Zero-sum Thinking Research Articles

“He Who Leaves the Old Way for the New, Knows What He Leaves, but Does Not Know What He Will Find”: Traditionalism, Zero-Sum Thinking, and Imagined Future

The radical rejection of the liberal political movements of the 1960s and 1970s by conservative politicians has been a core aspect of conservative politics. In fact, the youth movements of the 1960s broadened the goals of the labor and civil rights movement, also dealing with pacifism, ecologism, promotion of a new sexuality, new rights for women, and different sexual identities foreshadowing a revolutionary future for Western societies. It has been referred to as the silent revolution to define this movement of social change that began more than half a century ago. However, the reaction to the changes promoted by this movement since the 1980s has led to a cultural backlash. Fear of diversity, immigration, and economic and ecological crises has thus been the trigger for the new conservatism and populism. Everything produced by globalization has been considered decadent and immoral compared to a great and glorious past. The fortunes of the new populist parties in this sense are based on a traditionalist ideology that is not new at all, however. This article shows from a historical perspective how the idea of a threatening future found in the contemporary populist right is a radical conservative tendency that recurs throughout human history. In the article, an attempt will be made to define the culture and psychology of this conservative rejection of the future. Finally, possible solutions will be described in order to imagine a positive idea of the future.

Developmental psychopathology as a meta-paradigm: From zero-sum science to epistemological pluralism in theory and research.

In a thoughtful commentary in this journal a decade ago, Michael Rutter reviewed 25 years of progress in the field before concluding that developmental psychopathology (DP) initiated a paradigm shift in clinical science. This deduction requires that DP itself be a paradigm. According to Thomas Kuhn, canonical paradigms in the physical sciences serve unifying functions by consolidating scientists' thinking and scholarship around single, closed sets of discipline-defining epistemological assumptions and methods. Paradigm shifts replace these assumptions and methods with a new field-defining framework. In contrast, the social sciences are multiparadigmatic, with thinking and scholarship unified locally around open sets of epistemological assumptions and methods with varying degrees of inter-, intra-, and subdisciplinary reach. DP challenges few if any of these local paradigms. Instead, DP serves an essential pluralizing function, and is therefore better construed as a metaparadigm. Seen in this way, DP holds tremendous untapped potential to move the field from zero-sum thinking and scholarship to positive-sum science and epistemological pluralism. This integrative vision, which furthers Dante Cicchetti's legacy of interdisciplinarity, requires broad commitment among scientists to reject zero-sum scholarship in which portending theories, useful principles, and effective interventions are jettisoned based on confirmation bias, errors in logic, and ideology.

Zero-Sum Thinking and the Cultural Threat of Muslim Immigrants’ Religious Rights

Zero-Sum Thinking and the Cultural Threat of Muslim Immigrants’ Religious Rights

Beyond zero-sum thinking in teacher education: cognitive science, educational neuroscience, and the history of education

PurposeI take as a starting point the disparaging comments about the place of history and philosophy of education in initial teacher education (ITE) made by the chair of the Teacher Education Expert Panel established by the Australian Government in 2023, which I take to be the most recent attempt at resurrecting the tired debate over “the art versus science of teaching”. I draw on an example from my own ITE classroom to tease possibilities for how historical research and research in the sciences of learning can be in dialogue and collaborate to deepen educational scholarship.Design/methodology/approachThe purpose of this essay is to reflect on the scholarly discussions and debates in the sciences of learning that historical researchers of education have largely been absent or excluded from. I argue that historical researchers have an important role to play as “critical friends” to the burgeoning fields of cognitive science and educational neuroscience.FindingsFrom my cursory and singular account, I highlight two key areas of education where historical research and the sciences of learning can be fruitfully in dialogue and collaboration: Firstly, on the cultural dimension that prefigures learners' approach to learning; and secondly, on the factors that enable or disable effective learning.Originality/valueThis essay sets an agenda for historical researchers in education to exercise “critical friendship” with the cognitive and brain sciences of learning, specifically by adding temporal considerations to the way biology, psychology, and sociality interact to produce different educational outcomes. This will be of “practical” service to ITE – and to students in schools.

