Help and Aid

With power comes responsibility. This is a saying which states that when a person or group of people has power they must be responsible and know how to use it. For decades now, the Unites States has been a world superpower and was for a number of years arguably the only superpower. The country is thought of as the leader of the democratic world and serves as a model to many smaller third world countries trying to establish democracy.

There is a theory that explains diffusion of responsibility. This was a way of thinking that came about after an experiment conducted by Latane. After the experiment the conclusion was made that when people are in a group, they feel less personal responsibility to helping another person as they responsibility it shared amongst all of those in the group. In other words, in a group of four people, a single person will only feel 25% of the responsibility for a fifth person in need. (Latane) An example of this on a global scale could be seen during the events before World War II. When Hitler began slowly expanding into the countries surrounding Germany, the other countries adopted a form of appeasement to avoid war. With all of the other European countries, with the exception of Italy, the responsibility of stopping Hitler from taking over the smaller countries was shared so that none felt wholly responsible for keeping him in check. More current examples could be situations like the Rwandan genocide. This was something which the international community was aware of, but again, because most of the community was aware of it not much effort was put into helping from each individual country. Instead of a large UN force being sent, a very small group of soldiers from the different countries was used.

Unfortunately for the countries where violence occurs, the sense of responsibility and duty to help really is affected. This means that when famine or genocide breaks out that those affected will most likely receive less help than they need, in particularly from the larger countries like the United States. Despite having resources that could easily support and aide many of these international problems the financial or manpower assistance just isn’t given. Leaders and countries need to be fully aware of this and the psychology behind it and be able to give help to countries in need to the best of their ability.

Latane, Bibb. “Bystander Intervention in Emergencies”. 1968. http://www.nd.edu/~rwilliam/zsoc302/fall2002/experiments/Darley2.pdf

War is Hell

Certainly everyone has heard of the phrase, “War is Hell”. It is used in describing war and what goes on during armed combat. There are so many different things that go on during war it is nearly impossible to imagine the intensity of that sort of situation without having experienced it firsthand. Just because they leave the battlefield though doesn’t mean they’re problems stop. Often they come home to a public that is unhappy with the war and they don’t get the welcoming that they deserve. Now, similar to Vietnam, soldiers returning from duty get far less than they deserve. Especially considering that they’ve spent so much time training to fight and are now forced to live a civilian life.
Re-acclimating to this new lifestyle is a challenge since soldiers are forced to experience all kinds of extremely violent and stressful situations. Along with physical reactions to these different sights there are also psychological reactions, some that can affect a person months and years after the causal experience occurred. Sometimes these experiences can cause serious psychological damage which can be classified at post-traumatic stress disorder. This is a person suffers long term effects from a stressful situation, such as combat or seeing someone get killed. People who suffer from PTSD end up re-experiencing the traumatic event or events and will try to avoid places, people, or other things that remind them of the event. Soldiers affected by this will show symptoms for a long period of time and considerable damage can be done.
In the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there are a total of 40,000 reported cases of PTSD between January 1, 2003 and December 31, 2007. The number increased following the move to increase soldiers in the area and to increase the lengths of tours. As of May 2008 there had been 4,759 American deaths and over 32,000 wounded (Morgan). All of these soldiers eventually come home back to the states, where they have to deal with the PTSD as well as face a public that is unhappy about the war, with Bush having an approval rating of 31 % (Steinhauser). One of the best methods for helping a person to deal with PTSD is using exposure therapy. This is where the person is exposed to situations that caused the disorder in a controlled way so that they are not overwhelmed, with the exposure eventually reaching a point where the subject is no longer affected by it. This was shown when Dr. Keane conducted clinical trials with Vietnam veterans and concluded that exposure therapy was very successful at limiting things like flashbacks, irritability and nightmares (Keane).
Exposure therapy works though because of it being done in a controlled manner. When veterans are subjected to scenes from the war which they just recently returned from a public source, especially when the coverage has a high chance of being negative, it will affect them negatively. Though not nearly as bad as with the Vietnam war where soldiers were termed “baby-killers” among other things, veterans from the middle east often have less than grateful experiences while trying to adjust to civilian life. All the while dealing with PTSD and mass images they are confronted with on the news and nearly every other media outlet. There are programs currently in place that work through the Veteran’s Affairs, but not very much attention is paid to PTSD as it isn’t the easiest thing to diagnose. A change is needed to help those soldiers returning to be able to live a normal life in the suburbs, so to speak.

