Sheffield Institute for International Development

Ethical dilemmas and cognitive dissonance in international development

CALL FOR PAPERS

Workshop on 3 February 2017, University of Sheffield 

People working in international development assistance frequently face very difficult ethical dilemmas, particularly when they work for donor agencies that provide support to authoritarian regimes. Several of the countries considered to use aid most effectively to produce poverty-reduction, economic growth and improved service provision also have poor records on human rights and political freedom, clashing with the liberal democratic principles on which Western foreign assistance is based.

Debate on the ethics and politics of decision-making in these contexts has grown in recent years, but little is known about the psychological dimensions of development workers’ engagement with these issues. As well as raising crucial moral and political questions, day-do-day engagement with these issues involves significant cognitive and emotional strain. The experience of intense ‘cognitive dissonance’ (Festinger 1957) is likely to be a regular feature of work in places where strong narratives of improvement and developmental progress coexist with regular evidence of human rights abuses, repression and social exclusion. Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation in which a person holds two beliefs simultaneously that seem to conflict with one another, leading to mental stress which they seek consciously or unconsciously to resolve in pursuit of the comfort of internal consistency.

Although there is growing interest in the application of social psychology to international development, exemplified by the 2015 World Development Report (WDR) on ‘Mind, Society and Behaviour’, the vast majority of this work is concerned with how social psychology can inform our understanding the ‘minds of the poor’. The cognitive and emotional dimensions of working in international development, and how these influence attitudes and decision-making, have been largely ignored. Meanwhile, in psychology there has been a resurgence of interest in cognitive dissonance since the turn of the millennium but little exploration as yet of these psychological processes in the context of international development assistance.

Workshop aims and scope

This innovative interdisciplinary workshop aims to bring together people from across the social sciences with an interest in international development and psychologists working on the cognitive and emotional dimensions of decision-making. The aim is to situate psychological processes alongside the broader moral and political dilemmas of development assistance in difficult contexts, to explore these issues in a holistic way.

We invite theoretical and empirical papers for 20-minute presentations on any aspect of the above, including (but not limited to) work on the following:

-        Ethical and political dimensions of delivering international aid in authoritarian/controversial contexts

-        Cognitive processes and decision-making in contexts of real-world ethical dilemmas

-        Emotional dimensions of international development practice

-        Linking institutional practices and values to individual attitudes and beliefs

The one-day workshop will combine papers selected through this call with invited speakers from a range of disciplines. We have funding to cover the travel costs of participants (and accommodation for select participant where necessary) as well as a workshop dinner after the event.

Please submit your abstracts for proposed presentations to [log in to unmask] by 14 October 2016.