Cosmopolitanism and social dominance orientation mediate relationship between political orientation and sexism

Over the past decade, ‘anti-gender discourse’ has been institutionalised by the governing right-wing party in Hungary to a wide effect, from the removal of accreditation from a gender studies MA program to the Parliament's refusal to ratify the Istanbul Convention. The anti-egalitarian backlash echoes those emergent in other countries where right-wing populism has gained ground — such as Poland, Turkey, India, the United States, and Brazil. The present study examined the role of two opposite orientations, cosmopolitanism as an egalitarian worldview and social dominance orientation as the preference for hierarchies and inequality among groups and people in general, in mediating the relationship between political orientation and sexism among a representative Hungarian sample (N = 1000). The path analysis revealed that left-wing political orientation was associated with higher levels of cosmopolitan orientation, while right-wing political orientation was associated with higher levels of SDO. Higher levels of cosmopolitan orientation were associated with a more positive attitude toward feminists and lower levels of modern sexism and gender-based zero-sum thinking, while higher levels of SDO were associated with the opposite. Furthermore, cosmopolitan orientation mediated the relationship between political orientation and modern sexism and attitudes toward feminists, while SDO mediated the relationship between political orientation and modern sexism and gender-based zero-sum thinking. Our study emphasizes the important role of cosmopolitan orientation in opposing SDO and promoting a more egalitarian worldview.

The rise of techno-geopolitical uncertainty: Implications of the United States CHIPS and Science Act.

Growing techno-geopolitical uncertainty affects international business in many ways, calling for more scholarly attention to its causes and multinational enterprise (MNE) responses. The United States CHIPS and Science Act epitomizes the country's recent embrace of techno-nationalism in its economic rivalry with China, which has major implications for IB scholarship and management practice. The Act exhibits two features that fly against America's traditional liberal policy stance of championing an open and rules-based multilateral system. First, its reliance on subsidies, export control, and investment screening signifies departure from free trade and from market-based industrial policies. Second, its use of guardrail provisions pursues the weaponization of global value chains for geopolitical and geo-economic purposes. We view the Act as a showcase of a paradigm shift from market-oriented liberalism to intervention-oriented techno-nationalism, heralding a new era of zero-sum thinking and geopolitical prioritization. By examining the broader trend of techno-nationalism, we explore the distinct features of the Act and analyze the geo-strategies that MNEs need to adopt in response to the resulting techno-geopolitical uncertainty. Our analysis highlights the paradigm shift in policymaking, identifies the root causes of this shift, and examines the potential pitfalls it may create. To navigate this uncertain landscape, we suggest four strategic responses for MNEs: geo-strategies, reconfiguration, resilience, and corporate diplomacy.

Zero-Sum Thinking and the Roots of U.S. Political Divides

Zero-Sum Thinking and the Roots of U.S. Political Divides

Unravelling the relationship between populism and belief in conspiracy theories: The role of cynicism, powerlessness and zero-sum thinking.

In recent years, it has been argued that conspiracy beliefs and populist attitudes go hand in hand. Despite their theoretical and empirical similarities, it remains unclear why these constructs are so closely associated. Across three studies, we examined the processes underlying the relationship between belief in conspiracy theories and populist attitudes. Study 1 (Greece, N=275) and Study 2 (United Kingdom, N=300) revealed that the relationship between populist attitudes and conspiracy beliefs is mediated by political cynicism and zero-sum thinking. In Study 3 (USA, N= 300, pre-registered), we use a vignette of a fictitious country to experimentally show that having a newly elected populist party in power (as compared to a well-established party) reduced participants' tendency to believe conspiracy theories. Moreover, this was due to increased empowerment, decreased political cynicism and decreased zero-sum thinking. These findings reveal various complementary mediators of the link between populist attitudes and conspiracy thinking and suggest that electing a populist party in power may reduce conspiracy beliefs among the public.

The impact of leader dominance on employees' zero-sum mindset and helping behavior.

