Članak
mar 26
Nazad

PROJECT FEAR: EMOTIONS, GAME THEORY, AND FAILED PERSUASION IN ANCIENT GREEK AND CONTEMPORARY POLITICS

Andreas SERAFIM

10.51204/Anali_PFBU_26101A
SAŽETAK /

This paper examines Project Fear, the use of threat-based rhetoric to influence collective decisions, by analyzing Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue and Demosthenes’ On the Liberty of the Rhodians and comparing them with Brexit (2016) and Grexit (2015), respectively, using the theoretical frameworks of cognitive theories, particularly game theory and prospect theory. Two cognitive distortions affecting kairos, rational understanding, and decision-making are identified: hope (elpis) and anger (orgē). Project Fear fails when the stronger party relies on high-intensity threat signals without recognizing that, once the weaker audience perceives its status quo as one of massive, existential loss, hope and anger act as psychological multipliers, transforming negligible possibilities into viable strategies.

ČLANAK JE RASPOLOŽIV NA /
Engleskom  
REFERENCE /
  1. Bakker, Egbert J. 1997. Grammar as Interpretation – Greek Literature in its Linguistic Contexts. Leiden: Brill.
  2. Barberis, Nicholas C. 1/2013. Thirty Years of Prospect Theory in Economics: A Review and Assessment. Journal of Economic Perspectives 27: 173–196.
  3. Baron, Robert S., Mary L. Inman, Chuan Feng Kao, Henrietta L. Logan. 4/1992. Negative Emotion and Superficial Social Processing. Motivation and Emotion 16: 323–346.
  4. Berkowitz, Leonard. 1993. Towards a General Theory of Anger and Emotional Aggression: Implications of the Cognitive-neoassociationistic Perspective for the Analysis of Anger and Other Emotions. 1–46 in Perspectives on Anger and Emotion, edited by Robert S. Wyer, Jr. and Thomas K. Srull. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
  5. Blair, Robert James Richard. 2012. Considering Anger from a Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 3: 65–74.
  6. Borel, Emile, Jean Ville. 1938. Applications Aux Jeux de Hasard. Gauthier Villars: Paris.
  7. Borel, Emile. 1921. La théorie du jeu et les équations intégrales à noyau symétrique. Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences 173: 1304–1308.
  8. Canfora, Luciano (ed.). 1991. Il dialogo dei Melii e degli Ateniesi. Venezia: Marsilio.
  9. Carey, Chris. 2005. Propaganda and Competition in Athenian Oratory. 65–100 in The Manipulative Mode: Political Propaganda in Antiquity. A Collection of Case Studies, edited by Karl A. E. Enenkel and Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
  10. Chaniotis, Angelos. 2012. Unveiling Emotions. Sources and Methods for the Study of Emotions in the Greek World. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag.
  11. Coccaro, Emil F., Kristen L. Noblett, Michael S. McCloskey. 10/2009. Attributional and Emotional Responses to Socially Ambiguous Cues: Validation of a New Assessment of Social/Emotional Information Processing in Healthy Adults and Impulsive Aggressive Patients. Journal of Psychiatric Research 43: 915–925.
  12. Connor, Walter Robert. 1984. Thucydides. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  13. Dal Borgo, Maria Manuela Wagner. 2016. Thucydides: Father of Game Theory. Unpublished PhD Thesis. London: University College London.
  14. De Jong, Irene J.F. 1987. Narrators and Focalizers: The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad. Amsterdam: B.R. Grüner.
  15. De Romilly, Jacqueline. 1956. Histoire et raison chez Thucydide. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
  16. Doxiadis, Apostolos, Barry Mazur. 2012. Circles Disturbed: The Interplay of Mathematics and Narrative. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  17. Gable, Philip A., Bryan D. Poole, Eddie Harmon-Jones. 1/2015. Anger Perceptually and Conceptually Narrows Cognitive Scope. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 109: 163–174.
  18. Gagarin, Michael. 1981. The Thesmothetai and the Earliest Athenian Tyranny Law. Transactions of the American Philological Association 111: 71–77.
  19. Garfinkel, Sarah N. et al. 1/2016. Anger in Brain and Body: The Neural and Physiological Perturbation of Decision-making by Emotion. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 11: 150–158.
