Political Psychology in International Relations (Analytical Perspectives on Politics)

Political Psychology in International Relations ROSE McDERMOTT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS Ann Arbor Copyright...

Author: Rose McDermott

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Political Psychology in International Relations

ROSE McDERMOTT

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS Ann Arbor

Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2004 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America @) Printed on acid-free paper 2007

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A elP catalog recordfor this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McDermott, Rose, 1962Political psychology in international relations / Rose McDermott. p. cm. - (Analytical perspectives on politics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-472-09701-6 (cloth: alk. paper) - ISBN 0-472-06701-X (paper: alk. paper) l. Political psychology. 2. International relations. I. Title. II. Series. JA74.5.M4 2004 327.1 '0 1'9-dc22

2003026180

For BRUCE BUENO DE MESQUITA

and my mother, KA THLEEN McDERMOTT,

for their unwavering faith and support

Contents

Acknowledgments l. Introduction

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2. Forms of Methodology in Political Psychology

3. Theoretical Concepts in Political Psychology

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4. Cognitions and Attitudes: What We Think We Know and Why

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5. Behavior: Do Actions Speak Louder Than Words?

119

6. Emotion: Why Do We Love to Hate?

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7. Psycho bio graphy

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8. Leadership

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9. Group Processes

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10. Conclusions

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References

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Index

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Acknowledgments

The original idea for this book came from my adviser and mentor, Philip Zimbardo. Having been an editor for a series in psychology, he thought it might be a good idea for me to write a comprehensive and cohesive book on political psychology and international relations. I thank him now for the inspiration, among many other gifts. I thought about it for a while, but it was not until I mentioned this idea to another mentor, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, that the project began to come to fruition. Bueno de Mesquita is one of the editors for the Analytical Perspectives on Politics series published by the University of Michigan Press. He went far out of his way to solicit, encourage, and support this project from the very beginning right up until the end. I am extremely grateful to him for his help and encouragement. I would never have started this project without his assistance. In addition, lowe several large intellectual debts to those who trained me in psychology and in international relations. It goes without saying that my work would never have been possible without the work and example of Robert Jervis. As my dissertation adviser and beyond, through teaching and modeling, I have learned a great deal not only about content and substance but also about process and form. My appreciation for his skills, integrity, and support continues to grow year by year. I also owe a great debt to the late Amos Tversky, who not only taught me a great deal about psychology but also served as a consistent example of working hard to "get things right." I would also like to thank Peter Katzenstein and Richard Wrangham, other mentors who have provided guidance and support along my intellectual path over the past few years. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the various editors at the University of Michigan Press that have worked with me. I thank Chuck Myers for his initial interest and faith in me and the book. I thank Jeremy Shine for shepherding the manuscript through the review process. And I am especially thankful to Jim Reische for his critical help during the final stages.

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Acknowledgments

Obviously, there are many others whose support goes beyond specific intellectual training, and I would like to acknowledge some of those people here briefly. For friendship above and beyond the call of duty time and time again, I would like to express my sincere appreciation and affection for Lisa Butler, Steve Fish, Katie Greeno, Johanna Putnoi, Margaret Sullivan, and Kurt Weyland in particular. They have helped me to survive in more ways than they might know over the past few years, and I am very grateful. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their help, support, and indulgence while I was working on this book. I thank the cats Sweetie Pie and Blueberry, and especially our dog Demian for consistent and undemanding companionship and comfort. I thank my husband Jonathan Cowden for his unending encouragement of this project, and of me, and his patience with all the time that it took to complete. And I would like to thank my mother, who has always shown unwavering faith in me, even when I have lost it myself, and provided endless material and emotional support. I could never have completed this project without her love.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The events of September 11 profoundly shook the sense of personal security previously experienced by most Americans. In the light of the terrorist attacks, many of the questions and concerns that circulated in the media and in private conversations focused on the motivations of those involved. Why would someone do something so horrible? How might a leader induce his followers to give their lives for an abstract cause, and accomplish such a seemingly impossible goal even from a long distance away? How could people hate America and Americans so much when we mostly believe that we are decent and fair people who are concerned with the individual and human rights of others? How can a relatively small series of rare events puncture the sense of personal security of so many individuals not directly affected by the events? How can the government warn people to be careful without inducing fear and paralysis? How can individuals within a nation constructively channel bottomless degrees of anger, anguish, and abhorrence? Anyone of these questions, along with many others, requires and deserves tremendous thought and consideration. Two main insights come out of this reflection. First, explanations for very important and influential events often lie in the personal psychology of leaders, participants, victims, and observers. Comprehensive explanations for the personal motivations of a suicide bomber cannot be complete without some understanding of the nature of individual thought, action, and emotion. Second, tragedy can shift values, beliefs, and behaviors. Most important, tragedy can bring people together in previously unexpected and unusual ways. And psychological comfort, social support, and resistance to isolation achieve what no terrorist can dissolve: resilient individuals, community commitment, and political cohesion. These outcomes do not justify or ameliorate the impact of tragedy, but they do illuminate the ubiquitous nature of psychological phenomena within the context of the political world. Accurate representations of the world around us demonstrate the link between politics and psychology in deep and myriad ways.

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Every year, a topic appears in the news that offers direct evidence of this interplay. One year the Monica Lewinsky scandal suggested the ways in which a bright and promising politician can fall victim to his own personal psychological weaknesses. Another year the Chinese shot down an American spy plane and held the crew hostage for a period of time during which crucial questions about the decision-making capacity of the new president were raised. And all of these events seem silly or trivial in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 2001. Those events left many feeling frightened, hopeless, and powerless. One of the best ways to handle a personal sense of impotence lies in action, particularly action designed to help others or to gain some sense of mastery over the source of the fear by trying to obtain a better understanding of its sources. Methodological and theoretical tools exist to illuminate the processes that go into creating terrorists, encouraging followers to obey leaders, developing ideologies, and channeling emotion. This book attempts to examine these tools and the insights they produce through the prism of political psychology. What is political psychology? Why it is important? If the field of political psychology is to be more than the sum of its parts, it must add value to the independent studies of political science and psychology. In fact, there are many important issues and questions where each discipline benefits from the contributions and insights of the other. There are myriad ways in which political science and psychology interconnect. Combining these disciplines can provide additional purchase in topics that include the study of political leadership, political judgment and decision making, public opinion and voting behavior, the impact of emotion on behavior, the interaction between individual processes and group behavior, and the formation and maintenance of dominan t values in society. This book provides an introductory survey to the study of political psychology in international relations. The study of political psychology has produced a wide literature in American politics, particularly in American political behavior, as well (Iyengar and McGuire 1993; Sniderman and Tetlock 1991). However, this book focuses on the application of social and cognitive psychology to the study of security issues in international relations. 1 1. For purposes of brevity. the term political psychology will be used to refer to political psychology in international relations except as noted. This is not meant to imply that the study of political psychology is in any way limited to international relations.

