Tuba Sendinç has been awarded the College of the Liberal Arts’s Milton B. Dolinger Graduate Fellowship in the World War II Era for the 2023-24 academic year. In her dissertation, Tuba investigates why countries engage in status seeking behavior. She argues, based on previous findings in psychological research, that greater narcissism will make a leader desire more international status and prefer using more conflictual methods to obtain it. Thus, countries’ status-seeking behavior can be explained by the narcissism of their leaders. Tuba plans to test her theory with historical case studies (including one of how Hitler’s narcissism influenced the onset of World War II), survey experiments, and statistical analysis.
