Peter Beattie

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, MGPE, School of Governance and Policy Studies, Faculty Member

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Assistant Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, focusing on political psychology and global political economy.
New York State attorney, retired.

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Inna Kouper

Indiana University

Professor Sascha-Dominik Dov Bachmann

University of Canberra

Dries Putter

Stellenbosch University

Liana Markariani

Tbilisi State University

Maia Toradze

Anastasiya Osipova

University of Colorado, Boulder

Raushan Zhandayeva

Filip Bryjka

Polish Academy of Sciences

Tamazi Zaridze

Budapest Metropolitan University

Lilia Sablina

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Books by Peter Beattie

Book reviews in IJC, IJP/P, and EJC

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Social Evolution, Political Psychology, and the Media in Democracy: The Invisible Hand in the U.S. Marketplace of Ideas (Intro & Conclusion)

How does the media affect what people believe about politics - and by extension, how the politica... more How does the media affect what people believe about politics - and by extension, how the political system functions? I investigate the ecology of information, divided into two sides: demand (psychological) and supply (political-economic). Social evolution theory provides the organizing framework, which requires filling in from social, political, and evolutionary psychology; media and communication studies; political economy of media; and comparative media studies. The result reveals that democracy cannot obtain without media systems specifically structured to provide ideological diversity.

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Papers by Peter Beattie

Understanding the war in Ukraine Comparing knowledge and bias in Russia and the US

Political Psychology, 2024

What mass publics know about foreign affairs is of great importance in international politics. Kn... more What mass publics know about foreign affairs is of great importance in international politics. Knowledge and ignorance probabilistically delimit the range of opinions likely to form on foreign affairs issues. Military strategists understand the importance of “information warfare,” since publics apply foreign affairs knowledge to form opinions that may help or hinder a government's foreign policy goals. However, little research has investigated what the Russian and U.S. publics know about the invasion of Ukraine. By using a signal detection technique to assess the accuracy of, and bias in, knowledge related to the war in its first few months, this study provides insight into the knowledge both publics used to form opinions about the conflict in mid-2022. The results indicate that both groups have more accurate knowledge pertaining to the dominant narrative in the opposing country, compared to the dominant narrative in their own country. Both groups evinced greater bias toward their own-country narrative, with Russians more biased than Americans. These results are connected to differences and similarities in the two countries' media systems and political contexts. Normative implications differ; from a classical realist international relations perspective, public ignorance is expected and irrelevant, but some versions of democratic theory require unbiased and accurate knowledge found absent here.

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What do voters know, and why does it matter? Investigating issue-specific knowledge and candidate choice in the 2020 U.S. primaries

Are differences in issue-specific knowledge associated with different candidate preferences, aswo... more Are differences in issue-specific knowledge associated with different candidate preferences, aswould be expected if voters are judging candidates and their policy commitments on the basis of essential contextual knowledge they receive from the media? By utilizing a bias-sensitive method of measuring politically relevant knowledge—on economic, foreign policy, and environmental issues—we were able to identify candidate-selection effects of policy-specific information. The study also offers new evidence on how psychological traits affect political thinking within a partisan group,whereasmost research has focused on psychological asymmetries across ideological and partisan groups. Based on previous research, we expected Sanders supporters and supporters of other “anti-establishment” candidates to have less accurate knowledge on these issues than Biden (and other establishment candidate) supporters, as the demographic groups that differentially supported Sanders tend to have lower levels of political knowledge. Instead, Sanders and anti-establishment candidate supporters were found to be more knowledgeable on these issues. We also found psychological asymmetries among Democrats and Democrat-leaning Independents, which were associated with candidate preference. Overall, issue-specific political knowledge was found to be an important predictor of vote choice.

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Political polarization - A curse of knowledge?

Frontiers in Psychology, 2023

Purpose: Could the curse of knowledge influence how antagonized we are towards political outgroup... more Purpose: Could the curse of knowledge influence how antagonized we are towards political outgroups? Do we assume others know what we know but still disagree with us? This research investigates how the curse of knowledge may affect us politically, i.e., be a cause of political polarization.