Introduction

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In many instances, psychologists have focused on theory development while political scientists have emphasized theory application. Similarly, much scholarship has focused on the impact of psychology on politics and paid less attention to the impact of politics on psychology (Deutsch 1983). Yet the relationship between these areas should be reciprocal. The goal is to provide a genuinely interdisciplinary approach to the interaction of psychological processes and political outcomes. This book provides an overview of the relevant methods and theories that have been used in the examination of political psychology in international relations in chapters 2 and 3. Explanation concentrates on the particular strengths and weaknesses of these concepts for specific purposes. The impact of people's thoughts, actions, and emotions on political judgment, decision making, and behavior are discussed in chapters 4, 5, and 6. Finally, the roles of psychobiography, leadership, and groups are analyzed in chapters 7,8, and 9. Chapter 10 provides a summary of potential extensions and notable implications of these findings. The purpose of this approach is to offer a critical overview of the major literature and central issues and questions in the field, as well as to offer suggestions for promising directions in future research. What unifies political psychology and makes it distinct from other forms of political analysis is the search for explanation, description, and prediction at the individual level of analysis (Jervis 1976). The individual level of analysis informs and affects the kinds of questions that are asked, the forms of evidence that are sought, and the natures of inferences about causality that are made by political psychologists. This attentional bias is not always limited to the individual, for sometimes it incorporates the individual acting in concert with other individuals in group settings, but nonetheless it privileges the individual over organizational, bureaucratic, domestic institutional, economic, international, or other levels of analysis that diminish the significance of the individual. In this regard, political psychology provides a particularly humanistic slant on politics by asserting the importance of individual psychological processes to political outcomes. This chapter offers a background for the specific findings discussed later. Historical context provides a foundation for the emergence of the defining characteristics and central issues and questions that have preoccupied inquiry in this field. Resolutions and new research agendas that have emerged from this scholarship pose challenges for researchers who wish to understand the intersection of psychological and political processes.

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History

Political science as an academic discipline distinct from history really emerged with analyses of institutions such as Woodrow Wilson's Congressional Government in the late nineteenth century (Davies 1973). Modern psychology is often assumed to have begun with Freud's expansion of neurology into psychology at the turn of the twentieth century in Vienna. But the combination of the two fields did not really begin until much later in the twentieth century. Charles Merriam, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, initiated this integration in the 1920s (Davies 1973). Because Merriam was not too successful in his own applications, his efforts might have been forgotten except for the seminal contributions of his best-known student, Harold Lasswell. Lasswell is commonly considered the father of American political psychology, and his work explicitly focused on the impact of psychological processes on political outcomes (Deutsch 1983). Lasswell's approach, which applied psychodynamic concepts to political behavior by arguing that people projected their unresolved or unrecognized psychic conflicts onto the external political world (1930), significantly impacted the direction of future research in political psychology for several decades. In particular, Lasswell's preoccupation with finding the source of political behavior in individual psychological processes, particularly pathological processes, set the stage for the largely unidirectional production of research that followed (Deutsch 1983). Specifically, most scholarship focused on the impact of psychology on politics rather than the impact of politics on individual psychology. Despite subsequent widespread academic disillusionment with psychoanalysis as a causal explanation for political behavior, Lasswell's directional bias continues to influence scholarship. He has continued to exert an influence through the students he trained, including Fred Greenstein and Theodore Lowi, who in addition to their own contributions have gone on to influence many of their students in this perspective as well. As an academic discipline, political psychology reached its adulthood in the late 1970s. The International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP), which sponsors annual conferences, was founded in January 1978 (Deutsch 1983). Members come from a wide range of interdisciplinary backgrounds. Its journal, Political Psychology, began publishing in 1979. The first comprehensive reader in political psychology, entitled Handbook of Political Psy-

Introduction

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ch 0 logy, was edited by Jeanne Knutson in 1973. This was followed about a decade later by another well-received anthology, Political Psychology (1986), edited by Margaret Hermann. A third volume also entitled Political Psychology (2002) has been edited by Kristen Monroe. Despite early concerns regarding adequate training of political psychology graduate students (Merelman 1979), there are now six universities where students can major in political psychology at a variety of levels: University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, Irvine; Ohio State; University of Minnesota at Minneapolis; City University of New York; and State University of New York at Stonybrook. In addition, since 1990 Ohio State has been conducting an interdisciplinary summer institute in political psychology. Despite the emergence of these institutional forums concentrating on political psychology, it has remained an often fractured and diffuse discipline. Certainly some of the explanation for this lack of cohesion derives from the nature of academic incentive structures. Oftentimes, young scholars in particular might be concerned about getting tenure while pursuing less traditional disciplinary paths. When career standards require publishing in mainstream journals in one's own field, it can be problematic to conduct interdisciplinary work. Part of this lack of cohesion in the discipline may be due to budgetary constraints; it can be difficult for a discipline to agree to give up money for programs that are not entirely within its control. However, some of the responsibility lies with the practitioners as well. Much scholarship is theoretically inconsistent or empirically underdeveloped; little work speaks to or builds on other related work. Certainly some of these difficulties are the result of the wide variety of questions that are addressed and the methodological and theoretical discrepancies between disciplines. However, some of these difficulties are inextricably linked to the nature of the central issues that have defined the field: it has developed from one concerned with the impact of psychic processes on political outcomes to one that seeks to investigate in more detail the nature of those processes and the causes of those outcomes. Central Issues

Before we can analyze the findings of political psychology in international relations, it is important to define political psychology itself, using two important factors: defining characteristics and

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potential limitations. Defining characteristics describe what political psychology is and does as a field of inquiry, including its methods and approach. Potential limitations are those concerns and criticisms that question the relevance and importance of findings in political psychology to the scholarly, policy-making, and interested public communities at large. Defining Characteristics

There are several defining characteristics of political psychology in addition to the focus on the individual level of analysis already noted. Several concern methods, others concern content, but all are characteristic of the best work in political psychology. These characteristics are the multidisciplinary and multimethod nature of the inquiry, the focus on context and process, and the importance of applied relevance. The multidisciplinary nature of the field is true by definition. Just as there are many subfields of political science, there are many subfields of psychology. Most political science departments have divisions incorporating political theory, American politics, comparative politics, and international relations. Similarly, most psychology departments contain developmental, social, cognitive, physiological and/or biological, and sometimes neuropsychology or personality subfields. In addition, some research universities offer training in clinical psychology, while others do not; and some professional schools focus exclusively on clinical training. For purposes of political analysis in international relations, most scholars have adopted clinical theories of psychopathology or psychoanalysis, or, more recently, findings from social and cognitive psychology. Each subfield brings distinctive methodologies and theories to the questions it seeks to answer; combining disciplines leads naturally to combining methods as well. Greenstein (1973) has noted that political psychology inquiry is thus pluralistic by nature. The use of multiple methods is not inherently advantageous or detrimental, though of course each method has its relative strengths and weaknesses (chap. 2). Sometimes, the use of multiple methods merely confuses the central question being addressed. More often, however, multiple methods can increase one's confidence that the observed finding is in fact based on a real phenomenon, not a laboratory artifact or a specific historical anomaly (Tetlock 1982). What the use of multiple methods suggests, however, is that stimulus-response inquiries will not be enough. When a scholar

Introduction

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invokes multiple methods in examining a particular phenomenon, she assumes that the connections she seeks to establish are not simple or direct, but instead are influenced by a variety of cognitive and emotional factors (Jervis 1989c). The assumption that many connections of interest are related in complicated ways leads to another defining characteristic of political psychology, one related to context. Most political psychologists believe that contextual effects are crucial for understanding phenomena of interest. Psychological approaches to politics assume that history, development, and learning are as important to the dynamic political process as they are to the psychological process of growth and change. Less emphasis has been placed on how political processes constrain individual and group psychological processes. Obviously this occurs, for example, when public policies affect social programs like welfare or other social services in ways that can drastically affect the quality of life for millions of people. In additional, strong political movements can change people's beliefs and ideologies. Political terrorists and members of religious cults are not the only people whose lives become controlled by their political beliefs and actions. Mainstream political movements, such as fascism or communism, greatly altered the lives of those who lived under such systems. Therefore, in seeking to understand the path by which a particular individual arrives at a specific action or decision, both personal and political history matter. The particular beliefs, hopes, fears, and expectations of the actor come into play in explaining or describing behavior. As Jervis (l989c) has noted, in order to understand what someone will do, analysts may need to understand where he has been and what he has done. This concern with contextual responsiveness is at odds with theoretical paradigms that stress rigor over richness, or parsimony over thick description. Such rigorous models have traditionally formed the backbone of theories of international relations. Paradigms such as realism (Morgenthau 1973) or structural realism (Waltz 1979) assume that individuals mostly don't matter in the outcome of political events. Power, especially its distribution, represents the independent variable of interest in such models. Liberalism focuses on the ways in which cooperation can be induced through the use of norms and institutions (Keohane 1984). Economic theories, such as Marxism, focus on the distribution of money and capital between the ruling and working classes. Again, individuals are of little import in such analyses. Constructivism

