Affect Control in International Interactions

This research tests the proposition that national leaders generate international interactions in the process of maintaining sentiments about nations and international actions. The analysis deals with 1,934 international incidents in which one of 25 Middle Eastern nations responded twice within four weeks to an instigation by another of the 25 nations. Quantitative predictions from affect control theory correlate significantly with quantitative measurements of observed responses. In particular, affect-based predictions account for 59 percent of the variance in the nations' cooperation-conflict. Thus, international interactions are affectively-regulated to a significant degree.