Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed January 12, 2007). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 198-209).

For centuries, statesmen have engaged in personal encounters and correspondences with their political counterparts abroad and thereby exercised what can be called ‘personal diplomacy’ with the aim of influencing the other’s foreign policy. By tracing the use of this strategy in the history of the transatlantic relations between Germany and the United States of America from WWII to the present day, this research aims to analyze the applicability of the concept in this particular bilateral relationship and highlight the successes and failures of different statesmen’s attempts at exerting several types of power. To do so, Raven and French’s so-called ‘Power/Interaction Model of Interpersonal Influence’ is applied to the five case studies, which are the personal relationships between American presidents or secretaries of state and German chancellors or foreign ministers, namely Adenauer and Dulles, Ford and Kissinger, Kohl, Reagan and Bush Senior, Schröder and Bush Junior and Merkel and Obama. What transpires from the examination of their friendships or enmities is that personal relationships do indeed have an impact on statesmen’s political decisions in the German-American relationship, though, whether this influence has been essential or minor differs from case to case. Be that as it may, by presenting the numerous historical instances in which personal diplomacy can be said to have taken place and thereby demonstrating that there exists a trend, this thesis arrives at the verdict that personal diplomacy is a considerable factor in the two countries’ relations and one that demands attention if the scholarly discourse seeks to gain a full understanding of international political processes.

Scholars have researched how voters make decisions for well over a half a century, but these studies are limited in what they are able to say about how voters make decisions because they have focused on the choice rather than the process. Most of these studies have focused on the choice that voters reach or the way their memories are structured, overlooking the importance of the search and acquisition of information. Specifically, scholars in political science have paid little attention to how contextual variations in the information environment affect how voters make decisions. This dissertation investigate`s how changes in context affect how voters search for information. I explore three specific contexts: the number of offices on the ballot, the availability of partisan information about the candidates, and the presence or absence of campaign dialogue between two candidates. Indeed, one of the prominent features of American elections is the variation in the number of elections across jurisdictions, the availability of partisan information about candidates, and the amount of campaign dialogue between candidates--the three contexts that I examine in this study. I conduct three experiments that manipulate each of these contexts, using a dynamic information board that simulates the campaign environment and process tracing methods to track the information subjects chose to view and in what order they chose to view it. Results indicate that context shapes the way voters search for and acquire information. When faced with long ballots, subjects examined information less closely, they compared more information between candidates, and they searched for information less systematically. When subjects were unable to use the partisan cue, they compared less information between candidates and searched for information less systematically. Finally, when there was no dialogue between candidates, subjects searched for less information and had a less systematic search for it. These findings suggest that there are better ways to design elections.

Culturally shared beliefs about societies and humanity play a prominent part in world events, from beliefs about the histories and destinies of nations to beliefs about the appropriate relationship between humanity and the natural world. Many of these beliefs are "metanarratives," simplified representations of past and future societal trends, which often have narrative elements, such as goals, dramatic features, a sense of suspense for group members, and affective judgments about the passage of events over time. In this exploratory study, lifelong residents of the United States (N = 299 undergraduate students and 88 members of a web sample of older adults) indicated their degree of agreement with 73 metanarrative statements. Factor analysis of the students' personal belief scores for the 73 metanarratives revealed a pattern of clustering into six factors, indicating that people tend to believe in families of metanarratives. The six factors were Traditional Religion, American Secular Values, International Cooperation, Eco-Romanticism, Anti-Government Cynicism, and Rational Progress. The web sample largely replicated this structure, but with only four factors. The factors were highly correlated with political party affiliation and other psychosocial and demographic variables, including religiousness, Saucier "isms" factors, and MFQ moral foundations. Participants were also asked about the extent to which some of their strongest beliefs were reflected in their personal activities: career choice, leisure time, spending money, voting, joining groups, reading and viewing, and discussion. The 73 metanarratives were coded for several narrative features: evaluative schema (such as Progress or Looming Catastrophe), presence of standard story elements (context, problem, outcome), presence of goals, and presence of references to cognitively exceptional elements (circumstances beyond the ordinary), such as the sacred, transcendental, unique, or extreme. For both samples, metanarratives with an evaluative schema indicating two possible paths were more motivating than those with only one outcome (e.g., stability or a cycle of recurring ups-and-downs). Further, those with goals were more motivating than those without, and for the web sample, those with cognitively exceptional elements were more motivating than those without. Further study of metanarratives should help to better illuminate the factors leading to individuals' decisions to participate in their larger societies.

[No abstract] / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

A study was conducted to test Tomkins' Polarity theory (1963) on the psychological basis for being ideologically liberal or conservative and its relationship with intolerance of ambiguity and gender differences. Normativism, the conservative orientation, was found to have a positive relationship with intolerance for ambiguity. Males were found to be generally less humanist than females. Theoretical background and relevant research is discussed. Suggested applications of this study are to political persuasion, voting behavior, and the psychology of partisanship. This study intends to contribute to the literature on the psychology of ideology, political behavior and ideological differences between men and women.

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