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(Wendt 1999; Katzenstein 1996) may examine the cultural underpinnings of the norms, ideas, and interests that help formulate political action and behavior, but the individual in such models tends to be shaped and constrained by these larger sociological and cultural forces. Finally, while rational choice models may begin with an analysis of how individual rational actors make choices (Bueno de Mesquita 2000), such actors do not resemble the complex individuals recognized by psychologists in empirical studies. Rather, rational choice models assume that actors consistently folIowa pattern of rational behavior designed to maximize a certain kind of self-interest. So while such models may be interested in, and even focus on, individual actors at times, they do not construct such individuals in ways that are consistent with the descriptive empirical evidence produced by psychologists concerning the inconsistencies that tend to plague human decision-making processes. Political psychology sides with those who emphasize the conditional and contextual aspects of a particular decision maker with a unique history in a specific situation. While some social scientists stress the importance of prediction over explanation in theory development (Bueno de Mesquita 1996), others see explanation as the primary goal, as when we strive to understand the motivations of a suicide bomber or a rogue dictator. In addition, predictions that are accurate for most of the people most of the time may be useless to explain a particular person at a specific time (Mischel 1984). Because decision makers may possess unique, if possibly similar, characteristics, and they often act in novel circumstances, their behavior may not be as easily explained or predicted as that of college sophomores in a psychology experiment (Ebbeson and Konecni 1980; Sears 1986; Holsti 1989). Yet these unique individuals, and their decisions and actions, may be the actors that political psychologists are most interested in explaining, as well as predicting. The distinction between explanation and prediction raises another defining characteristic of political psychology. Political psychology, which by its nature is most interested in what happens inside the little black box that mediates input and output, stimulus and response, is very process oriented (Hermann 1986c). In many circumstances, political psychologists are more interested in how a decision was arrived at than the actual content of the decision itself. The limitation of this focus, of course, is that process-oriented explanations are notoriously difficult to generalize. Specific aspects of the person or the situation make it relatively easy to

Introduction

9

speculate about why a given situation was unique, but those aspects may not be applicable to a different situation. Ifpart of the goal of political psychology (as of any academic discipline) is to be able to generalize from limited data and develop cumulative theory, undue attention to specifics can limit broader applicability. This need not be the case, however. If sufficient self-conscious attention is brought to generalizing across situations, it might be possible, especially with the use of experimental or multiple methods that increase empirical confidence, to find similarities in processes across situations or over time. This would be particularly true in seeking to explain the behavior of the same individual in the same situation over time (Mischel 1984), as Janis (1982) was able to accomplish in his work on group think (see chap. 9, this vol.). If the focus remains on similarities of process, rather than outcome, and sufficient attention is paid to circumstances that make the relevant conditions more similar than different, generalizability becomes possible. A final defining characteristic of political psychology is its primary concern with applied questions (Deutsch 1983; Hermann 1986c). Here, again, it is possible to see the sustained influence of Lasswell reemerge. Lasswell was interested in the application of psychoanalytic theories to political actors. These psychoanalytic theories did not exist in the abstract; they were applied to an analysis of political elites and their impact on particular political processes, such as the distribution of benefits in society (1930). Applications to current topics continue to be central focuses of inquiry in political psychology. Recent investigations have focused on nuclear war, terrorism, crisis management, bargaining, negotiation and conflict resolution, ethnic conflict, prejudice, racism and other forms of discrimination, and the influence of the mass media. Much research in political psychology has attempted to be "responsive and relevant to societal problems" (Hermann 1986c). One difficulty with efforts to tie scholarly work to political problems lies in the danger of scholarship becoming politicized (Jervis 1989c; Tetlock 1994). While Tetlock (1994) argues that it may be impossible and even undesirable to create a value-neutral political psychology, it nonetheless remains crucial to "monitor and minimize" ideological bias to maintain scientific credibility. While topical societal concerns can and should influence the kinds of questions and concerns that are asked and addressed, they should not determine the quality of methods invoked or the weighing of evidence collected.

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Central Questions

Some of the central ideological and methodological concerns that have preoccupied political psychology since its inception surround questions of its relevance and applicability. Does political psychology bring any added value to the study of international relations, for example, over more standard theories such as realism or rational choice? What is the comparative advantage of bringing psychological explanations into political domains where they mayor may not prove relevant to understanding a given political issue or event? Conversely, what does the incorporation of political issues add to psychological analyses of judgment and decision making that cannot be arrived at through the study of more personal domains? These questions have often plagued the credibility of the findings that were generated, and they have weakened the perceived relevance of these findings for policymakers. These concerns have primarily taken four forms: accusations of political bias, concerns about insensitivity to political exigencies, questions regarding external validity, and comparisons to rational models. Political psychology may have had difficulty establishing and maintaining itself as a scientific discipline due to perceptions that most political scientists are politically and ideologically biased toward a liberal agenda (Jervis 1989c; Tetlock 1994). Some of the liberal bias in political psychology may result from the self-selection of those who believe that environmental intervention can improve societal problems (Sears 1989). Obviously, if an analyst does not believe, fundamentally, that individuals make a decisive difference in the outcome of world events, then there is no reason for that person to study the psychology of individual leaders. Further, if a scholar does not believe that substantive and effective intervention to change the condition of the world is possible, then there is no reason to try to effect change. However, other practitioners fear that this liberal bias, perceived or real, could lead to the "complete collapse of our credibility as a science" (Tetlock 1994, 509). Tetlock argues that it is essential for political psychologists to guard against the tendency for political beliefs to inform scientific processes. In this regard, he suggests four strategies for reducing the likelihood that political bias will introduce itself into scientific practice. These are making sure the evaluation of counterfactual claims is consistent regardless of ideological implications, assessing causality by introducing experiments into public opinion surveys, attempting to quantify qualitative evidence, and

Introduction

11

remaining attentive to counterexamples that run contrary to preferred ideology. Tetlock (1994) advocates the preeminence of the scientific method over political goals; without scientific credibility, political psychology becomes little more than political advocacy. Clearly it is important for political psychology to embrace the scientific method to the exclusion of political biases. One way to do this is for practitioners to remain self-conscious about their own political beliefs and to maintain integrity about the distinction between scientific procedures and political agendas. It is crucial, for example, that findings that might run counter to the political agenda of the investigator be reported nonetheless, and that practitioners understand that their findings might easily be used in support of a position they reject. Scientists may never be able to achieve value-free research agendas, but they must remain willing to report their results to their friends and enemies alike. Ironically, a second accusation that has been levied against work in political psychology is that it is too insensitive to political demands and pressures (Greenstein 1973). In attempting to introduce psychological explanations into political analysis, many political psychologists inadvertently (or otherwise) end up privileging psychological processes over political realities. Indeed, this may be one reason why many policymakers do not consider experts on decision making to have anything useful to offer to their deliberations (Jervis 1989c). Many decision makers see themselves as acting in response to the external political demands and pressures of a particular situation and not necessarily as simply responding to their internal psychological dynamics. 2 They find psychological explanations irrelevant and superfluous. The confusion arises, of course, because in many situations political and psychological imperatives works in the same direction. When this occurs, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to determine which force held primary sway. And, in reality, it may not matter in some cases because many outcomes no doubt involve an interaction of both factors. Political and psychological exigencies can overdetermine particular political events or outcomes, presenting a problem of multiple sufficient causation. In order to test specifically psychological or political theories, therefore, it is important to look for cases and situations where political and psychological forces 2. This may be the result of an actor-observer difference where many people see themselves as acting in response to situational pressures while viewing others as acting in response to internal personality dynamics (Jones and Nisbett 1972).