Background: Research on the curse of knowledge has shown that even when people are incentivized to act as if others do not know what they know, they are still influenced by the knowledge they have.

Methods: This study consists of five studies consisting of both experimental and non-experimental and within- and between-subjects survey designs. Each study collected samples of 152–1,048.

Results: Partisans on both sides overestimate the extent to which stories from their news sources were familiar to contrapartisans. Introducing novel, unknown facts to support their political opinion made participants rate political outgroup members more negatively. In an experimental design, there was no difference in judging an opponent who did not know the same issue-relevant facts and someone who did know the same facts. However, when asked to compare those who know to those who do not, participants judged those who do not know more favorably, and their ratings of all issue-opponents were closer to those issue-opponents who shared the same knowledge. In a debiasing experiment, those who received an epistemological treatment judged someone who disagreed more favorably.

Conclusion: This research provides evidence that the curse of knowledge may be a contributing cause of affective political polarization.

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Theory, Media, and Democracy for Realists

Critical Review, 2018

Democracy for Realists delivers a long-overdue attack upon apologetics for American political rea... more Democracy for Realists delivers a long-overdue attack upon apologetics for American political realities. Achen and Bartels argue that the "folk theory of democracy" is not an accurate description of democracy in the United States and that without a greater degree of economic and social equality, democracy will remain an unattainable ideal. But their account of the gap between ideal and actual relies too heavily on the innate cognitive limitations and biases (particularly intergroup bias) of our psychology. These are important, but they provide only an incomplete understanding if we do not incorporate a focus on information and ideas. Mediaeffects research and comparative media studies provide evidence that the ignorance of the U.S. voter is only partly caused by cognitive limitations, and they point the way to a more effective way to bring social psychology into political science.

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When Left Is Right and Right Is Left: The Psychological Correlates of Political Ideology in China

Political Psychology

A robust empirical literature suggests that the development of one's political ideology is the pr... more A robust empirical literature suggests that the development of one's political ideology is the product of an "elective affinity" between the discursive, socially constructed elements of ideological belief systems and the psychological constraints, motives, and interests of those who are drawn to those belief systems. However, most studies which support this elective affinity theory have been conducted in the West. In the present study, we tested the theory in China to see whether elective affinities between psychological traits and political ideology are more likely to be universal. Across a nationally representative sample (N = 509), we found initial support for the characterization of the left-right divide in China, albeit in reverse. Namely, the "liberal Right in China mostly evinces traits of the psychological Left in the West (e.g., lower intolerance of ambiguity), while the "conservative Left" mostly evinces traits of the psychological right in the West (e.g., higher system justification). Epistemic motives were most reliably related to political ideology, while existential and relational motives were more mixed; economic and political aspects of ideology were more closely linked to psychological traits than social/cultural aspects. The present findings provide an extension of existing theory and opportunities for further development.

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Knowledge in international relations: Susceptibilities to motivated reasoning among experts and non-experts

Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 2019

Motivated reasoning as a pervasive feature of human psychology poses challenges to the ideal of l... more Motivated reasoning as a pervasive feature of human psychology poses challenges to the ideal of liberal democratic government, which relies on citizens’ rationality. Motivated reasoning is at least partially caused by a biased store of knowledge, a partial set of accumulated information that skews reasoning about important political issues. However, there is some evidence that specialized training in a given domain may reduce the effects of motivated reasoning within that domain. To test whether a similar phenomenon is evident in the field of international relations, a signal detection technique is used to measure knowledge of U.S. foreign policy among two samples, one of IR professors and one of laypersons. The results uncover significant differences between experts and nonexperts, indicating that training in IR helps to reduce biases in knowledge, potentially providing “knowledge constraints” on motivated reasoning. Nonetheless, some evidence of bias among IR professors remains, s...

