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Roy Eidelson is a psychologist who studies, writes about, and consults on the role of psychological issues in political, organizational, and group conflict settings. His most recent book is Doing Harm: How the World's Largest Psychological Association Lost Its Way in the War on Terror. He is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, and the former executive director of Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania.. OpEd News Member for 897 week(s) and 6 day(s) 93 Articles, 0 Quick Links, 12 Comments, 6 Diaries, 0 Polls
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Friday, December 21, 2018Get Ready for These Political Mind Games in 2019 Our core concerns--about vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness--are soft targets for manipulation by today's plutocrats. There are twenty "political mind games" we should watch out for in the year ahead. Progress toward greater democracy will depend upon recognizing and resisting them. 
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Friday, November 2, 2018A Tale of Two Caravans It makes sense that Donald Trump and other GOP leaders are worried about an approaching caravan. But it's not the one you're probably thinking of. 
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Tuesday, September 25, 2018Political Mind Games: The Kavanaugh File GOP leaders have once again turned to their favorite mind game playbook to quell controversy over allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. 
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Monday, July 23, 2018Another Crossroads for the APA Leaders of the American Psychological Association (APA) will meet next month in San Francisco at the annual convention. There they will hold two critical votes, both with important ramifications for whether the APA will again lose its way and stumble badly when next confronted with the stark choice between do-no-harm ethics on the one hand and expediency and careerism on the other. 
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Monday, June 18, 2018"They're Different from Us": The Profiteers of Prejudice Today's greed-driven plutocrats know that solidarity with the disadvantaged and mistreated is jeopardized whenever differences like race, gender, and religion are emphasized and exaggerated. That's why they highlight these differences while downplaying similarities in the concerns and aspirations we all share. 
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Monday, June 4, 2018Authoritarians, Plutocrats, and the Fight for Racial Justice Overt racism isn't the sole engine that drives opposition to Black Lives Matter and the NFL player protests. Like every social movement, these efforts represent a threat to those who benefit most from the status quo. Atop that list are Trump himself and other tremendously wealthy Americans who choose to exploit their political power in order to advance selfish interests at the expense of the greater good.
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Tuesday, May 8, 2018The APA Speaks Out Against Gina Haspel The journey to redemption is long and often tempest-tossed. But the American Psychological Association (APA) took another noteworthy step last week when CEO Arthur Evans Jr. sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee, expressing concern over President Trump's nomination of Gina Haspel as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). 
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Thursday, May 3, 2018The DCCC's Mind Games and the Ballad of Roy Moore It's bad enough that the business-friendly Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and other establishment Democrats are aggressively tipping the scales in favor of their hand-picked "moderate" candidates in primary contests around the country. It's even worse that they've now taken to defending this strategy by comparing unwelcome progressives to the likes of Roy Moore. 
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Wednesday, April 18, 2018The 1%'s Mind Games: Psychology Gone Bad While millions of Americans grasp for lifelines amid the unforgiving currents of extreme inequality, multi-millionaires and billionaires comfortably ride the waves and add to their enormous wealth and power. Progress toward a more equal and decent society depends upon resisting and debunking the seductive propaganda of today's plutocratic snake-oil vendors. 
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Tuesday, March 20, 2018POLITICAL MIND GAMES: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What's Happening, What's Right, and What's Possible Political Mind Games was written to help inoculate the public against the 1%'s self-serving appeals. When we expose and debunk their mind games, the 1%'s empty rhetoric loses its allure, their selfish motives are laid bare, and everyone can see clearly how a privileged few have fleeced and forsaken the country--and the people--that made their enormous wealth and power possible. 
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Monday, October 30, 2017Facing History: My Reply to APA CEO Arthur Evans Only a clear-eyed view of past transgressions can light the way for a vigorous and unflinching defense of psychology's do-no-harm principles. 
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Thursday, October 5, 2017Fear, the NRA and Gun Industry's Deadliest Weapon The NRA and gun lobby aggressively push psychologically-potent appeals because they know nothing sells guns like fear -- including the fear of not having a gun.
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Wednesday, June 28, 2017From Outer Space, Three Guideposts for the Resistance For the Trump resistance, chronicles of aliens from outer space offer some surprisingly valuable guideposts about key psychological challenges that lie ahead: Beware Trumpian fearmongering, blind loyalists, and divide-and-conquer tactics. 
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Friday, March 17, 2017The Sustaining Fires of Standing Rock: A Movement Grows Regardless of the Dakota Access Pipeline's final disposition in the federal courts, Energy Transfer Partners and its cronies have unleashed a counterforce that may well exceed their comprehension and control. While digging for dollars they've awakened a movement that combines a long-overdue commitment to addressing the trampled rights of Native Americans with a reinvigorated call for climate justice and environmental action. 
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Tuesday, February 28, 2017The Predatory Presidency Predators in the wild aren't the only ones to use trickery, deception, and stealth as complements to brute force. To disguise the real impetus behind its recent executive orders, the Trump White House turns to sky-is-falling psychological mind games, warning us that these steps are necessary to protect the public from dire threats. 
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Monday, January 30, 2017Bait and Switch: Psychology and Trump's Voter Fraud Tantrums To fully understand Trump's complaints about "illegal voters," we need to recognize that voter fraud and voter suppression are opposite sides of the same coin. By promoting beliefs about the former, the groundwork is laid for pursuing the latter. In this way, tales of unlawful voting have long been a pretext for obstructing the voting rights of U.S. citizens. 
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Wednesday, January 4, 2017Heart of Darkness: Observations on a Torture Notebook Just in time for the Trump Administration's official embrace of brutality, we have another book defending torture: "Enhanced Interrogation" by psychologist James Mitchell. Although subtitled "Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying to Destroy America," Mitchell's implausible and self-serving account actually reveals much more about him than it does about the men he helped torture. 
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Monday, December 26, 2016Resisting the Mind Games of Donald Trump and the One Percent Smooth-talking con artists are familiar figures in American folklore. The well-dressed hustler arrives in an unsuspecting town. He pitches some miracle cure or get-rich-quick scheme, door-to-door or from atop a soapbox. 
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Monday, June 20, 2016Standing Firm for Reform at the American Psychological Association Abolitionist Frederick Douglass warned, "Power concedes nothing without a demand." Feminist Audre Lorde similarly advised, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." Their words are worth remembering as we now witness a coordinated campaign of intimidation, deception, and obfuscation targeting the APA's recent efforts to right its ship and institute meaningful ethical reforms in national security contexts.
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Tuesday, December 1, 2015When Psychologists Deny Guantanamo's Abuses Disgruntled factions are pursuing a deceptive and self-protective campaign aimed at discrediting the recent Hoffman Report, which documented extensive and compelling evidence of collusion between leaders of the American Psychological Association and Department of Defense officials. The latest entry comes from the leadership of the APA's military psychology division. |