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can be teased apart and predictions diverge. These cases provide the best tests for the relative importance of political versus psychological factors in a particular situation. A third concern that has faced political psychologists involves the extent to which findings from a controlled experiment in a psychologicallaboratory can be applied to real-world decision making (Ebbeson and Konecni 1980; Sears 1986; Jervis 1989c; Holsti 1989). The trade-off between the internal validity offered by the laboratory and the external validity provided by the so-called real world can be problematic in the pursuit of meaningful theories and generalizable findings (also see chap. 2). Tetlock (1982) has argued for the use of multiple methodologies to increase confidence in findings that corroborate each other across investigative domains. Tetlock, along with other collaborators including Paul Sniderman, has undertaken such a challenge successfully in his own cuttingedge work involving embedding experiments in national public opinion polling (Kuklinski et al. 1997). For many purposes in political psychology, this dichotomy may not be as problematic as it seems at first blush. Political psychologists are rarely content to limit their investigations to the laboratory; experimental results remain useful and interesting for the purpose of generating hypotheses and developing theoretical ideas and then testing them in the real world. Indeed, many behavioral economists and rational choice theorists conduct experiments to provide empirical tests of formal models (also see chap. 2). Ideas and hypotheses generated experimentally might then be tested empirically in the real world through public opinion surveys, archival case studies, fieldwork, or various other methods. This process not only allows the possibility of disconfirmation of laboratory results but also ensures that a theory is tested on a different sample than that used to generate it. In this way, while the concern of applicability must remain salient, it should not preclude experimental work designed to provide a microfoundation for broader theoretical development. A final concern really rests on philosophical grounds and as often as not becomes a matter of personal taste. As recently as 1986, Mandel could write that "most scholars in the field no longer believe that states always use the 'billiard ball' rational actor approach" (251). This is no longer true (Jervis 1989a; Holsti 1989). In many areas of political science in particular, rational choice and game theory models hold sway as the dominant paradigm in the field. While most psychologists might find it absurd that anyone

Introduction

13

would assume that individuals are rational, most rational choice theorists remain unconcerned about descriptive accuracy to the extent that they can achieve predictive power using rational assumptions. Still, whether or not one believes that prediction is more important than explanation, it is certainly better to achieve both than one alone. The hope of political psychologists is to accomplish just that. Many of the current debates in political science in general, and in international relations in particular, involve rational choice advocates versus constructivist theorists. Psychological models diverge from constructivist analysis in myriad and significant ways. While some psychologists are primarily interested in cultural variations in particular phenomena, most social and cognitive psychologists strive to discover and explain universal aspects of the human condition. This does not mean that psychological and constructivist models need be antagonistic. To the contrary, such models can provide evidence at different levels of analysis challenging the rationalist interpretation of human motivation and action. Political psychology can provide a microfoundational basis for understanding such important issues as the origins of preferences, the framing of decision making, the nature of signals in communication, the impact of momentum on hostility, how biological and socialization differences contribute to sex differences in aggression, and so on. Constructivists can build on such understandings and contribute the added dimension of sociological and cultural forces on such dynamics. Certainly psychological models have presented the most forceful empirical challenge to the claims of rational choice modeling. Yet because much of political psychology, at least within political science, is judged relative to the success of rational choice models, it is important to delineate some of the important differences between these psychological models. 3 Indeed, many of them are discussed explicitly in terms of the ways in which they deviate from "rational" models; this presentation alone privileges rational models over psychological ones, because it unfairly shifts the burden of proof onto the psychological models. While part of the preference between approaches may come down to taste and opinion, there are also important substantive differences in the underlying assumptions of each approach. Because these differences are cru3. For a provocative cultural explanation for why Western cultures prefer parsimonious models such as rational choice while Asian ones do not, see Motokawa (1989).

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cial in assessing which model provides a more accurate representation of the human decision-making process, they will be briefly outlined here. First, rational choice theories typically present models that assume rational, unitary actors seeking to maximize their utility given established and fixed preferences (Bueno de Mesquita 2000). Psychological models tend to present individuals as complex people whose behavior is often nonrational for a whole host of cognitive and affective reasons. In this regard, nonrational behavior should not be understood to be the equivalent of irrational behavior (which suggests some lack of touch with reality). Rational models often provide more parsimonious causal explanations but can be limited in a number of ways. Specifically, by and large most rational choice models cannot identify the nature and sources of the interests and preferences that they assume as given in order to derive utilities. While rational theorists might respond that psychologists do not do any better at offering a similar theory for the origins of preferences or framing effects, psychology remains interested in seeking the answers to those questions in a way that rational models rarely do. Further, the psychological method of experimentation provides an obvious mechanism by which to study such questions fruitfully. This lack of a theory of the origins of preferences often hampers the ability of rationalist models to explain outcomes in specific cases, much less to adequately address the dynamics of changing preferences (Holsti 1989). Second, because most rational choice models derive from economic ones, they tend to operate at a structural or international level of analysis and analyze large numbers of cases in order to develop general theories about the relationship between variables (see Bueno de Mesquita 2000 for a review). Moreover, while rational choice models can incorporate individual differences (Bueno de Mesquita 2000), most do not take sufficient account of the differences between people. Many complications arise when people are treated as interchangeable. Not only do different people behave differently in different situations (Jervis 1989c), but similar people behave differently in the same situation as well. Rational choice arguments tend to assume that differences in people's behavior are based on differences in preferences, but not in different responses to incentive structures. In other words, while diverging preferences may lead to different choices by individuals holding contradictory values, those individuals are assumed to still have the same understanding of the incentives. They just make a

Introduction

15

different choice in order to maximize a different value. Most rational choice approaches argue that people will seek to maximize their utility; they may not get the outcome they prefer for a whole host of external reasons, but they do not neglect actions designed to maximize their self-interest. From this perspective, it is difficult to explain why rational actors would engage in self-destructive behavior, such as drug addiction, without perverting the notion of self-interest. This limitation of rational analysis has lead Holsti (1989) to argue that structural models that make the assumption of rational actors can lead to complacency about the dangers in international relations by underestimating the possibility for accidents, misperceptions, and emotions to lead to conflict. Not only do psychological models assign greater complexity to humans, they differ from rational models in several other ways as well. Another difference is related to the concern about a liberal bias raised above. Specifically, political psychologists are likely to believe that there exists an element of environmental control or intervention that makes it possible to achieve a more effective solution to societal problems (Sears 1989). Once the causal mechanisms underneath a pathological situation are adequately identified, techniques for improvement can be designed. The most obvious example of this in more traditional psychology lies in psychotherapy. The implicit assumption here, derived from Freud, supposes that insight equals the relief of symptoms; once understanding is achieved, positive change can occur. This belief differs from rational choice arguments that assume, by definition, that most people behave in rational ways because it is in their best interest to do so. Intervention is not necessary; exogenous forces can lead to undesired outcomes, but structural constraints provide incentives for the most efficient strategies to survive. Third, political psychologists are committed to empirical investigation. While this is true in some of the best rational choice work (Bueno de Mesquita 2000), much of the economic theorizing on which rational choice work is based is more theoretical than empirical in nature (Sears 1989). Ironically, political scientists who have traditionally scorned the use of psychology often turn to economic models for inspiration. Waltz (1979), in particular, based his structural realist model explicitly on insights from microeconomic theory. Many game theorists and institutionalists have done the same. Yet what such political scientists now seem to fail to recognize is that the hottest area of economics these days lies in the behavioral realm, where most of microeconomics now draws heav-

