The psychological microfoundations of knowledge production in international relations
This project aims to identify and explore the underlying psychological mechanisms (or microfoundations) of knowledge production in IR scholarly communities in the South. Recent research suggests that the attention to non-Western intellectual production can elicit misrecognition and produce and a self-effacing stance. Research has shown that geopolitical changes in world politics impact not only what scholars in those regions think about the world but also have psychological effects on how scholars see themselves and the knowledge they produce about their countries and international relations. Material, socio-political, and geopolitical dynamics affect the conditions for intellectual innovation and knowledge production. States, however, do not produce knowledge; scholars do. Scholarly communities educate, inform, and influence policymakers —impacting either directly and indirectly on foreign and defence policies, the country’s behaviour in international politics, and more broadly, how power transitions are shaped. Studying the underlying psychological mechanisms of knowledge production offers an innovative angle to understand how scholars in emerging powers think the world, how they frame and disseminate their knowledge about the international, how they perceive other cognate scholarly communities, and more broadly, allow us a window to predict how IR knowledge will frame the future of international politics. To date, little work has examined the structure or psychological correlates of the knowledge production about the international. I fill this gap by combining sociology of knowledge and behavioural science. Across three studies, I explore how individual differences (e.g., personality, morality, values, prejudice, and stereotyping) are associated with knowledge production in IR. I focus on these because they have been studied most widely in social and political psychology, as my departing point to establish interdisciplinary points and to allow replicability.