Leaders strive to encourage helping behaviors among employees, as it positively affects both organizational and team effectiveness. However, the manner in which a leader influences others can unintentionally limit this desired behavior. Drawing on social learning theory, we contend that a leader's tendency to influence others via dominance could decrease employees' interpersonal helping. Dominant leaders, who influence others by being assertive and competitive, shape their subordinates' cognitive schema of success based on zero-sum thinking. Employees with a zero-sum mindset are more likely to believe that they can only make progress at the expense of others. We further propose that this zero-sum mindset results in less interpersonal helping among subordinates. We test our hypotheses by employing different operationalizations of our key variables in eight studies of which four are reported in the manuscript and another four in Supplemental Information across a combined sample of 147,780 observations. These studies include a large archival study, experiments with both laboratory and online samples, and a time-lagged field study with employees from 50 different teams. Overall, this research highlights the unintended consequences that dominant leaders have on their followers' helping behavior by increasing their zero-sum mindset. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The Status Dilemma in World Politics: An Anatomy of the China–India Asymmetrical Rivalry

Abstract The role of status in world politics has become an important research topic. This article examines China–India relations through a new framework for status dilemmas. This article, through a careful comparison of the status dilemma with other models of conflict, clarifies the logic and mechanism of status dilemmas in world politics. In particular, it differentiates between the status competition model and the status dilemma model. The status dilemma entails overestimation of the competitive nature of the status relationship and underestimation of the potential compatibility of the status goal. The article demonstrates that the China–India relationship is not always a zero-sum game, even though its competitive nature is real. Asymmetrical power and motivated reasoning contribute to misunderstanding and misperception. The power asymmetry makes India oversensitive to Chinese actions, and it makes China less sensitive to India’s concerns. Motivated reasoning, based on historical memory and domestic politics, moreover, makes India’s perception of China more negative and competitive than China’s apprehension of India. The status dilemma has broad implications for power politics in the new era which suggest that policymakers should realistically evaluate the challenges of status competition while avoiding deterministic zero-sum thinking.

Personal relative deprivation and the belief that economic success is zero-sum.

Why do people view economic success as zero-sum? In seven studies (including a large, nationally representative sample of more than 90,000 respondents from 60 countries), we explore how personal relative deprivation influences zero-sum thinking-the belief that one person's gains can only be obtained at other people's expense. We find that personal relative deprivation fosters a belief that economic success is zero-sum, and that this is true regardless of participants' household income, political ideology, or subjective social class. Moreover, in a large and preregistered study, we find that the effect of personal relative deprivation on zero-sum thinking is mediated by lay perceptions of society. The more people see themselves as having been unfairly disadvantaged relative to others, the more they view the world as unjust and economic success as determined by external forces beyond one's control. In turn, these cynical views of society lead people to believe that economic success is zero-sum. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on social comparisons, the distribution of resources, and the psychological consequences of feeling personally deprived. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Which styles of moral reasoning predict apprehension toward consensual non-monogamy?

Consensual non-monogamy (CNM) refers to any intimate relationship where partners agree to form multiple, concurrent intimate relationships. Stigma against CNM is well-documented, but its antecedents are unclear. Here, we test how apprehension toward CNM is related to moral reasoning. In Study 1, participants (N = 229) identified reasons why people disapprove of CNM from which we created the CNM Apprehension Scale (CNMapp). In Study 2, participants (N = 726) completed the CNMapp alongside established measures of moral decision-making: the moral foundations questionnaire, the social dominance orientation scale, the zero-sum thinking in romantic relationships scale, the moral approbation scale, and the HEXACO-60. We identified five reasons for CNM apprehension: 1) anticipated relationship conflict, 2) moral belief violation, 3) reputational damage, 4) sexual health risk, and 5) same-sex intimacy. People who scored higher on CNMapp reported more zero-sum thinking about their romantic relationships, stronger purity and antiegalitarian beliefs, lower openness to experience, and greater desire for moral approbation from others. We argue that CNM apprehension can be traced to two primary concerns: unrestricted sociosexuality and risk of interpersonal conflict. We conclude by considering how moral intuitions about CNM may be adaptively mismatched to environments where technology addresses the recurrent adaptive challenges of non-monogamy.

Protecting Chinese Interests Abroad or Planning for PRC Primacy?