16


ily upon psychological methods and insights. Political psychologists, at least partly as a result of the phenomena they find interesting, tend to work back and forth between laboratory discovery, abstract theorizing, and real-world empiricism. This is clearly related to the fact that one of the defining characteristics of political psychology lies in its interest in applied questions. But in a choice between normative theory and descriptive accuracy, rational choice theorists tend to side with normative theory, while most political psychologists would advocate for the primacy of descriptive accuracy. Finally, because another defining characteristic of political psychology is its use of multiple methods, its work tends to be much more methodologically pluralistic than work in rational choice (Greenstein 1973; Sears 1989). Rational choice models see individuals as rational actors motivated by competitive self-interest; psychologists tend to see people as more heterogeneous in their motives and desires (Jervis 1989a). As a result, most rational choice analyses involve statistical analysis of large-n data sets designed to test an abstract theory or formal model. Political psychologists are more likely to allow a wider catholicism in investigative methods that seek to uncover the causal relationships of interest. The previous discussion is not meant to imply that rational choice modeling is somehow bad. Rather, rational choice and game-theoretical models have accomplished a remarkably rapid accumulation of knowledge and provided impressive insights into important phenomena including democratic peace theory. There are important ways in which the two models diverge, and perhaps different arenas of explanation or prediction in which they excel. But rational choice models and political psychology are not necessarily incompatible (Jervis 1989a). Rather, each model starts from a fundamentally different set of assumptions about human nature and the relevant questions of interest. While some psychologists have argued that there is no model that can be both normatively adequate and descriptively accurate (Kahneman and Tversky 1979, 1984), many economists and other rational choice theorists argue that the two models can be reconciled by relaxing some of the more stringent assumptions required in classical expected utility theories. Political psychology and rational choice models need not be antagonistic in application, even if they remain so in theory. There are at least two ways in which the two models might combine.

Introduction

17

First, it may be that psychological models can help in the formulation of theories concerning the origins of preferences and interests that are typically assumed to be fixed and given in rational choice modeling (Jervis 1989a). Second, it may be that different models are appropriate for the investigation of different types of questions. If one is interested in the causal relationship between a large number of variables concerning general themes, rational choice may provide an ideal theoretical basis that offers sophisticated methodology to explore those concerns. Indeed, rational choice models appear to excel at prediction (Bueno de Mesquita 1996, 2000). On the other hand, if one is primarily interested in an indepth understanding of the process variables affecting a particular person, event, decision, or situation, psychological models and methods may be more effective. Clearly, some of the differences lie in the domain of interest: a single individual, process, or event versus a larger-scale phenomenon. Larger theories cannot be entirely based on a single individual or event, although theoretical extrapolations remain justified when larger, representative subject pools provide a basis for particular findings. Directions for Future Research

There are several areas where political psychology has yet to develop its early promise for insightful theorizing and analysis. Some of these areas offer interesting and important directions for future research. I will argue that experimentation provides the best mechanism through which to investigate the major topics confronting this field. There are at least four important areas of future research in political psychology. First, incorporating emotions, including recent findings from the neurosciences on the impact of emotion on decision making, into political models remains a crucial next step in developing more realistic and accurate models of political decision making. Second, work that focuses on the interaction between the individual and his or her political and social group will provide important insight into how people become politicized, how such forces help maintain or dissolve political allegiances, and how such loyalties affect other parts of their lives. Third, specific to the area of judgment and decision making, work on prospect theory that can begin to investigate the nature offraming effects, the relationship between the status quo, the reference point, and various levels of aspiration or expectation, will prove key in producing a more comprehensive alternative to rational

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choice models of decision making. This goal will also be furthered by attempts to expand prospect theory analysis beyond the individual to the group. Finally, efforts to adopt and adapt burgeoning work in positive psychology into the political realm can provide an entirely new perspective on political leadership and political involvement. Since Freud's interest in psychology grew out of training in neurology, there has long been an interest in psychology on the ways in which thought and emotion relate. As more and more sophisticated technology becomes available to explore the inner regions of the brain biologically and chemically, some of these relationships may become clearer at a cellular level. This basic research will eventually allow for a more comprehensive picture of how various mechanisms and functions within the brain produce thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and interactions with the external world. From a beginning that stressed the importance of emotion and motivation on behavior, much academic psychology has since moved in the direction of stressing the importance of purely cognitive processes to behavior. Just as advances in neuropsychology have encouraged psychologists to reembrace the interaction between emotion and cognition, political psychology needs to reintroduce the importance of affect in judgment, decision making, and action in the political arena as well (Jervis 1989c). There are long and deeply held stereotypes that claim that emotions are either irrational or unpredictable in nature. But this does not mean that emotions are actually counterproductive in political discourse, much less irrelevant; nor that they cannot be studied in a systematic way. Even when the impact of emotion on politics may prove dangerous, as in the case of anger, revenge, or hatred, its influence remains no less important or significant. Indeed, since emotion is so often used to sway public opinion, its political impact should be considered more seriously. Second, political psychologists need to bring more attention to the interaction between the individual and his or her political and social groups. This bridge provides the crucial foundation between the psychological individual and his or her social world. If political psychology is to compete with rational choice models, then insights derived from political psychological understandings must be able to examine actions at the level of strategic interaction; political psychology must be able to generate some version of a game-theoretic understanding and analysis of individuals making choices in group contexts with conflictual goals and values.

Introduction

19

This work can take several forms. How is it that some individuals become critically involved in their political world, while so many others remain apathetic? What does it take for individuals to become involved in political issues and to maintain such interest and activity across a life span? How do others lose interest in, and respect for, all things political? Are the explanations institutional or individual, or do they involve some interaction between political leadership, regime type, and individual psychology? Further work might examine how political involvement and pressures can begin to change and shape an individual's beliefs, attitudes, actions, and values. Most important, how is it that individuals resolve personal differences for the service of larger social and political goals? How do personal values interact with, affect, and shift in the face of competing values presented by others? Third, prospect theory offers at least one potential alternative model for analyses of judgment and decision making (also see chap. 3). A more comprehensive model of political choice based on the maxims of prospect theory needs to be developed to provide a more cohesive and accurate challenge to rational models. One important area for future work seeks to examine the origins of framing effects. Another seeks to specify the relationship between the status quo, the reference point, various points of aspiration or expectation, and the notion of value. Fourth, a great deal of work in positive psychology has recently begun to shift the focus in psychology away from pathology to functionality. This work, led by Martin Seligman, concentrates on notions of well-being. Rather than focusing on what is wrong and why it does not work, greater emphasis is being placed on what is right and how to help people lead happier, more fulfilling lives. Since much political effort strives to improve the quality of life for many, the goals of these two programs seem naturally compatible. The challenge, then, is to think through a positive political psychology. How is it that politics and political action can help to improve the lives of those who participate as well as those who remain under the influence of powerful authorities? Finally, self-awareness fuels one of the best engines of research. Many of the seminal insights in both psychology and political science were captured by those who began research as "me" -search.4 The mirror of introspection reflects useful ideas and questions for why and how others might think, feel, or behave. 4. This phrase comes from Lee Ross.

