Helen Purkitt
- Media Contact
Emerging Security Issues (ESI) is a private consulting firm dedicated to understanding emerging and more traditional national security global issues. The mission statement of the company is, "Together we will adapt to 21st Century Global Security Threats." The company is currently working on modifying an open source database and wiki developed for colleagues at the University of Botswana's International Tourism Research Centre (ITRC) as a 2010 Fulbright project about emerging threats to Botswana ecotourism (see www.Botswanatourismresearch.org) to serve as a resource for individuals and entities in southern Africa seeking to adapt to climate change.
ESI is also working on developing the content for a MOOCs on Introduction to Political Psychology and one on African Emerging Security Issues.
From 1979-2012 Professor Purkitt taught several Political Science courses at the U.S. Naval Academy. One of her most popular courses was Political Psychology. One of her principle research interests is how people viewed as limited information processors make political decisions. She coauthored a book entitled "South Africa Weapons of Mass Destruction" that explains how different models of decision making, including insights from psychological research, can be used to understand why past top decision makers in South Africa decided to give up their covert nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. She has also used memory research and script theory to explain how and why initial explanations of high profile terrorists bombings (e.g., the 2005 London bombings) changed over time.
She was a member of an NSF-sponsored Invisible College led by psychologist James Vost and political psychologist Margaret Hermann that met for five years to train graduate students and to collaborate on research related to how people solve unstructured problems in political decision making. This collaboration resulted in an edited volume (D. Sylvan and J. Voss, Problem Representation in Foreign Policy Decision-Making, Cambridge University Press, 1998). Since all of the graduate students working on this project received tenure-track positions, this research project helped to ensure that International Political Psychology would be a viable and growing area of interdisciplinary research in several fields, including Political Science and Psychology.
She has edited and written dozens of other books and scholarly articles and continues to serve as a consultant and speaker on a variety of issues related to international relations and how individuals in small groups in their roles as political decision makers process information to reach decisions about complex problems with no known solutions.
Primary Interests:
- Applied Social Psychology
- Attitudes and Beliefs
- Culture and Ethnicity
- Group Processes
- Internet and Virtual Psychology
- Judgment and Decision Making
- Organizational Behavior
- Political Psychology
- Research Methods, Assessment
- Sociology, Social Networks
Books:
- Purkitt, H. E., & Burgess, S. (2005). South Africa's weapons of mass destruction. Bloominghton, IN: Indiana University Press.
- Purkitt, H. E. (Ed.). (2011). Annual editions: World politics 11/12. New York: Dushkin/McGraw-Hill.
- Purkitt, H. E. (Ed.). (2009). African environmental and human security in the 21st century. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press.
Journal Articles:
- Purkitt, H. E., & Dyson, J. W. (1986). U.S. foreign policy towards southern Africa during the Carter and Reagan Administrations: An Information processing perspective. Political Psychology, 7(3).
Other Publications:
- Burgess, S., & Purkitt, H. E. (2012). South Africa’s decision to go nuclear. In T. Yoshihara and J. R. Holme (Eds.), Nuclear strategy in the second nuclear age. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
- Purkitt, H. E. (1998). Problem representations and political expertise: Evidence from "think aloud" protocols of South African elite. In D. A. Sylvan and J. F. Voss (Eds.), Problem representation in foreign policy decision-making (pp. 147-186). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
- Purkitt, H. E. (1992). Political decision making in the context of small groups: The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited -- One more time." In E. Singer and V. Hudson (Eds.), Political psychology and foreign policy. Boulder, CO: Westview.
- Purkitt, H. E. (1991). Artificial intelligence and intuitive foreign policy decision makers viewed as limited information processors: Some conceptual issues and practical concerns for the future. In V. Hudson (Ed.), Artificial intelligence and international politics. Boulder, CO.: Westview Press.
- Purkitt, H. E., & Dyson, J. W. (1990). Decision making under varying situational constraints. In K. Borcherding, O. I. Larichev, and D. M. Messick (Eds.), Contemporary issues in decision making. North Holland: Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.
- Purkitt, H. E., & Wells, V. G. (2006). Evolving bioweapon threats require new countermeasures. Chronicle of Higher Education.
Helen Purkitt
3799 Las Vegas Boulevard
Las Vegas, Nevada 89109
United States of America
- Phone: (410) 293-6873