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Regular version of the site
Important announcements 1

Events

December, 6 — regular seminar

Event ended

Topic: “Personality Traits and the Foreign Policy Preferences of Russian Elites”
Speakers: Boris Sokolov (HSE), Yegor Lazarev (University of Toronto), Eduard Ponarin (HSE)

The Laboratory for Comparative Social Research announces the next  regular seminar, which will be held in Saint-Petersburg (Sedova st., 55-2, room 303) on December 6 at 5-00 pm. Boris Sokolov (HSE), Yegor Lazarev (University of Toronto), Eduard Ponarin (HSE) will deliver a report “Personality Traits and the Foreign Policy Preferences of Russian Elites”.

What shapes preferences and choices of foreign policy decision-makers? The currently dominant rational-choice approach assumes that cool-headed actors weigh the probable costs and benefits of clearly-defined choices and then decide accordingly. The political psychology literature offers an alternative model, in which personal psychological traits affect policy decisions. The latter approach has been rarely used in studies of foreign policy —perhaps because high-level officials are mostly inaccessible to researchers. Our study overcomes this issue, using unique data from the Russian Elite Survey to examine associations between the Big Five personality traits and the Russian elite’s foreign policy preferences in four broad domains. We find that people scoring high on either conscientiousness or agreeableness share conservative or aggressive opinions regarding various aspects of international relations in general and Russia’s foreign policy in particular. In contrast, people scoring high on extraversion, openness-to-change, and especially neuroticism express more liberal, peaceful, cooperative, and pro-Western attitudes.

Everyone interested is invited!

Working language is English.

Videoconference with Moscow office of the LCSR (Krivokolenny Pereulok, 3, room 3-333) will be provided. Guests from Moscow are invited to make a request for a pass to the building to Tereza Tonyan (ttonyan@hse.ru by 12 am of the seminar’s day.

Guests from St. Petersburg are invited to make a request for a pass to the building to Olesya Volchenko (ovolchenko@hse.ru) by 12 am of the seminar’s day.

Also after the seminar a videotape will be put up after the summary of the presentation.