While accepting that feeling is an integral part of human cognition, we should
not of course lose sight of the fact that negative emotions clearly can have a
damaging effect in politics and that emotion can lead to highly irrational outcomes.
We shall see many of these effects when we come to look at the
negative aspects of nationalism and ethnic conflict, for instance, both of which
are fuelled by powerful human emotions. Equally, some kinds of mood clearly
damage the quality of decision-making. As Vertzberger notes, "depression produces
rigid, narrowly focused information processing," especially extreme and
overgeneralized assessments of the situation. 30 During his last days in office,
Lyndon Johnson was clearly in a deeply depressed state, and this may have
contributed to his closed-mindedness and unwillingness to listen to advice that
ran counter to his Vietnam policies. The same seems to have been true of
Richard Nixon during the scandal of Watergate. 31
There is a greater tendency in the psychological study of international
relations and foreign policy to treat emotion as a negative force than there is in
the study of mass behaviors such as voting and public opinion, and there is some justification for this: it is hard to see the emotions that fuel ethnic hatred,
genocide, apartheid, terrorism, and war between states as positive forces in the
world. Nevertheless, the positive role of emotion in decision-making is beginning
to be appreciated within the international relations branch of political
psychology as well. Jonathan Mercer's work on trust provides a leading
example of this kind of approach, as does Ralph White's work on empathy.
The work of both of these scholars will be discussed in Chapter 16, and it is
also consistent with the hypothesis that emotions can have a predominantly
"good" effect on decision-making.