presidential Campaign

Rumors that President Barack Obama is a Muslim were rampant during the 2008 presidential campaign and continued well into his presidency. These rumors were widely believed, were electorally consequential, and are part of a growing trend of politically motivated misconceptions. Thus, relying principally on the theory of motivated reasoning, we examine the factors that shaped citizens’ beliefs about and responses to messages about Obama's faith. Using an original survey experiment and data from the 2008–2009 American National Election Study panel, we show that citizens’ responses to rumors about Obama's religion were shaped by political predispositions, political awareness, and their interactions. Identification of Obama with Islam was most widespread, and the cues encouraging such identification were most successful, among individuals with low levels of political awareness, conservative and Republican identifications, and negative views of cultural out‐groups. Viewing Obama as Muslim was significantly less prevalent among people with high levels of awareness and with the opposite set of predispositions.     

Academic activism and its impact on individual‐level mobilization,sources of learning,and the future of academia in Turkey

In January 2016, academics in Turkey distributed a peace petition calling for an end to hostilities and to restart negotiations with the Kurdish movement. The Turkish government responded by opening legal cases, jailing academics, and dismissing them from universities. In the state of emergency following the July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, the government's extended powers allowed them to fire thousands of civil servants from every branch of government, including thousands of academics. This increased the number of academics who organized to form and teach in academic collectives. The current study evaluates how politicization occurs in scholars removed from the university environment. Traditional approaches to collective action and politicization suggest that empowerment is an important catalyst in politicization and continuation of collective political engagement. With the social and political restrictions that decree law dismissals place on scholars, what is it that motivates them to politicize? The current study was conducted through semistructured interviews with nine academics who work in these collectives. Participants described their politicization in terms of previous practice, reaction to injustice, and ideals of academia and academic freedom. They further evaluated current and prospective functions and possible barriers to academic collectives. Finally, although somewhat ambivalent, participants discussed feelings of efficacy, psychosocial support, and senses of solidarity and liberation in terms of being empowered. Their perspectives provide an opportunity to understand how and where academics engage in scholar activism for an independent and free academia in the context of consolidated political oppression.     

Racial prejudice predicts opposition to Obama and his health care reform plan

The present study examines the relationship between racial prejudice and reactions to President Barack Obama and his policies. Before the 2008 election, participants’ levels of implicit and explicit anti-Black prejudice were measured. Over the following days and months, voting behavior, attitudes toward Obama, and attitudes toward Obama’s health care reform plan were assessed. Controlling for explicit prejudice, implicit prejudice predicted a reluctance to vote for Obama, opposition to his health care reform plan, and endorsement of specific concerns about the plan. In an experiment, the association between implicit prejudice and opposition to health care reform replicated when the plan was attributed to Obama, but not to Bill Clinton—suggesting that individuals high in anti-Black prejudice tended to oppose Obama at least in part because they dislike him as a Black person. In sum, our data support the notion that racial prejudice is one factor driving opposition to Obama and his policies.     

Methodological Challenges in the Study of Emotions in Politics and How to Deal With Them

This introductory article to the special issue zooms in on the literature on political emotions with a specific focus on methodological questions of “how to study” political emotions. To the extent that methodological matters are addressed in the extant literature, the associated challenges are often portrayed as a clash between social science and natural science disciplines, a clash frequently illustrated by the meeting between political science and neuroscience. Rather than being a clash between academic disciplines, this article argues that many of the methodological challenges facing emotional research have their origin in scholars' diverse views on the relationship between themselves as researchers and political emotions as a research object. In the light of this acknowledgment, the article encircles and discusses the methodological challenges associated with three key conceptual distinctions between: (1) individual and collective emotions, (2) emotions and reason, and between (3) involuntary political emotions and the strategic usage of political emotions. Using the contributions to this special issue as illustrations, the article argues in favor of moving beyond mutually exclusive dichotomies regarding these conceptual distinctions and offers pathways for dealing with current methodological challenges to emotional research. It points to methodological pluralism, transparency, and context‐sensitive research strategies.     

Mapping Contentious Collective Emotions in a Populist Democracy: Duterte's Push for Philippine Federalism

This article analyzes collective emotions toward political change in a populist democracy. Taking the federalization of the Philippines led by President Rodrigo Duterte as an exemplar case, we extend prevailing scholarship which focuses on populist leaders' electoral discourse by examining the affective landscape of the populist public in a postelectoral context. Utilizing a sequential mixed-methods design, we algorithmically classify the stance and sentiment valence of 18,535 Facebook comments about federalism, then we reflexively identify collective emotions based on major discursive storylines across each stance-sentiment intersection. Our integrated analysis reveals collective feelings of (1) hope and euphoria and (2) vindictive contempt among supporters of Duterte's federalism, while detractors of the campaign express (3) derisive amusement and (4) fear and skepticism. Two of these public emotions may be idiosyncratic to Global South populisms: public fear and president-invested salvific hope. We discuss the implications of our findings along themes of emotional polarization in a populist democracy, linking political affect with democratic participation through social media.     