Keane, T. M. & Kaloupek, D. G. (1982). “Imaginal flooding in the treatment of a posttraumatic stress disorder”. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.
Morgan, David. “Post-traumatic stress soars in U.S. troops”. 27 May, 2008. Reuters. Dec 2, 2008 www.reuters.com

“National Center for PTSD Fact Sheet”. United States Department of Veterans Affairs. Dec 2, 2008 < http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/ncmain/ncdocs/fact_shts/fs_what_is_ptsd.html>

Steinhauser, Paul. “Poll: Bush’s popularity hits new low”. 19 Mar, 2008. CNN. Dec 2, 2008 <>

Preemptive Strikes Justified?

Wars get started for a number of reasons, but perhaps the oddest one that people have come up with is preemptive war. The idea is that two countries foresee an armed conflict somewhere in the future but decide to act upon it now rather than waiting. While the idea of protecting the citizens of a country is perhaps the most important, it brings up the question of where the line is drawn between aggressor and victim. When one country views another as imminently threatening, does it have the right to strike first in defense?

The popular answer, in today’s age, seems to be yes. A specific definition which is generally agreed upon has two main conditions. One is that the preemptive strike has to be equal or proportionate to what the perceived threat is. Meaning that one countries strike can’t be overwhelming when compared to the perceived threat. The other condition is that the threat level has to have reached a level where a first-strike strategy is a requirement and that it has to be a quick and not prolonged affair (Welsh). His type of thinking seems a little backwards, that in order to prevent a war in the future, a war must be started in the present. It’s almost a lazy approach to politics in that the countries have decided there is a problem but that there is nothing which they can do to help it other than go to war.

Whether or not preemptive attacks are morally justified, there are examples of them being accepted worldwide. For instance, in 2007, Israel destroyed a nuclear facility in Syria with nearly no reaction. There was no immediate threat of Syria using some sort of nuclear based weapon. However, the jump from developing weapons to nuclear power isn’t an overnight one. The attack was deemed preemptive, as a threat could be seen down the road and off in the future (Cooper). There is also the example of the United States invading Iraq, which was justified as a preemptive strike. The Bush strategists were probably realist politicians when it came to war, in the sense that conflicts are inevitable and that they should only be conducted if necessary. Seeing as a conflict was inevitable with Iraq, there was a push to get the first strike in first to eliminate the perceived threat (Orend). This would be an example of a preemptive strike which possibly used much more force than called for, as well as lasted much longer than required to take away the perceived threat.

Cooper, Helene, Mark Mazzetti. “An Israeli Strike on Syria Kindles Debate in the U.S.”. New York Time, October 10, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/washington/10diplo.html

Decision Making

The leader of a country typically is involved in that country’s military. For instance in America the president is also the commander-in-chief. Having this much power is a great responsibility for a person to hold. Unfortunately, there is no way to guarantee that the person in this position will be the best for it, as everyone has their own personalities and some people may be better suited for it than others. And as each personality is different, the decisions made will also be different from each person. The five-factor personality theory claims that there are 5 main factors that shape a person’s personality, all of which are biological. The different categories are extraversion, agreeableness,conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience, with conscientiousness being related to organization, thoroughness and the ability to make plans. This specific factor is probably where a person’s need for cognition would fall as well (Srivastava 2008). Obviously this difference in needs for cognition can have a large impact on the country. Imagine some sort of crisis that strikes; warranting a decision as to what to do. The leader could take extra time to think about the problem, but the extra time may cost lives. Or they could make a quick decision, but less thought could mean that the wrong decision is made perhaps costing more lives.
People who have a high need for cognition will typically have a sort of desire to tackle more difficult problems or to spend more time working out a problem. Those with a low need for cognition typically will gather the required information and then make a decision as quick as possible, rather than spending more time processing it. In one study, a group of students showed that people with high cognition will do more work in trying to find information and make a decision than those with low cognition. This can be translated into a more general application to all people with high or low needs for cognition (Hazenberg, Palenewen, Verplanken 1992).
The level of a person’s and more specifically a leader’s need for cognition, whether high or low, will be playing a very large role in his success as a leader. If the leader has a high need for cognition, then more time will pass before action is taken, but they will have considered many more angles and possibilities to the problem. Whereas if the leader has a low need for cognition, action will come quicker since they don’t have as much interest in thinking critically about it, but will lack the same insight as the decision made by the leader with a high need for cognition.
An example of a decision that came quickly due to a low need for cognition could be George W. Bush’s decision to invade Afghanistan following the attacks on September 11th. For instance, the decision to wage a war on terror came very quickly after the attacks. This proved to be a popular decision with the American people, with Bush’s approval rating reaching a record high 92 percent. It also proved to be a good decision to go after Osama Bin Laden, who was being protected by the Taliban government in Afghanistan. The American people were looking for some sort of retaliation directed towards the people involved with the attacks, so a quick decision in this instance seemed reasonable. The polls taken immediately afterwards showed that this instance of low cognition was popular with Bush’s approval rating being near ninety.
While that decision seemed to be a good one, the one following it, the invasion of Iraq as a continuation of the war on terror, did not seem to be a good decision. The decision to invade perhaps wasn’t considered as much as it should have been nor was the information at hand looked at closely enough. Some groups wanted to allow more time for more information to be gathered on what the Iraqi government was doing and to find the weapons of mass destruction, but the American government acted quickly. With the war in Iraq still a current issue, it could be viewed that this was not a good decision. The most recent polls taken show the approval rating has dropped to 28 percent, and while there are now a handful of other issues which have affected this, the war can arguably be the longest running issue.
Hazenberg, Pieter T., Palenewen, Grace R., Verplanken, Bas. (1992). “Need for
Cognition and External Information Search Effort”. Journal of Research in Personality, 26(2), Retrieved from PsycArticles database.
Page, Susan. (9/19/2008). Bush’s disapproval rating worst of any president in 70 years.
USA Today. Retrieved November 1st, 2008, from http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080422/a_pollbox22.art.htm
Srivastava, S. ([2008]). Measuring the Big Five Personality Factors. Retrieved [10/31] from http://www.uoregon.edu/~sanjay/bigfive.html.

