Books by Jaap Van Ginneken

By analysing a wide range of empirical research into leadership, this book provides a composite portrait of frequent characteristics, such as personality and demeanour, that influence both the success and popularity of political leaders. Through the lenses of mass psychology and collective behaviour sociology, the author offers fascinating observations on political leadership which reveal a coherent pattern. In our choice of and support for leaders, we still seem to be guided by unconscious or instinctive preferences. Evolutionary psychologists have labelled this ΓÇÿCALPΓÇÖ for ΓÇÿCognitive Ancestral Leadership PrototypeΓÇÖ. Length, symmetry, face form, voice pitch, eye blinking and more turn out to play a role ΓÇô even today - alongside personality and style. Each chapter of the book offers a case study to illustrate these observations, including Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Boris Johnson. This book is accessibly written to appeal to students of politics, psychology and sociology, as well as the wider interested reader. 

In this accessible, unique study of a forgotten but noteworthy figure, the author tells the story of the life of Kurt Baschwitz (1886-1968), a scholar who fled from the Nazis.

The author tests the hypothesis that hubris and the Bathsheba syndrome tend to affect all top leaders, by zooming in on the best known and very highest executives of our own day and age, and examines the psychological forces tugging at the top level of political leadership.

Looking at orientations in casting, make-up, sets, props, lighting, camera movements, music, and language, this book follows the genres, from animated cartoons to romantic movies. It tracks the stories to their origins and dissects their hidden messages.

Understanding Global News provides a lively, critical introduction to news media and challenges the often unquestioned notions of media objectivity. By employing a range of theoretical perspectives and a variety of examples, the author demonstrates the way in which our perceptions of the world are constructed by the news media.