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Curiosity about one's own process can illuminate relationships between variables that serve as the foundation for testable hypotheses. In addition, self-analysis can provide a humble check on the grandiosity and validity of the theories we seek to apply to others. This book stresses the multiple ways in which politics and psychology interact and interconnect in the realm of international relations. The central argument of this perspective is that individual people exert decisive impact on the outcome of world history and political events. No other major approach in international relations theory stresses this factor so forcefully in its causal explanations and predictions. Moreover, the use of psychological methods and theories, in concert with an understanding of political exigencies, allows political psychologists to gain a deeper appreciation for the complexities that underlie the intersection between the person and the situation.

CHAPTER 2

Forms of Methodology in Political Psychology

Before studying a particular person, event, or issue in political psychology, scholars must think systematically about how to investigate the topic of interest. There is a wide variety of methods available from both the psychological as well as the political science traditions. Methodology continues to be important because it helps to shape and focus the kinds of questions that are asked, the answers that are sought, the explanations that are considered or rejected, and the evidence that is marshaled. Different methodological approaches often divide analysts working on similar substantive topics; sometimes these divisions are artificial or superficial, and other times they challenge the legitimacy and utility of the findings reported. What constitutes methodology in political psychology? Methodology relates to what is studied, how it is studied, and the ways in which it is studied. Many of the methods that will be discussed here emerge from long-standing traditions in psychology, but they are put to use in the service of investigating political phenomena. Some of the strategies employed, however, come from methods that have evolved in the political science tradition and are used to explore the psychological and political ramifications of various people, events, and processes in international relations. Methodology is yet another arena where the traditions and concerns of psychology and political science overlap in multiple ways. This chapter outlines six primary methodological strategies that have been utilized to a greater or lesser extent in political psychology. Laboratory experiments and simulations allow for unparalleled control of the variables under investigation in order to support causal arguments. Typically, subjects are brought into a controlled environment in the investigator's laboratory, and specific aspects of the environment are systematically manipulated in order to determine the effect such variations have on the person's thoughts, feelings, or behaviors. Self-report questionnaires, often in the context of a laboratory study, rely on a sub21

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ject's ability and willingness to share internal and external processes with the investigator regarding particular attitudes, beliefs, values, or thoughts of interest. Survey research applies sampling techniques to study the opinions and actions of large groups of people; recently, some experiments have begun to be embedded in such instruments (Kuklinski et al. 1997). Such work using multiple methods in the form of experiments embedded in nationally representative survey studies establishes a very sophisticated form of methodological investigation. Such research constitutes the wave of the future in cutting edge methodological work in political psychology and promises a wealth of new topics and evidence for discovery and interpretation. Content analysis seeks to examine a person's utterances, either in speech or in writing, in order to better understand or explain the individual's personality; the assumption here is that such an understanding might help explain past behavior or predict future behaviors on the part of the person under investigation. Observer ratings of policymakers can use either idiosyncratic or standardized forms to garner the impressions subjects have of the words or actions of particular public figures; the notion here is that converging observations can provide important information about the personality and future actions of such people. Conversely, although it is not done much, such ratings might be used to examine differences in the observers as well but comparing different group responses to the same person or stimulus. Much room for creative work exists in this arena; a great deal of it will most likely be conducted in the arena ofvoting behavior, comparing different demographic groups' responses to particular candidates. Case studies typically involve archival work, where an investigator examines and analyzes a particular person, event, or process by looking at historical documents, speeches, letters, memos, diaries, and oral histories. Such work usually focuses on either a person or an event. When the emphasis revolves around a psychological interpretation of the life of a particular person, the result often takes the form of psycho biography (chap. 7). Laboratory experiments and simulations, self-report questionnaires, and observer ratings of policymakers derive primarily from psychological traditions. Case studies involving archival work come mostly from a political science tradition. Survey research and content analysis are both widely employed in both disciplines. Each of these methods will be discussed in turn.


23

Measurement of Persons and Attitudes

Sears (1987) argues that there are four basic approaches to social science research---experimentation, survey research, fieldwork, and use of available data-and that these methods are complementary, not mutually exclusive in nature. l In other words, the use of one methodology does not preclude the use of another in investigating a particular phenomenon, although certain researchers may be more or less comfortable with particular methods. Sears (1987), like Tetlock (1982), advocates the use of multiple methods. Within the methods Sears discusses, there are specific subsets (for example, use of available data includes both content analysis as well as observer ratings). For the purposes of political psychology in international relations, I will discuss the six methods mentioned earlier to analyze and examine people, issues, and events. Survey research encompasses a large area of research in American politics in general, and voting behavior and public opinion in particular. This large body of literature will not be reviewed in depth here because our focus is on international relations. Nonetheless, this method, while underused in work in international relations, holds methodological promise and will be briefly reviewed using examples drawn from American politics. Laboratory Experiments and Simulations

Laboratory experiments offer unparalleled control over the variables of interest. Of all the methods discussed, the results of experiments allow the highest confidence possible in terms of causal inference. This is because the experimental method permits the systematic manipulation of variables in a controlled environment. Experimenters know that the results reflect more than the differences between people going into the experiment because they make sure that self-selection effects are mitigated by the random assignment of subjects to conditions within the experiment (for a review of experiments in political science, see McGraw 1994; McDermott 2002b; for the best discussion of the experimental method in general, see Aronson et al. 1990; for a discussion of experimental 1. The following discussion on the types of methods and their relative strengths and failings draws heavily on Tetlock (1982).

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methodology in political science, see McGraw 1996; McDermott 2002c). Experiments in Behavioral Economics One of the most productive areas of current research in economics lies in the realm of behavioral economics, including behavioral game theory, which often rests on the foundation of experimental evidence, sometimes in concert with formal mathematical models. Ironically, economists have turned to psychology for both insight and methods to further investigate the processes they find interesting, while political scientists still turn to more conventional economics as the basis for many realist and rational choice models of political behavior. Many of the substantive topics that preoccupy behavioral economics research these days overlap with areas of research interest in political science. The main areas of work in behavioral economics include (Roth 1995): (1) Prisoner's Dilemma and public good issues; (2) problems of coordination and cooperation; (3) dynamics of bargaining; (4) experimental markets; (5) auction behavior; and (6) individual choice (for more extensive reviews, see Palfrey 1991; Kagel and Roth 1995; Roth 1987, 1995; and McDermott 2002b). Some of the most relevant work dovetails with topics of interest in political psychology as well. In particular, experimental work on bargaining offers insights into processes of negotiation including substantive areas such as arms control, trade policy, and war termination. Research on individual choice draws heavily upon the Kahneman and Tversky experiments on judgment and decision making. Most of this work points to behavioral anomalies that run contrary to the predictions of standard economic theory, just as much of the work in psychology contradicts the assumptions present in rational choice models of behavior. Some of the most interesting and important work in behavioral economics tries to improve models of behavioral game theory through the introduction and incorporation of psychological insights. Colin Camerer (1997) has been a pioneer in advancing this work. He argues that the accuracy of prediction in game theory would improve with the incorporation of theories of learning into game theory models. He categorizes the kinds of experiments that have been done in this regard into three types. First, some experiments demonstrate how individuals lean toward systematic "reciprocated social values," especially revenge and fairness. The second set of findings revolves around central psychological findings such as framing effects and overconfidence (chap. 3).