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The Power of Fair Procedures: The Effect of Fair Treatment on Subordinates’ Perceptions of Power and Hierarchy

The Road to Psychopathology: Neoliberalism and the Human Mind

Journal of Social Issues, 2019

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The (Intellectual Property Law and) Economics of Innocent Fraud: The IP & Development Debate

There exists today a lively debate between those who believe that maximal IP protection should be... more There exists today a lively debate between those who believe that maximal IP protection should be extended throughout the world regardless of differing stages of national development, and those who believe that such an imposition would be harmful, if not deadly, to developing economies and societies. In this essay, I reexamine the debate, showing how much or little is actually known, and, it is hoped, to expose innocent fraud wherever it may be uncovered.

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When Left Is Right and Right Is Left: The Psychological Correlates of Political Ideology in China

by Peter Beattie, Rosalie Chen, and Karim Bettache

Political Psychology

A robust empirical literature suggests that the development of one’s political ideolog... more A robust empirical literature suggests that the development of one’s political ideology is the product of an “elective affinity” between the discursive, socially constructed elements of ideological belief systems and the psychological constraints, motives, and interests of those who are drawn to those belief systems. However, most studies which support this elective affinity theory have been conducted in the West. In the present study, we tested the theory in China to see whether elective affinities between psychological traits and political ideology are more likely to be universal. Across a nationally representative sample (N = 509), we found initial support for the characterization of the left- right divide in China, albeit in reverse. Namely, the “liberal Right in China mostly evinces traits of the psychological Left in the West (e.g., lower intolerance of ambiguity), while the “conservative Left” mostly evinces traits of the psychological right in the West (e.g., higher system justification). Epistemic motives were most reliably related to political ideology, while existential and relational motives were more mixed; economic and political aspects of ideology were more closely linked to psychological traits than social/cultural aspects. The present findings provide an extension of existing theory and opportunities for further development.

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Information: Evolution, Psychology, and Politics

Papers on Social Representations, 2016

Social representations theory is unique within social psychology for its primary focus on informa... more Social representations theory is unique within social psychology for its primary focus on information and its effects on society. Schema research likewise focuses on information, but only information in individual minds. Meme theory, while essentially a rediscription of what we already know, provides a helpful perspective on how ideas form, change, and spread. Together, these three approaches to information can help inform a political psychology capable of addressing the most pressing political problems we face today.

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The merciless mind in a dog-eat-dog society: neoliberalism and the indifference to social inequality

by Karim Bettache and Peter Beattie

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 2020

Neoliberalism asserts that to preserve individual liberty, an effective competitive market must b... more Neoliberalism asserts that to preserve individual liberty, an effective competitive market must be established to allow individuals to freely choose their economic activities and to reward individuals according to their merits. This ideology has been criticized for condoning social inequality by attributing the presence of social hierarchy to innate or learned personal qualities. We review existing psychological research that has treated neoliberalism as a cluster of personal beliefs and supplement this review with a cross-cultural analysis of 40 societies that differ along two dimensions of neoliberalism: presence of economic freedom and believing in meritocracy. At the individual level, subscription to neoliberalism is positively associated with confidence in personal control, endorsement of system justification, social exclusion of disadvantaged groups, and reluctance to take remedial collective actions that would reduce social inequality. At the society level, the presence of economic freedom and popular support for meritocracy in prototypic neoliberal societies jointly predict greater acceptance of unequal power distribution in these societies, even after controlling for the actual level of economic inequality.

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This Changes Everything? A Possible Future of China-U.S. Relations after Trump

by Peter Beattie and Ana Tomicic

Looking past common prognostications, this article focuses on the conditions for an alternative p... more Looking past common prognostications, this article focuses on the conditions for an alternative possible future of China-U.S. relations, beyond the trade war or a new cold war. Its aim is to map out a possible future that would open up if the U.S. political system takes a leftward turn in 2020 and beyond. Taking stock of the present, this article argues that information logistics affects the structure of the political-economic system, including international relations. Fundamental changes in the ecology of information make a "democratic socialist" presidential administration in the U.S. a significant possibility, and make international communication more feasible-including communication between China and the Western public. This represents an opportunity for China to augment its soft power, while overcoming its most pressing economic and social challenges. Focusing on conditions of ecological emergency and the crisis of capitalist democracy, it is argued that new opportunities exist to facilitate the international cooperation required to avoid climate catastrophe, and for warmer relations to develop between China and the U.S.

