Suchergebnisse

The symposium papers show that differences in sources and context clearly matter in the 'at‐a‐distance' assessment of a leader's psychological characteristics. The stability of both cognitive and personality attributes decreases as observations focus on shorter time frames, more spec fic policy domains, and private rather than public arenas. Despite these qualifications on the use of texts to profile individual leaders, the indices of social cognition and personality do discriminate individual differences between leaders. Because the results reveal significant differences in assessing individual leaders over time with multiple sources and at different levels of analysis, it becomes more worthwhile to investigate research questions that would be moot in the absence of important source, context, or aggregation effects. With the use of automated content analysis and greater access to data from electronic sources, it is now easier to carry out quantitative content analyses of psychological characteristics and to confirm or qualify the insights generated in this symposium.

This study uses the Verbs in Context System (VICS) to analyze and compare the operational codes of President Lyndon Johnson and his advisors during the Vietnam conflict. The initial focus is on changes in Johnson's general operational code as revealed in public statements during the period leading to the decisions to bomb North Vietnam and to intervene with ground forces in South Vietnam. Johnson's public operational codes for the domestic, foreign, and Vietnam domains are then compared, and his public operational code for the Vietnam conflict is contrasted with the private operational code of his Vietnam advisors (as expressed in private memoranda). Period effects, domain effects, and other differences are revealed between the views of Johnson and those of his advisors.

This study addresses the impact of crisis management strategies, stress, and groupthink conditions on the integrative complexity of British decision makers in 10 decision-making episodes during two Anglo-German crises in 1938 and 1939. A systematic random sample of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's statements during British cabinet deliberations in the intragovernmental arena and British messages to Germany in the intergovernmental arena during the acute phase of each crisis was scored for integrative complexity. An ANOVA of integrative complexity for crisis, arena, and episode demonstrated a significant independent relationship between strategy and integrative complexity plus a significant interaction effect between strategy and arena on integrative complexity. There were also significant differences in Chamberlain's integrative complexity between early and later episodes of the Polish conflict in the intragovernmental arena; no significant differences occurred between episodes in either arena during the Munich conflict. These results support the hypotheses that associate low integrative complexity with the implementation of a competitive strategy in the intergovernmental arena and with high stress in the intragovernmental arena.

The authors investigate the linkage between presidential operational codes and the management of foreign policy conflicts during the period of strategic adjustment in American foreign policy following the cold war. Beliefs expressed in public speeches by Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton are coded for self and other attributions that represent different forms of the exercise of political power. Bush's beliefs reveal a less cooperative, relatively inflexible approach to conflict management in the foreign policy domain, whereas Clinton's beliefs indicate a more flexible and cooperative approach. Their orientations interacted with contextual variables and the opponents' behavior to shape the selection of U.S. behavior in four post-cold war conflicts: Panama, Haiti, the Persian Gulf, and Bosnia. A favorable power position and the absence of vital or strategic U.S. interests enhanced the effect of presidential operational codes.