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Finally, some experiments show how people systematically violate normative strategic principles, including backward induction. In his own work, Camerer concentrates on the effects oflearning within the context of behavioral game theory experiments. In his research on learning, he has developed an experience-weighted attraction (EWA) model to characterize his findings. In this model, Camerer and his colleagues (Camerer and Ho 1999; Anderson and Camerer 2000) demonstrate how certain strategies reflect a combination of individuals' preexisting predispositions and some updating based on their payoffs. These factors help determine individual choice probabilities according to a rule such as LOGIT. Camerer and Ho (1999) develop their model in the context of normal form games. They treat reinforcement and belief learning as special cases that they reject in favor of their overall EWA model. In more recent extensions, Camerer and colleagues (Camerer, Ho, and Chong 2002) examine the interaction between so-called adaptive learners, who only pay attention to their own payoff experience, and sophisticated learners who may incorporate others' payoffs into their learning. They characterize two types of sophisticated learners, farsighted and myopic. Farsighted sophisticated learners can help "teach" other players by choosing strategies with the highest net present value. This phenomenon has been demonstrated in a series of repeated trust games with incomplete information and also in sender-receiver signaling games (Anderson and Camerer 2000) As noted in Camerer's (1997) categorization of the experimental behavioral game theory literature, one of the main areas of research focuses on reciprocated social values, including fairness. Fehr and colleagues have conducted some of the most important work in this area (Fehr and Gahter 2000; Fehr and Schmidt 1999). They argue that fairness represents an important reciprocity in enforcing contracts and other social norms; they claim that this kind of reciprocity enhances the possibility of collective action, for example. However, they note that fairness reciprocity means that financial and other incentives crowd out voluntary cooperation and restrict competition in markets with incomplete contracts. In related work, Fehr and Schmidt (2000) note that fairness reciprocity helps explain individual preferences for incomplete contracts. Experiments in Political Science Experiments offer a high degree of internal validity; experimenters can be pretty sure that outcomes differ on the basis of things that were manipulated systematically within the experimental condi-

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tions themselves. This allows experimenters to make causal arguments about which factors cause certain outcomes, or contribute to them, and which do not. One of the advantages of this approach is that it forces attention on the situation. Unlike psychobiographies, where the preoccupation lies with the individual, who is assumed to be the author of his own experience, experiments allow investigators to focus on the power of the situation in controlling behavior, even (or especially) when people are unaware of the impact of their environment on their behavior. Another strength of experiments comes from the scientific rigor that is designed into the process. Experimenters must be aware of, and control, the independent variables of interest. They must be careful in recording results as dependent variables. Later statistical analysis allows for detailing the relationships between these variables and any interactions among them. With this process, results become prominent that might not have been obvious without systematic large-scale analysis. What is the trade-off? What are the limitations of experiments? The high internal validity offered by experiments sometimes comes at a cost to external validity. Many experiments suffer from their seeming inability to replicate more complex real-world phenomena. Skeptics often remain uncertain of the relevance of experimental findings when their wider extrapolation remains unclear or untested. The main question becomes whether the given experimental situation is actually like the psychological process it seeks to illuminate in the larger world. If the situations differ significantly, it can be dangerous to argue for the relevance of the findings to the issues oflarger concern. But if the situations are reasonably similar, the findings may prove useful in understanding and generalizing to important processes in human behavior, decision making, and emotion, among other areas. The significant factor here is not how much the experimental situation objectively resembles the real world, so-called mundane realism, but rather how much the subjects truly engage in the experimental process that is manipulated, so-called experimental realism. Experiments that purport to represent genuine real-world situations often create mundane realism in their settings but fail to elicit critical experimental realism from subject responses. On the other hand, some of the most powerful and influential experiments of all time, including the Milgram and Asch experiments (chap. 4), presented completely artificial laboratory environments but engaged truly crucial experimental realism. Environmental realism


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does not need to be studied and generalized; rather, experimenters need to create experimental realism in order to generate comprehensive causal arguments that can then be generalized (Aronson et al. 1990). Why do some experiments lack sufficient external validity to be applied more broadly to the phenomenon of interest? Imagine an experiment that seeks to understand foreign policy decision making. If the subjects are college sophomores, as they most commonly are, there may be enough differences between the subject pool and the individuals of interest to make analogies between them uncertain. In other words, the subject pool may differ from the individuals of interest in maturity, experience, background, ego involvement and investment, and strategic incentives. These differences can limit how far conclusions drawn from the college subject pool can be applied to the foreign policy decision-making elite. David Sears (1986) outlined several specific characteristics of the typical college laboratory pool that can bias the results of experiments in systematic ways. College sophomores, by virtue of their age, have less crystallized attitudes, a less clear sense of self, higher rates of compliance, more unstable peer relationships, stronger cognitive skills, and more self-absorption than a typical older American. He argues that these characteristics combine with the laboratory setting to produce a view of human nature as more malleable and compliant than it in fact usually is. Further, this bias accentuates psychology's reliance on the primacy of cognition in human activity and excludes other important factors such as emotion, material incentives, and other external constraints. An obvious solution to this problem is for psychologists and other interested experimenters to solicit feedback from a wider population that is more representative and characteristic of the people and processes under investigation. But these experimenters suffer from the same material constraints that they sometimes fail to adequately attribute to others: college sophomores are quick, cheap, and easy compared to other, more representative, subject pools. Using this strategy, more scholars can produce more work more quickly. Clearly, academic incentives can be as responsible for the presence of biases that academics abhor as the college sophomores who manifest them. A second cause of the lack of external validity in experimentation rests with the organizational and bureaucratic constraints and material incentives that shape behavior in the real world. Often

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these restraints are difficult to mimic in experimental settings. Yet these constraints and incentives might override the personality or psychological predispositions of individuals within these settings. It can be challenging to determine how much influence a particular psychological cause might have, no matter how real it might be in isolation, when combined with strong institutional requirements that may stand in opposition to the person's disposition. Anyone who has been really mad at a boss or colleague and wanted to quit, but stayed on the job because of financial pressures, understands the conundrum of wanting to do one thing but needing to do another, namely, be nice and keep the job because of the money or career advancement it offers. A third source of limitation on the generalizability of experiments resides in the relative time horizons of the experience. Experiments rarely last more than an hour, another side effect of using mostly college students as subjects. However, processes in the real world often evolve over days, months, or even years. Extrapolating the experience of a single cause of a particular outcome in a discrete, time limited, and typically safe experimental environment onto the behavior of an individual in a complex environment interacting with many others over several issues lasting many months or years can prove challenging under the best of circumstances. And ethics forbid experimentation in realms where people might actually be in danger or unsafe. Yet in international relations in particular, many decisions (e.g., war) literally involve risking the lives of many. Such situations are unethical to duplicate experimentally, so we might never know how such factors as concerns for one's own personal safety might impact important psychological decision-making processes. But experiments remain useful to the extent that they can illuminate robust processes that have wide and systematic impact on human behavior. While all the limitations raised previously carry merit, all leaders are people, and they share the same brain physiology and other characteristics that all human beings possess. Assessing the impact of these processes on behavior remains an empirical question that lies open to systematic research. Attempts to make experimental situations more "realistic" or to widen the subject pool can only strengthen the findings of experimental work. No other methodology allows the investigator to argue a causal connection between variables with as much confidence. Indeed, Walker (1976) claims that the reason that social sci-