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Ideology, Values, and Foreign Policy

Oxford Bibliographies, 2019

Ideology is a prototypical “contested concept,” though competing definitions can generally be sor... more Ideology is a prototypical “contested concept,” though competing definitions can generally be sorted into pejorative and nonpejorative categories. Pejorative definitions consider ideology to be a set of false beliefs about the world and how it operates, typically facilitating exploitation or injustice. Nonpejorative definitions consider ideology to be something neutral (or its normative dimension to be undetermined a priori), a kind of systematized thinking about politics or political economy; a worldview. It is the latter definition that is most common in international relations scholarship outside of the Marxian tradition, and it will be used here. Values are commonly defined as rank-ordered ideas about what is desirable, transcending specific situations, that guide behavioral choices and influence evaluations. Given these two definitions, values are subsumed under ideology; they form the normative dimension of ideology. For example, A may value both self-determination and democracy (and A may see elections as a means of ensuring self-determination); but if A’s ideology pictures the international system as dominated by a superpower that regularly interferes in elections, she may support the decision of a less powerful state to avoid elections to evade the superpower’s interference. Ideology, as a systematized way of thinking about politics, can help adjudicate conflicts between values—as in this example, between self-determination and democracy. International relations scholarship has traditionally overlooked the influence of ideology and values on foreign policy and public opinion about foreign policy. Considerations of power maximization and balancing were commonly hypothesized to overwhelm any influence of ideational factors, such that the latter could be safely ignored as mere epiphenomena of the former. More recently, the variously named ideational, interpretivist, or constructivist turn in international relations has opened the way for IR scholars to investigate the effects of ideas within the international system. Foreign policy analysis, operating at a less abstract level, has been more open to ideational factors as influences on policymakers. Yet a great deal remains to be explored about the way ideology and values constrain and influence foreign policy decision-makers, and public opinion (which, in turn, may constrain and influence decision-makers). Ideology and values can be conceptualized at the micro level as beliefs held by individuals and at the macro level as widely shared beliefs (akin to “social representations”) enforced, inculcated, and/or reproduced by institutions.

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Who is the Neoliberal- Exploring Neoliberal Beliefs across East and West.docx

by Peter Beattie and Karim Bettache

Journal of Social Issues

Research in political psychology has uncovered “elective affinities” between psychological traits... more Research in political psychology has uncovered “elective affinities” between psychological traits and political ideology. Strong correlations have been found linking psychological variables to political-economic beliefs in Western countries. These results suggest that people’s psychological traits influence the development of their ideology, making some ideas, explanations, prescriptions, and ways of understanding the world seem more convincing or satisfying than others. Most such investigations have focused on differences along the liberal-conservative ideological spectrum in the U.S., or the left-right divide in Europe and the (rest of) the Americas. Relatively little research has examined psychological elective affinities with neoliberal ideology in particular, and none to our knowledge has been done outside of the West (including Turkey and Israel). We report the results of a preliminary investigation into the psychological correlates of neoliberal ideology in Hong Kong, India, and the U.S. Our U.S. results replicate earlier research introducing the Neoliberal Beliefs Index, while our Hong Kong and Indian results reveal similarities and differences in the psychological traits associated with neoliberal beliefs.

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The Road to Psychopathology: Neoliberalism and the Human Mind

Journal of Social Issues

Neoliberalism has been the dominant influence on economic policy in most of the world for nearly ... more Neoliberalism has been the dominant influence on economic policy in most of the world for nearly four decades. There has been a great deal of analysis of neoliberalism’s economic effects, but its psychological effects have received comparatively less attention. This article attempts to fill this gap, providing an assessment of neoliberalism according to psychological criteria. First, it describes the development and evolution of neoliberal theory, noting how it has changed over time. The psychological suppositions inherent in neoliberal theory are foregrounded, and judged by their correspondence to psychological research. Then, relevant psychological literature is reviewed and discussed to discover the possible psychological effects of neoliberal economic policies. The conclusion refers to the genesis of neoliberalism as a source of inspiration for crafting an alternative economic ideology better suited to human psychology.