Protecting Chinese Interests Abroad or Planning for PRC Primacy? Andrew Scobell (bio) Andrea Ghiselli's meticulously researched and lucidly written tome, Protecting China's Interests Overseas: Securitization and Foreign Policy, explores the drivers of China's increasing global military activism and is well worth the read. He has done exceptional research in primary Chinese language sources and solidly grounded his scholarship in the relevant international relations literature. The topic is one that has grabbed the attention of the United States and other countries—the growing global activism of the armed forces of the People's Republic of China (PRC). While still modest and tentative compared to the security activities and overseas military postures of other great powers, the 21st-century activities of China's armed forces go well beyond the PRC's borders and immediate periphery. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy now routinely transits the Indian Ocean to the Gulf of Aden, and PLA Navy vessels regularly appear in more distant bodies of water. China joined the club of great powers that possess overseas military bases with its first official military facility beyond PRC borders formally established in Djibouti in 2017. And for twenty years the PLA has regularly conducted ground, air, and maritime exercises with other militaries in locales both within China and around the globe. China has also been dispatching soldiers to serve in UN peacekeeping missions far afield since the 1990s. But China's increased military activism during the past decade or so signals a sea change in Beijing's disposition and thinking. China long proclaimed that it did not station a single soldier overseas or occupy an inch of foreign soil. But with a military base abroad, Beijing can no longer say this. What accounts for this dramatic change? The book describes the 2011 unraveling of Muammar Gaddafi's regime in Libya as the watershed event. Beijing was caught by surprise and had to scramble to evacuate some 36,000 Chinese workers from the chaos (p. 1). The operation was coordinated by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs mostly using chartered commercial shipping via the Mediterranean to remove PRC citizens from harm's way. The involvement of the military in this operation was almost [End Page 160] a sideshow—limited to four PLA Air Force Ilyushin Il-76s flying out 1,655 Chinese (p. 229) and a single PLA Navy vessel, the frigate Xuzhou, serving as an escort for an armada of civilian ships ferrying the evacuees out of Libya (pp. 223–24). According to Ghiselli, "a crisis in a third country had never impacted Chinese interests abroad as much as this one" (p. 1). In an era where great-power competition is the dominant rubric and the myth of Chinese omnipotence seems pervasive in the policy community, two key findings of Protecting China's Interests Overseas merit special attention. First, Ghiselli finds that China's greater security presence beyond its own immediate Asia-Pacific neighborhood is defensive—driven by a "powerful" impulse (p. 1) to protect its burgeoning interests overseas—rather than propelled by an offensive strategy to wrest global supremacy from the United States. The author concludes that the "deployment of Chinese soldiers in critical regions like the Middle East or North Africa…has not been motivated by a desire to erode American supremacy in those regions" (p. 241). Ghiselli's point is that not everything Beijing does is about great-power competition with Washington. Of course, the United States looms large for China's leaders and factors into almost every decision they make. But the PRC is pursuing its own destiny and advancing its own interests, not all of which involve the United States. A policy implication of this finding is that there is potential for cooperation, or at least coexistence, with the PRC on the global stage. However, China's "interest frontiers" are expanding and, when combined with Beijing's own zero-sum thinking, notwithstanding China's "win-win" propaganda rhetoric, there is no guarantee that this potential will be realized. Second, Ghiselli's research reveals that most "events related to China's interest frontiers were hardly the result of a well-thought-out plan" (p. 242). This finding calls...

Vaccine apartheid: global cooperation and equity

Vaccine apartheid: global cooperation and equity

Win-win denial: The psychological underpinnings of zero-sum thinking.

A core proposition in economics is that voluntary exchanges benefit both parties. We show that people often deny the mutually beneficial nature of exchange, instead espousing the belief that one or both parties fail to benefit from the exchange. Across four studies (and 8 further studies in the online supplementary materials), participants read about simple exchanges of goods and services, judging whether each party to the transaction was better off or worse off afterward. These studies revealed that win-win denial is pervasive, with buyers consistently seen as less likely to benefit from transactions than sellers. Several potential psychological mechanisms underlying win-win denial are considered, with the most important influences being mercantilist theories of value (confusing wealth for money) and theory of mind limits (failing to observe that people do not arbitrarily enter exchanges). We argue that these results have widespread implications for politics and society. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Taxing the rich: public preferences and public understanding

ABSTRACT Who supports high taxes on the rich? Existing accounts of public attitudes focus on egalitarian values and material interests, but make little mention of the ideas people hold about how the economy works descriptively. Drawing on the distinction between positive- and zero-sum beliefs about the economy, and original survey data from five countries, I show that there are systematic differences in tax progressivity preferences across groups within the public who think differently about the economy. Positive-sum thinking is associated with less progressive preferences. However, despite theoretical attention, there is no evidence of systematic zero-sum thinking among the public. On the other hand, some descriptions focus on conflict between rich and poor, and these do predict support for greater progressivity. Further analysis is required to differentiate alternative causal explanations of the patterns observed, but different modes of descriptive economic thinking are an important feature of the mass politics of progressivity.

