The Leadership Analysis and Influence Operations Laboratory (LA/IO) is an interdisciplinary laboratory within the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity (CEHC) at the University at Albany.
What We Do
We focus on leadership, group and population analysis as carried out in the academic field of Foreign Policy Analysis and by various United States and Allied intelligence agencies.
More specifically, our research attempts to measure aspects of leader, group and population psychology and dispositions from open-source intelligence, including written and verbal communication.
We conduct primarily basic research on the individual differences between leaders and how these differences influence their decision-making and subsequent policy choices.
To support these efforts, we also develop tools to assess individual differences and analyze leader, group and population behavior.
Why We Do It
World leaders (and their followers) have an undeniable impact on global politics and the course of history. Leaders such as Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, Mao Zedong, Saddam Hussein, Nelson Mandela, Charles de Gaulle and Martin Luther King Jr. all affected national and global life.
Our Primary Goals
To understand the characteristics of leaders and of their followers to predict and manage change in local, provincial, national and global contexts.
