Authors:
- Demonstrates how our choices of political leaders are influenced by unexpected factors such as physiognomy or height
- Offers a new perspective on leadership in a time when discursive power is becoming increasingly more important than coercive power
- Provides an in-depth analysis of the leadership of key figures in international politics
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Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
By analysing a wide range of empirical research into leadership, this book provides a composite portrait of frequent characteristics, such as personality and demeanour, that influence both the success and popularity of political leaders. Through the lenses of mass psychology and collective behaviour sociology, the author offers fascinating observations on political leadership which reveal a coherent pattern. In our choice of and support for leaders, we still seem to be guided by unconscious or instinctive preferences. Evolutionary psychologists have labelled this ‘CALP’ for ‘Cognitive Ancestral Leadership Prototype’. Length, symmetry, face form, voice pitch, eye blinking and more turn out to play a role – even today - alongside personality and style. Each chapter of the book offers a case study to illustrate these observations, including Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Boris Johnson. This book is accessibly written to appeal to students of politics, psychology and sociology, as well as the wider interested reader.
Reviews
“Jaap van Ginneken has long been considered one of the most prolific authors on psychology, for a broad audience in The Netherlands. His works are written in a clear and accessible style. With numerous examples, he shows time and again how miraculous and fascinating human behaviour is. His book on leaders is the crown on his work.” (Vittorio Busato, Editor-in-Chief, De Psycholoog, the Netherlands)
“Always wanted to know what makes the world leaders so powerful? It is important, and sometimes also hilarious and unsettling, to understand what features makes these men (and women) directors of our common future. To discover all this you have to read Van Ginneken’s latest book.” (Cees Hamelink, Emeritus Professor International Communication, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
“This book offers a bold challenge to modern theories about leadership. There is little rationality in how we choose our political leaders as we are constantly being fooledby our ancestral brains. This provocative message may ruffle a few feathers but if you think leadership matters, you cannot ignore this book.” (Mark van Vugt, Professor of Pyschology, Vrije Universiteit, the Netherlands)
Authors and Affiliations
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Villeneuve, France
Jaap van Ginneken
About the author
Jaap van Ginneken is Former Associate Professor of Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He has extensive experience in media and journalism and is the author of 24 books, 10 in English. His previous book The Psychology of Power was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2014.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Profile of Political Leaders
Book Subtitle: Archetypes of Ascendancy
Authors: Jaap van Ginneken
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29476-6
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-29475-9Published: 07 July 2016
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-80582-5Published: 07 June 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-29476-6Published: 30 June 2016
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 167
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations
Topics: Political Communication, Political Theory, Business Strategy/Leadership, Industrial and Organizational Psychology