Supplemental Material for Win–Win Denial: The Psychological Underpinnings of Zero-Sum Thinking

Supplemental Material for Win–Win Denial: The Psychological Underpinnings of Zero-Sum Thinking

Reception and practice of diplomacy in modern Japan: power, interests, and norms

Abstract This article re-examines Japan’s entry into international society, focusing on leading Japanese diplomats. It has been believed that Meiji leaders’ interpretation of international society and diplomacy was characterized by power-political and zero-sum thinking, and they took a realistic approach in an imperialistic system. However, the present article demonstrates that Japanese diplomacy in and after the 1890s was basically guided by interest-oriented and non–zero-sum thinking which was closely tied to the international order. Leading Japanese diplomats, who learned from their experiences in diplomacy with Western countries, understood the significance of norms as well as the importance of military power, and pursued Japan’s national interests within the rules and norms of international society. These findings offer a new image of the principles of modern Japanese diplomacy, the mechanisms of Japanese imperial expansion, and the process of the spread of norms in international society.

The Downside of Divinity? Reputational Harm to Sectarian Universities from Overtly Religious Advertising

The present research explores whether the use of overtly religious advertising by a sectarian university affects its academic reputation. The authors propose that individuals assume universities that engage in more (vs. less) overt religious advertising devote a greater proportion of their institutional resources toward religious education. Further, they posit that individuals exhibit zero-sum thinking about resource allocation whereby they believe that a university’s provision of greater resources toward religion education implies the availability of fewer resources for other academic programs and disciplines. As such, whereas overtly religious advertising can bolster individuals’ evaluations of programs and disciplines closely related to religion (e.g., divinity, theology), it can adversely affect evaluations of programs and disciplines in other areas (e.g., science, engineering, business, economics). Finally, the authors suggest that individuals’ zero-sum thinking has the potential to create the most reputational harm for a religious university’s scientific programs and disciplines due to the presumption of many individuals—even those who consider themselves religious—that religion and science are antithetical. This theorizing is empirically supported by six experiments with over 2,400 participants.

The geopolitics of COVID-19: US-China rivalry and the imminent Kindleberger trap

Purpose The spread of COVID-19 is not just a health crisis. The pandemic has taken a geopolitical dimension. The health crisis amplified the competitive dynamics between the USA and China, affected the provision of global public goods and injected instability into the global order. In line with the geopolitical zero-sum thinking, both the USA and China have sought to capitalize on the crisis to boost their international profile. Instead of working together to mitigate the health and economic impacts of COVID-19, the two powers fear that the other will exploit the current situation to accrue political, economic or military gains that will give it an edge after the pandemic subsides. The spread of COVID-19 has set off a “battle of narratives,” in which China and the USA are accusing each other of failing to rise to the challenge. The world seems to be falling into a “Kindleberger Trap,” in which the established power is unable to lead while the rising power is unwilling to assume responsibility. The COVID-19 crisis is occurring amid the collapse of global cooperation. The USA, the traditional leader of international collective efforts in times of crisis, has abandoned its role entirely. The lack of leadership at the global level during an international crisis may cause the breakdown of the international order. Design/methodology/approach This paper examines the US-China competitive dynamics through the lens of the work of Charles Kindleberger, which both liberals and realists regard as foundational when examining the dynamics of global crisis management. This paper also uses the meta-geopolitics framework to determine the ability of both China and the USA to respond to the current COVID-19 crisis and its implications for their power and standing in the international system. Findings This paper concludes that the only way to escape the Kindleberger trap is “to embed Sino-American relations in multilateralism.” Originality/value As rivals, both the USA and China are seeking to capitalize on the crisis to boost their international profile. This paper probes how China and the USA navigated the ongoing COVID-19 crisis to determine whether or not they are currently in a “Kindleberger Trap,” using elements of the meta-geopolitics framework of analysis, namely, health issues, domestic politics, economics, science and international diplomacy. Using the meta-geopolitics framework will help us determine the ability of both China and the USA to respond to the current COVID-19 crisis and the implications of that on their power and standing in the international system.