Frustration in Germany
by Josh

The natural state of things is a state of peace where people are getting along. This gets upset when aggression is added to the equation. War is a state created directly by showing aggression through being threatening towards or attacking another party. These aggressive acts are reflections of the group's want for self-preservation. When a group is faced by a situation which seems dangerous, the group reacts in a violent way to make sure the situation gets resolved. A country’s livelihood is based on its population of people and when its people’s livelihoods are threatened it is something which needs addressed. So when there is a shortage of food and its population is facing starvation the country’s government is hard pressed to find a solution. When a country has lost its food sources and its people are facing starvation, which would then lead to riots and civil violence, it looks to at the different ways to solve the problem. In this example, the quickest way to solve the food shortage would be to step over its boundaries and take from the food sources of other countries. The group in question will then do everything it can at that moment to ensure their continued survival (Ryan).

Hitler had declared in his book, Meinkapf that he would attempt to expand the country's borders to all the surrounding areas to incorporate all of the German people and to "save" the Aryan race (Ensor). He wanted to set up a state in Europe where Germany was the major power. These decisions were also facilitated by an idea that his country's population was growing too quickly and would very soon push the limits of the country’s ability to feed itself. So the idea to begin expanding was pushed forward because of this seemingly immanent danger to the survival of the country. Of course, this was followed by the invasion of the nearby countries. Germany’s economy was in a horrible state, having been devastated by the involvement in World War I. The economy was in a downward spiral due a combination of a large part of the economy being focused on the war effort and having yet to turn back to civilian production as well as Germany being forced to pay billions in war reparations to the other countries. This, along with a general depressed state of the population from the large number of killings and the sense of being cheated following the Treaty of Versailles, drove the leadership to act in a way which it normally may not have. Hitler and his top advisers decided that to keep their country from essentially imploding from the many different factors violent action needed to occur, which came in the form of military expansion.

The frustration-aggression theory states that motivation for aggression increases when current behavior is interrupted or prevents us from reaching a goal. Basically, the combination of Barker, Dembo and Lewin were stating that when a person is kept from having something they want they have a greater propensity for violence and aggression. In one study researchers placed a toy beyond the reach of children and kept them from having the toy for a period of time. After the children were eventually allowed to have the toy they tended to exhibit aggressive behavior and play with the toy violently (Barker). In the case of Nazi Germany, they were faced with a situation from which it seemed nearly impossible to recover. In order to get enough resources to sustain their projected population and not only keep their country from collapsing but once again become a world superpower, they would have to go to increased measures and responded aggressively. Bringing the economy back to life to begin supporting a population that was growing and accustomed to a good quality of life was too large a task to accomplish internally and they used their military to step into the neighboring countries to get the resources that would be required to save the country.

Barker, R., Dembo, T. and Lewin, K. (1941) Frustration and aggression: An experiment with young children, University of Iowa Studies in Child Welfare, 18, 1-314. Syque 2002-2008.
Ensor, R. C. K. "Mein Kampf" and Europe. International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1931-1939), Vol. 18, No. 4 (Jul. - Aug., 1939), pp. 478-496.
Ryan, Richard M.; Deci, Edward L. Avoiding Death or Engaging Life as Accounts of Meaning and Culture: Comment on Pyszczynski et al. (2004). PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA.