The pervasive power of political positioning: A review of Culture & Political Psychology

Metaphorical analyses

The power of a societal view of political psychology is many, and one unique facet is that of original analysis to grow our understanding of political discourse. Feldman, in his chapter (2014), discusses the use of metaphors in Japanese politics to help explain and ‘dumb down’ politics to the culture of Japan. In discussing a variety of metaphors that represent the personalities, actions, and behaviors of the Japanese politicians that are used to summarize the characteristics of a given group, Feldman exhibits a critical point of metaphors. It is not simply the metaphors themselves, but whose metaphors to whom, which is the critical point. A look at the 2001 American repeal of the Estate Tax, which only affected 2% of all Americans, was highly supported by American people with the use of the metaphor of a “death tax” instead of “estate tax”. One member of Congress was quoted saying, “Where I am from, no one will ever be subject to the estate tax, but when I feel my support waning, I say, I’ll get rid of the death tax to protect you, your families, your farms’—and I get cheers. Why should I try to educate them?” (Graetz & Shapiro, 2005, p. 78). Metaphors are not used simply to dumb down politics, but in this case, are used to further the gains of the powerful in exchange for the many. Baugnet and Fouquet’s (2014) presentation of the metasystem around social representations of metaphors brings a fruitful expansion of the understanding of power—by examining what constructs, represents, and displays power in a specific context. Their cultural comparison around colors examines not simply what represents power as a metaphor, but why it represents power. In these chapters, it becomes clear that a social representation does not simply exist, but it exists for a goal for a given person created by a potential third party.

Geka (2014) introduces the notion that perceptions of politics can devalue the benefits of political action and in turn, influence the behavior of individuals through which these notions could be challenged or changed. In other words, Geka shows that the cultural understanding of a topic (metaphor) is directly tied towards its group’s collective values. This notion is particularly enticing, as it allows the same cultural understanding (“our voice in the system is not appreciated”) to permit various potential equifinality points (“so therefore we must revolt!” compared to “so therefore we will not vote”). The value of values is important to recognize in political psychology, as it has been shown in many ways that support of a given value (human rights) does not necessarily bring about equal application of human rights (Abrams, Houston, Vyver, & Vasiljevic, 2015; McClosky, 1964). Geka adds to this discussion by showing the ambiguity of values and social representations, and helps recognize that a more nuanced approach towards a cultural understanding is best if seeking to understand the limitations of a given representation through the valuations of power and values and their interactions across networks of meanings.

All three of these chapters point to a certain role of metaphors within the political system. They set up one of the pivotal arguments within this book, being that power is both something that can be used as well as something that can be imagined. Both uses of power—as a noun as and as a verb—can be analyzed as a very critical piece in development of social representations and political identities.

Methodological advancements

This collection of works does a wonderful job in exploring other ways to analyze values, societies, and cultures in which individuals operate and make meaning within. Particularly, the works of Gonzalez-Duclert (2014), Lášticová & Petrjánošová (2014), and Otmazgin (2014) will be highlighted for their contributions, along with further recommendations that come from the commentaries of Tateo (2014) and Wagoner (2014).

Gonzalez-Duclert’s examination of film within social and historical contexts of countries pushes us to look further into the cultural creations of a given people (Carriere, 2014) to understand culture. In this way, cultural creations allow us to move from testing theories in laboratory or interview settings to more creativity, innovative domains that speak to the culture at a given moment. Other explorations into cultural creations, such as diaries (Zittoun & Gillespie, 2014) easter eggs (Glaveanu, 2014) and literature (Moghaddam, 2004) provide us to look into the positioning of a given culture as framed by the creator. Beyond that, the reaction of the culture upon such a creation provides even more complexities to analyze—the development of a classic such as “The Wizard of Oz”—a movie that, when released, resulted in a $1.1 million dollar loss for the producers (Eyman, 2005), yet is known throughout the world today. However, Gonzalez-Duclert takes these creations a step further and uses them as their own application of theory. Here, political psychology merges from psychology in movies towards psychology as movies, similar to the method proposed by Moghaddam (2004) in regard to literature.

Otmazgin’s chapter revolves around a survey in which they analyze the understanding of Japanese culture from an outside perspective of Korean youth. Here, while a survey is not novel by any means, the interest in how individuals negotiate the ambivalence between wanting to enculturate and accept Japanese culture with the disapproval of foreign policy makes an interesting case study. Their conclusion that it is through Japanese culture that individuals are able to gain more opinions and see a different side of Japanese culture than without it. While that may no doubt be true, it seems more likely that Japanese media culture is a completely different coin, not the same, as Japan as a state.

The examination of drawings (Lášticová & Petrjánošová, 2014) is fruitful for theoretical discussions of borders as well. Here, the authors use personal constructions of perceived and understood borders to discuss identity formation within commuting students. This expansion of the border concept, away from physical or mental borders and towards a created visual depiction of them—allows researchers to see into the mind, limited by only the ability of the artist. Yet, the drawing, and the discussion around the drawing, gives the interviewer a look into the human psyche they might not have originally have had. Their work also is able to develop the notion of borders—showing that even crossing a border does not necessitate its removal or its past, but instead stays with the individual in a form of memory that shapes their identity and, in their case, limit the development of a supranational identity.

Beyond drawings, Lášticová & Petrjánošová also use focus groups, permitting a dynamic of interactive data construction that moves towards a collective intelligence of a given topic (Woolley, Chabris, Pentland, Hashmi, & Malone, 2010). Woolley et al.’s work shows a strong correlation between those groups in which turn taking is granted and collective intelligence scores, along with social sensitivity. The reduced power of the researcher, by providing tools to grant the researched to express themselves, and other individuals to do that with, are important methodological tools worthy of future consideration. Other large group interactions, such as data mining on social media, should also be examined for their accessibility, importance, and ease of access to prove and discuss theoretical considerations in a low-power environment.

Theoretical advancements

Finally, it seems appropriate to discuss the larger contribution of this work as a whole, which is within its theoretical rigor. While all contributions provide an interesting theoretical expansion, I would like to highlight three that I felt were most interesting and expansive across the chapters.

Staerklé proposes a model of four different ways in which one could consider political thinking, which he calls moral order, free market, social diversity, and structural inequality (2014, p. 59). Their differences come through how each social order seeks to be regulated—either through duties to the majority, rights towards the individual, rights towards the group, or duties to the minority. And while this taxonomy is easy to describe, in practice, it blends and merges between the two. The border between these constructions of social order—where duties to the majority mix with collective rights—allows for the development and construction of Othering those who do not properly fit into the majority.

And, as Staerkle argues, by us living within a ‘culture of control’, we seek to avoid those that do not fit into predictability, those that are, in our definition of a social order, ambiguous. And, when faced with ambiguity, we turn to the government to provide even stricter social order in order to resolve that, even when it may place heavier regulations on ourselves (Worchel, 2005). And here lies, I believe, an interesting level of analysis provided through Staerkle’s taxonomy—that of rights and duties and ambivalence. In the cross diagonals of his matrix, which is not noted, is that the Free Market and Social Diversity categories line up with an increase of ambivalence to provide social order due to their focus on rights, while Moral Order and Structural Inequality are focused on decreasing ambivalence due to a focus on duties. A social order in which you know what one cannot do is much more predictable than a social order defined by what one can do (and the boundaries for what one cannot do are not so easily drawn). So within a social order described by rights, Othering occurs through an individual crossing a post-determined border that should-not-have-been-crossed. In this way, Staerkle’s model provides interesting considerations of social order and Othering within the scope of temporality, where individuals must negotiate between ‘what could be’ and ‘what was once’ to determine how to overcome ambivalence and determine the border for the group in question.

This conception of social order as a conglomerate of individual’s positions and cultural discourse is elaborated as a continual process of triangulation by Tateo (2014) and concludes that this Othering process is definitional of a political psychology—deciding who is right, who is wrong, who should lead, and who should stand aside. For othering shows up across the spectrum of research—from whether one wants to promote a culture of debate or culture of diversity (Sánchez-Mazas, 2014), to studying current identities or identities yet-to-come (Wagoner, 2014), to even the ideology you choose to approach social and political questions towards (Balez, 2014), there is always an other that requires acknowledgement and positioning away from (and yet towards it at the same time).

Thus, this work has moved political psychology beyond the individual as a psychological citizen (Moghaddam, 2008) and towards a new conceptualization of the individual—of one that positions themselves in a multitude of frameworks in order to solve a particular question or dilemma set forward by the individual. Through examining lay thinking (Magioglou, 2014b), we face a political psychology not of rationality or averages, but of an individual driven by values, ethics, and emotions. The heroic potential of an citizen (Zimbardo, Breckenridge, & Moghaddam, 2015) can only be understood through an analysis of the system that surrounds and guides the person, while also recognizing and examining how the individual uses that system for his or her best comprehended interests. Yet, even then, there lies the existence of power dynamics that are used by both system and person. The triadic interactions of power, values, and person emerge not just from the study of one, but from the examination of the borders between and across the systems at play.

Conclusion

Magioglou’s effort at combining a collection of works that speaks to a broad range of researchers in an even broader field of political psychology is a resounding success. The chapters grapple with social representation theory, social identity theory, educational philosophy, and sociological theory with a display of both sound quantitative survey methodology and rigorous theoretical extensions. I have attempted to highlight what I thought were some of the major contributions to the book, but each chapter provides a unique and fruitful insight into the discussion that cannot be understated, which is summarized well in a concluding commentary from scholars at the end of each section. Readers interesting in seeing how a more holistic, societal view on politics can provide unique insights into the human condition should be interested in picking up this book, along with anyone who wishes to get a greater understanding of the complexities of politics in a globalizing world.