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The Cognitive Structuring of American Identity: Individual Differences in the Form, Content & Affect of National Identification

Most research on national identity assumes that people think and therefore understand groups and ... more Most research on national identity assumes that people think and therefore understand groups and themselves as members in basically the same way. We complement this approach by examining differences in the quality of people " s thinking. While many people think in the simple concrete categorical terms assumed in most research, we argue that some individuals either do not think categorically or they think about categories in a reflective complex way. Consequently, they construct their national identity differently. To test this, we conducted an online survey that included interactive problem-solving tasks to assess cognitive functioning and standard survey items to measure the quality, content and affect of participants " American identity. Our results indicate individuals think in qualitatively different ways and this is reflected in how they identify as Americans. Moreover this effect of cognitive differences is independent of and stronger than its common surrogate, level of education. We conclude with a consideration of the implications of these results for racist conceptions of nationality and democratic citizenship.

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The "Chicken-and-Egg" Development of Political Opinions – The Roles of Genes, Social Status, Ideology, and Information

Past research about genetic influences on political ideology has revealed that ideology is partia... more Past research about genetic influences on political ideology has revealed that ideology is partially heritable. Neurological research has revealed that ideological differences are reflected in patterns of brain structure and response, suggesting a direct genotype-phenotype link; at the same time, social and informational environments have also been found to affect brain structure and response. This has led to a " chicken-or-egg " question: do genes produce brains with ideological predispositions, or do social and informational environments do most of the heavy lifting? This article investigates the relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors on ideological development, using a role play experiment on the development of opinions on a novel political issue. The results support the view that the process is bidirectional, suggesting that like most traits, political ideology is produced by the complex interplay of both genetic and (social/informational) environmental influences.

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Book reviews in IJC, IJP/P, and EJC

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Social Evolution, Political Psychology, and the Media in Democracy: The Invisible Hand in the U.S. Marketplace of Ideas (Intro & Conclusion)

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Understanding the war in Ukraine Comparing knowledge and bias in Russia and the US

Political Psychology, 2024

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What do voters know, and why does it matter? Investigating issue-specific knowledge and candidate choice in the 2020 U.S. primaries

Download

Political polarization - A curse of knowledge?

Frontiers in Psychology, 2023

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Theory, Media, and Democracy for Realists

Critical Review, 2018

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When Left Is Right and Right Is Left: The Psychological Correlates of Political Ideology in China

Political Psychology

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Knowledge in international relations: Susceptibilities to motivated reasoning among experts and non-experts

Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 2019

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The Power of Fair Procedures: The Effect of Fair Treatment on Subordinates’ Perceptions of Power and Hierarchy

The Road to Psychopathology: Neoliberalism and the Human Mind

Journal of Social Issues, 2019

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The (Intellectual Property Law and) Economics of Innocent Fraud: The IP & Development Debate

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When Left Is Right and Right Is Left: The Psychological Correlates of Political Ideology in China

by Peter Beattie, Rosalie Chen, and Karim Bettache

Political Psychology

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Information: Evolution, Psychology, and Politics

Papers on Social Representations, 2016

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The merciless mind in a dog-eat-dog society: neoliberalism and the indifference to social inequality

by Karim Bettache and Peter Beattie

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 2020

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This Changes Everything? A Possible Future of China-U.S. Relations after Trump

by Peter Beattie and Ana Tomicic

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Ideology, Values, and Foreign Policy

Oxford Bibliographies, 2019

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Who is the Neoliberal- Exploring Neoliberal Beliefs across East and West.docx

by Peter Beattie and Karim Bettache

Journal of Social Issues

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The Road to Psychopathology: Neoliberalism and the Human Mind

Journal of Social Issues

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The Cognitive Structuring of American Identity: Individual Differences in the Form, Content & Affect of National Identification

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The "Chicken-and-Egg" Development of Political Opinions – The Roles of Genes, Social Status, Ideology, and Information

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Knowledge in International Relations: One Precursor to Motivated Reasoning among Experts and Non-Experts

