報告者：Paul Schuler [Associate Professor of Political Science at University of Arizona]

日時：2024年7月11日（木）15:00～17:00

場所：東京大学本郷キャンパス社会科学研究所1F　第二会議室（104号室）
　　　https://www.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/guide/

言語：英語

開催形式：対面

対象：一般公開

司会：東島雅昌（東京大学社会科学研究所）

報告要旨：Why do regimes and parties often promote individuals to represent or "personify" them? In the context of political parties and regimes, why do they frequently promote personality cults as branding tools? While historians suggest that personality cults have unique legitimating powers, political science downplays the legitimating role of cults. We theorize that symbolic leaders serve a specific psychological purpose. In particular, they "anthropomorphize" groups, thereby increasing loyalty and emotional connection to those groups. To test this logic, we use a unique lab experiment to test the impact of the human face in generating heightened 1) attachment to a group and 2) in-group favoritism. To do so, we adapt the widely used "minimal groups" experimental paradigm to test a "minimal face" model of group identification. While preliminary results do not show an effect on resources distribution, they do show that personifying groups increases the cohesion of the group. In this paper, we discuss the implications of these findings for future research on personality cults.