Enacting collective support for the European integration: Participation in pro‐integration action and preference for specific transnational acculturation strategies

We propose that collective support for European integration is mani‐fested in 2 distinct forms: first, as engagement in socio‐political action by citizens who seek to change their nation and its status in Europe. Second, it is manifested as a transnational acculturation process that impacts on both nations and their citizens. These processes potentially engage social identities at 3 levels: national, European and as supporters of the European integration. Here, we examine these different levels of identification as part of a model predicting collective support for the European integration. To capture the dimension of transnationality, we collected data from 2 Romanian samples, 1 of participants living in their country of origin (N = 203), and 1 of participants living as migrants outside Romania (N = 196). We found that identification as a pro‐integration supporter flows from European and Romanian national identifications and is an excellent predictor of collective support for European integration in both its forms. We conclude by discussing how our findings can be applied to the design of intervention strategies and policies to promote support for the European Union and the integration process in the current socio‐political climate (where the unity and the very existence of European Union are under threat).     

Collective Narcissism: Political Consequences of Investing Self‐Worth in the Ingroup’s Image

This article proposes a new theoretical framework for the reviewed state‐of‐the‐art research on collective narcissism—the belief that the ingroup’s exceptionality is not sufficiently appreciated by others. Collective narcissism is motivated by the investment of an undermined sense of self‐esteem into the belief in the ingroup’s entitlement to privilege. Collective narcissism lies in the heart of populist rhetoric. The belief in ingroup’s exceptionality compensates the undermined sense of self‐worth, leaving collective narcissists hypervigilant to signs of threat to the ingroup’s position. People endorsing the collective narcissistic belief are prone to biased perceptions of intergroup situations and to conspiratorial thinking. They retaliate to imagined provocations against the ingroup but sometimes overlook real threats. They are prejudiced and hostile. Deficits in emotional regulation, hostile attribution bias, and vindictiveness lie behind the robust link between collective narcissism and intergroup hostility. Interventions that support the regulation of negative emotions, such as experiencing self‐transcendent emotions, decrease the link between collective narcissism and intergroup hostility and offer further insights into the nature of collective narcissism.     

How Transitional Justice Processes and Official Apologies Influence Reconciliation: The Case of the Chilean ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ and ‘Political Imprisonment and Torture’ Commissions

Perceptions of the ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ and ‘Political Imprisonment and Torture’ commissions and related beliefs, emotions and socio‐emotional climate were analysed in people affected and unaffected by past political violence in Chile (N = 1278). People directly affected regard institutional apologies as less sincere and effective, and they were more critical of the commissions. Those who have a positive appraisal of the commissions, compared with people who disagree with the commissions activities, are less prone to forget past collective violence; report higher levels of negative emotions, such as shame, and positive ones, such as pride and hope, about the collective past; and consider that the commissions contributed to knowing the truth about what happened to victims and helped bring human rights violators to justice. Those appraising the commissions in a positive fashion also perceive a more positive emotional climate and inter‐group trust, have more confidence in institutions and report more universalistic values. A multiple‐regression analysis suggests that commissions play a relatively successful role as transitional justice rituals, reinforcing reconciliation. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Personality Certainty and Politics: Increasing the Predictive Utility of Individual‐Difference Inventories

Research on political psychology has benefitted from using individual‐difference measures to predict political attitudes and behavior. And, previous research has further identified a number of specific variables that enhance the predictive utility of individual‐difference scales. However, a potentially important factor that has been overlooked is the certainty with which people make their responses. The present research establishes that the certainty with which people respond to scales is associated with stability of the scale responses over time and correspondence between the scale and related outcomes. In addition, the effects of certainty in political ideological identification in predicting politically relevant outcomes hold when controlling for a number of previously established moderators. This research suggests that measuring certainty in answers to individual‐difference scales can be a useful and efficient way to increase the predictive utility of those scales within the political domain and beyond. This benefit is demonstrated with need for cognition (Study 1), need to evaluate (Study 2), and ideological identification (Studies 2 and 3).     

Substantiating Byzantium: The role of artifacts in the co‐construction of narratives

Acknowledging the abundance of narrative elements in servicescapes and anchored on the premise that consumption experiences are co‐constructed, this research extends existing servicescapes scholarship by theorizing the role of material objects in the co‐construction of narratives at storyscapes, that is, those servicescapes where narratives are at the center stage of the consumption experience. Using a museum exhibition of Byzantine heritage in Thessaloniki, Greece, the findings provide insight on the way in which consumers engage and “read” material artifacts in narrative co‐construction. The emergent framework theorizes consumer participation as narrative substantiation and sheds light on its four constitutive narrative‐construction processes (completing, relating, recontextualizing, and imagining) and on the ways in which consumers anchor these processes on artifact's materiality (artifactual knowledge, practicalness, intermateriality, and realness). Furthermore, this research offers an alternative approach to the existing language analogy according to which objects have their own voice and rhetoric. I see objects, instead, as contributing an evocative engagement according to which consumers unpack objects not only in their reference to the servicescape narrative but also in reference to their own personal and collective lives. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.