Journal of Social and Political Psychology

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Theory, Media, and Democracy for Realists

Achen and Bartels deliver a long-overdue attack upon apologetics for the US political system. The... more Achen and Bartels deliver a long-overdue attack upon apologetics for the US political system. They argue that the normatively-desirable " folk theory of democracy " (also known as democracy) is not an accurate description of the really-existing system of government in place in the US. Without a greater degree of economic and social equality, democracy will remain an unattainable ideal – no matter what sort of mathematical and rhetorical gymnastics apologists for the present system use. But their account of the gap between ideal and actual relies too heavily on the innate cognitive limitations of our psychology. Evolutionary and political epistemology, along with the conclusions of media research, provide a supplement resulting in a more complete and realistic account.

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Competing Economic Paradigms in China review

Journal of Economic Issues

Cohn analogizes the introduction of neoclassical economics in China to the spread of Christianity... more Cohn analogizes the introduction of neoclassical economics in China to the spread of Christianity under Western colonialism: economist-proselytizers truly believed that the ideas they propagated would benefit everyone, and they were supported in their mission by the U.S. government, business interests, Western philanthropies, and international institutions. In addition to these “push” factors coming from outside of China, there were domestic “pull” factors. The Chinese government saw practical and ideological benefits in neoclassical economics. It would allow Chinese officials to speak the same language as their foreign partners, facilitating business deals and the technology transfer China needed; and this idiom would also serve to narrow officials’ focus to profits and losses, “efficiency,” excluding broader socio-political goals. The neoclassical faith in the power of markets to transform private vice into public virtue would serve as an ideological legitimation for China’s turn down the capitalist road. And Chinese economists and economics students were attracted to neoclassical economics for its greater seeming scientificity and practicality – compared to Marxist economics, which seemed sterilely philosophical and ideological – an attraction that only increased as market reforms transformed daily life and made Marxist concepts seem increasingly outmoded (or worse: subversive). This combination of push and pull factors – or selection pressures, in evolutionary terms – is described as “invited influence.”

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Book review: A Critical Guide to Intellectual Property

International Journal of Communication, 2020

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Review Essay: The Battle over Human Nature, Coming to a Resolution

Political Psychology, 2016

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Book Review: What Is Information? by Peter Janich

International Journal of Communication, 2019

What is overlooked in scientific accounts of information? This is the question philosopher Peter ... more What is overlooked in scientific accounts of information? This is the question philosopher Peter Janich provides an answer to in What Is Information? In an attempt to denaturalize and demythologize the received view of a concept used within several fields of science, this book will be particularly valuable for scholars in communication and media studies, but also in the philosophy of science, evolutionary theory, neuroscience, and political science. Janich calls for the concept of information to be reembedded in communication, where the meaning and use of information are inextricably linked, and criticizes "metaphorical" applications of information in genetics, technology, and neuroscience.

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万象更新——特朗普之后中美关系可能的未来(加注释修改版)

by Peter Beattie and Ana Tomicic

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Knowing what the electorate knows: Issue-specific knowledge and candidate choice in the 2020 elections

This study examines how political knowledge affects voting behavior. By utilizing a bias-sensitiv... more This study examines how political knowledge affects voting behavior. By utilizing a bias-sensitive method of measuring politically relevant knowledge – on economic, foreign policy, and environmental issues – we were able to identify candidate-selection effects of policy-specific information. The study also traces how psychological traits affect political thinking within a partisan group, whereas most research has focused on psychological asymmetries across ideological and partisan groups. Based on previous research, we expected Sanders supporters and supporters of other “anti-establishment” candidates to have less accurate knowledge on these issues than Biden (and other establishment candidate) supporters, as the demographic groups that differentially supported Sanders tend to have lower levels of political knowledge. Instead, Sanders and anti-establishment candidate supporters were found to be more knowledgeable. We also found psychological asymmetries among Democrats and Democrat-leaning Independents, which were associated with candidate preference. Likewise, similar differences in knowledge and psychological traits were found between those planning to vote for Trump versus Biden in the general election. Overall, issue-specific political knowledge was found to be an important predictor of vote choice.

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