  20. Gleicher, Faith, Richard E. Petty. 1/1992. Expectations of Reassurance Influence the Nature of Fear-Stimulated Attitude Change. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 28: 86–100.
  21. Henderson, Jeffrey. 2003. Drama and Democracy. 179–195 in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Pericles, edited by Loren J. Samons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  22. Hornblower, Simon. [1994] 2011. Greek Historiography. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  23. Janis, Irving L. Seymour Feshbach. 1/1953. Effects of fear-arousing communications. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 48: 78–92.
  24. Juchler, Ingo. 2015. Thukydides: Der Melier-Dialog. 45–72 in Narrationen in der politischen Bildung, edited by Ingo Juchler. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
  25. Kahneman, Daniel. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  26. Kahneman, Daniel, Amos Tversky. 2/1979. Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk. Econometrica 47: 263–291.
  27. Kahneman, Daniel, Amos Tversky. 4/1986. Rational Choice and the Framing of Decisions. Journal of Business 59: S251–S278.
  28. Kahneman, Daniel, Amos Tversky. 2000. Choices, Values and Frames. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  29. Konstan, David. 2006. The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press.
  30. Leventhal, Howard, Robert Singer, Susan Jones. 1/1965. Effects of Fear and Specificity of Recommendation Upon Attitudes and Behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2: 20–29.
  31. Lloyd, Geoffrey Ernest Richard. 1979. Magic, Reason and Experience: Studies in the Origin and Development of Greek Science. London, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
  32. Lowe, Nicholas J. 2000. The Classical Plot and the Invention of Western Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  33. Margolin, Uri. 2012. Game Theory and Fictional Worlds. 505–531 in The Living Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn, Jan Christoph Meister, John Pier, Wolf Schmid. Berlin: De Gruyter.
  34. Martin, Gunther. 2009. Divine Talk: Religious Argumentation in Demosthenes. Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
  35. McDermott, Rose. 1998. Risk-taking in International Politics: Prospect Theory in American Foreign Policy. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
  36. Ober, Josiah. 2003. Tyrant Killing as Therapeutic Stasis: A Political Debate in Images and Texts. 215–250 in Popular Tyranny: Sovereignty and Its Discontents in Ancient Greece, edited by Kathryn A. Morgan. Austin: University of Texas Press.
  37. Ober, Josiah, Thomas Perry. 2/2014. Thucydides as a Prospect Theorist. Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought 31: 206–232.
  38. Ostwald, Martin. 1955. The Athenian legislation against tyranny and subversion. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 86: 103–128.
  39. Pritchett, William Kendrick. 1979. The Greek State at War. Vol. 3. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  40. Rood, Timothy. 1998. Thucydides: Narrative and Explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  41. Rubinstein, Lene. 2005. Differentiated Rhetorical Strategies in the Athenian Courts. 129–145 in The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law, edited by Michael Gagarin and David Cohen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  42. Serafim, Andreas. 2021. Religious Discourse in Attic Oratory and Politics. New York and London: Routledge.
  43. Tversky, Amos, Daniel Kahneman. 4/1992. Advances in prospect theory: Cumulative representation of uncertainty. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 5: 297–323.
  44. Viansino, Giovanni. 1998. Un contrasto politico epocale: Meli e Ateniesi a confronto. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.
  45. Von Neumann, John. 24/1928. Zur Theories der Gesellschaftsspiele. Mathematische Annalen 100: 295–320.
  46. Wakker, Peter P. 2010. Prospect Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  47. Whitchurch, Joe. 2025. Revenge, Punishment, and Anger in Ancient Greek Justice. London: Bloomsbury.
  48. Whitmarsh, Timothy. 2015. Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.