The significance and limitations of empathy in strategic communications.

Yorke, Claire

doi:10.30966/2018.riga.2.6

Cited by 2 publications

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References 4 publications

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“…He repeatedly emphasized that he was being “candid” and “frank” with the Chinese and departing both from diplomatic norms and his standard practice. In a variety of ways, he sought to cultivate interpersonal empathy (Yorke, ) and indicated to Zhou that he treated him differently than everyone else and sought to create a special, unusually intimate relationship: “I speak to you more frankly than to any other foreign leader.” “Let me be more honest with you than I have been with any other foreign leader,” he said. “I have talked more with you on these visits than I have with my staff in two years.” He repeatedly expressed admiration for Zhou, with comments such as: “It's rare to meet people who have been opponents for whom one has such personal regard.” In return, he interpreted Zhou's behavior toward him as “very candid” and “startlingly frank.”…”

Section: Conceptualizing the Relationship Between Individual And Statmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personal and Political Emotions in the Mind of the Diplomat

Keys

Yorke

2019

Political Psychology

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Despite growing research on the role of emotions in international relations, little work has analyzed how diplomats and decision-makers themselves make sense of feelings generated by relationships that have both individual and state-level implications. Do diplomats consciously experience feelings on behalf of the state? If so, how? How might individual embodied emotions affect how diplomats carry out their roles during negotiations?In the first systematic effort to address and conceptualize these questions empirically, with Henry Kissinger as a case study, we investigate the interplay between the experience of being an individual with personal emotions, on the one hand, and the practice of evaluating performative emotional cues relevant to the state, on the other. We suggest that diplomats recognize some emotional inputs as accruing not to them as individuals but to the state they represent, typically in connection with traditional diplomatic protocols and rituals that are firmly established as state-level performances. At the same time, however, especially but not exclusively in high-stakes negotiations involving strong personal relationships, individually embodied feelings with little-to-no state relevance can have significant influence on how diplomats define and pursue the national interest.Scholarly interest in the role of emotions in international relations often runs up against a conceptual problem: Who exactly is experiencing the emotions? Scholars, like journalists, diplomats, and the public, often write of states as though they were people with human emotions: Japan was offended, Israel feared, the United States was angry. Many scholars view such characterizations as a useful shorthand or metaphor, rather than a claim that states have feelings. Most would probably agree that it is individuals who have feelings that can be experienced collectively or assigned to the state, but very little sustained conceptual or empirical work has probed how individuals might experience state emotions.This article offers an exploratory analysis of how diplomats and leaders make sense of feelings that have both individual and state-level implications. Do diplomats and leaders believe that they feel on behalf of the state? If so, how do they perceive those feelings? And what are the implications of the way they assign emotions for the perceptions, judgments, and the conduct of diplomacy? In the first systematic effort to conceptualize these questions using empirical evidence, we investigate the interplay between the experience of being an individual with personal emotions, on the one hand, and the practice of generating and receiving state-level emotional cues, on the other. Focusing on bs_bs_banner

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Section: Conceptualizing the Relationship Between Individual And Statmentioning

confidence: 99%