Diplomacy and Psychology: Psychological Contributions to International Negotiations, Conflict Prevention, and World Peace

Abstract

Psychological science has the potential to contribute to international diplomacy, and thereby indirectly to the prevention of conflicts between and within states that may escalate to wars. In this introduction of the Special Issue on Diplomacy and Psychology, different varieties of diplomacy are first briefly introduced. Then follows an enumeration of areas of psychological research that show the greatest promise of being directly or indirectly relevant to diplomacy. These research areas include judgement and decision making in negotiations and social dilemmas, social justice, intergroup conflicts, and intercultural processes. An additional area is research on environmental policy making, whose important role needs to be better recognized in international diplomacy. Overviews are also given of the articles included in the Special Issue.

The Effect of Group Decision Making on Cooperation in Social Dilemmas

“…Recently research has focused on a number of different aspects, including leadership (e.g. De Cremer & VanVugt, 2002), fairness (Hertel, Aarts, & Zeelenberg, 2002), cultural factors (Hulbert, Correa da Silva, & Adegboyega, 2001;Parks & Vu, 1994;Probst, Carnevale, & Triandis, 1999) and social values (Kortenkamp, 2001;Parks & Rumble, 2001;Van Lange, 1999), as well as behaviour in applied versions of social dilemmas (Gaerling, Kristensen, Backenroth-Ohsako, Ekehammar, & Wessells, 2000;Joireman, Van Lange, Van Vugt, Wood, Leest, & Lambert, 2001;Van Lange, Van Vugt, & De Cremer, 2000).…”

Faire Formeln

“…Zartman und Aurik (1991) streichen die Notwendigkeit vertrauensbildender Maßnahmen heraus, um Verhandlungen zwischen Konfliktparteien mit unterschiedlichen individuellen Voreinstellungen zum Erfolg zu führen. Gärling et al (2000) schließlich preisen den Nutzen psychologischer Theorien für die Politikwissenschaften an. Eine Reihe von Autoren betont die Bedeutung psychologischer Erkenntnisse über Emotionen und kognitive Prozesse für die Verhandlungstheorie und schätzt diese als grundlegend für das Verstehen von Risiko-und Verhandlungsverhalten ein (Goldgeier und Tetlock 2001;Kelman 1997).…”