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ence has been better developed in psychology than in political science is because of psychology's heavy reliance on the controlled laboratory experiment. On the other hand, political science research has progressed mostly with case studies and field studies, which have proved less amenable to systematic theory development across cases. Indeed, while laboratory experiments remain the gold standard of psychological research, there have been relatively few experiments conducted within political psychology to study processes in international relations. As noted previously, more experimental work has been conducted in political science in the realm of voting behavior. Simulations constitute another form of laboratory testing. In more recent years, simulations typically involve computer-based attempts to run multiple plays of a particular kind of game or scenarios that mimic some process of interest in the real world. Certainly one ofthe most famous of these computer-based simulations was the Prisoner's Dilemma tournament run by Axelrod in the mid-1980s. Axelrod (1984) placed entrants' strategies in a large computer tournament in order to test which strategies were most successful in promoting cooperation over time in a Prisoner's Dilemma situation, where the rational individual strategy may be to defect, but the larger payoff for everyone requires that players cooperate. Axelrod found that the highest payoffs for contestants came from a tit-for-tat strategy (each round required that the player advance the move made by the opponent in the previous round of play). Tetlock, McGuire, and Mitchell (1991) drew on a variety of methodologies, including simulations, experiments, and qualitative and quantitative historical work, to assess the adequacy of psychological perspectives on nuclear deterrence. In another attempt to combine various research methodologies to enrich the understanding of complex phenomena, Tetlock (1989) again advocated a wide variety of research methodologies including simulations and experiments, mass survey and public opinion data, quantitative historical data, in-depth case studies, and formal models to examine the processes that might lead to nuclear war. Fischer and Suleiman (1997) investigated the relationship between election frequency and cooperation using two groups with elected representatives playing an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma kind of game. In order to examine the evolution of cooperation in this setting, they ran 360 simulation games within this paradigm.

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Self-Report Questionnaires

Self-report questionnaires are designed to ask a large number of individuals for the same information regarding their beliefs, feelings, thoughts, actions, attitudes, or values. As opposed to experiments that examine the impact of the situation on behavior, selfreport questionnaires tend to focus on individual differences between people. Self-report questionnaires rely on the assumption that individual differences that are measured or assessed on particular traits reflect personality dispositions that in turn could affect policy choices and outcomes. The goal in much of this research has been to ascertain individual differences and correlate these differences with particular policy preferences or positions. Perhaps the best known work of this type focused on the authoritarian personality (Adorno et al. 1950). This work was begun by a group of Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany who were at the University of California, Berkeley. They were looking for the roots of the fascism that had plagued their homeland in personality factors. They conceptualized the authoritarian personality as a person with a constellation of personality traits that included anti-Semitism, ethnocentrism, and political and economic conservatism. They devised a scale, the Ftest, which, when combined with an interview, Thematic Apperception Tests, and other projective measures, demonstrated tendencies toward fascism in those with high scores. The underlying assumption here relied on the untested hypothesis that those who favor interpersonal strategies that are authoritarian in nature would project their tendency to blame and threaten others onto the international environment and favor authoritarian strategies there as well. The argument rested on the psychodynamic theory that interpersonal hostility would be projected onto the external world and lead those with a high F -scale score to endorse punitive and extreme kinds of foreign policy. While a great deal of work was done in this area, research on the authoritarian personality faltered upon accusations of bias and political motivation (for a nice discussion, see R. Brown 1986). Very little behavioral confirmation was found on the central link between interpersonal tendencies as stated on self-report questionnaires and policy preferences and behavior. However, more recent work supports an interaction effect between societal threat and authoritarianism. Feldman (1997) used 1992 National Election Survey (NES) pre- and postelection questionnaires of 1,564 whites


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and discovered that while there did not appear to be a direct relationship, there was an interaction effect such that perceived social threat activated authoritarian predispositions. Etheredge (1978a, 1978b) conducted a more compelling study in assessing the personality traits of thirty-six high officials in the u.s. Department of State and correlating them with their tendency to use force in forty-nine crises between 1898 and 1968. He found that he could predict the policy preference of these leaders over 75 percent of the time. In particular, Etheredge was able to demonstrate that decision makers who advocated the use of military force were more likely to display dominant behavior toward their underlings. This study was particularly noteworthy for its use of highlevel officials as the subject of scrutiny; such a study carries a great deal more external validity than one conducted solely with college students. More typically, studies of international relations based on correlations between self-report measures and policy preferences suffer from the same challenges to external validity that can plague experimental studies. Moreover, self-report measures lose the internal validity gained through experimental design. Two limitations on causal inference in nonexperimental studies are particularly problematic (Cook and Campbell 1979). First, there can be a response bias or demand characteristic problem, where subjects strive to figure out what the experimenter wants and give it to her. This might occur when an experimenter is not blind to the conditions or hypotheses of the study or when the measures administered in the same experimental session demonstrate some obvious relationship. Under these circumstances, subjects can be subtly induced to produce responses that might be biased in the experimenter's preferred direction. Second, personality alone is quite complex; relationships between personality and policy preference, even if they exist in the laboratory, might readily vanish in the face of other personal or institutional variables or strategic constraints in a wider context. Content Analysis

Content analysis can be defined as "a technique for making psychological inferences about politically relevant aspects of the personality of political actors from the systematic, objective study of written and transcribed oral material" (Winter and Stewart 1977, 29). Political scientists interested in topics beyond political psy-

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chology and international relations employ content analysis as a useful method of investigation. Scholars who study the media, for example, often rely on content analysis in order to examine the substance of a message, such as a political speech or campaign advertisement, so that they can then analyze its effect on some behavior of interest, such as voting. While these other uses remain influential and important, this discussion will focus on the use of content analysis in studying individual personality, particularly in the area of leadership studies, because this topic is most relevant and central here. Content analysis attempts to use the naturally occurring information offered by decision makers in order to explain or predict their public policy proclivities. The advantage of this strategy is that investigators actually study the person that they are interested in understanding. Content analysis typically utilizes archival or contemporaneous records-press conferences, diaries, speeches, letters, and interviews with the subject or his or her close associates-to uncover particular themes or patterns in the subject's personality, such as dominance or cognitive complexity. This strategy then assumes that knowledge of these themes can help predict particular policy strategies and outcomes of interest. Such studies require clear definitions of the themes or personality traits that are being investigated so as not to introduce bias in interpretation, merely finding what is sought without regard to subtle variations within and between individuals on any given trait. Coding manuals often help to clarify these interpretations across researchers who score particular people on various traits. High interrater reliability is essential in order to have confidence that the traits discovered in fact exist and are verifiable. Well-done content analysis studies can demonstrate impressive predictive power (Kowert and Hermann 1997). Several interesting studies have been conducted using this methodology. For example, David Winter (1995) compared Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, and George Bush in the 1992 presidential campaign. He sought to assess and predict the governing style of each man based on a psychological analysis of the motivation imagery in their speeches. Winter and his colleagues (1988) used content analysis to analyze a single individual: Richard Nixon. Content analysis sought to extract such psychological variables as use of imagery and needs for achievement, affiliation and intimacy, and power. Using Nixon's 1969 inaugural address, content analysis revealed that Nixon had a high need for achievement, a high


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need for affiliation, and an average need for power. Winter et al. (1988) validated these findings through a systematic analysis of Nixon's behavior as registered in the memoirs of six of his aids. Rosati (1988) looked at three central figures in the Carter administration to explain continuity and change in their foreign policy beliefs. Statements by President Carter, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski were examined over the course of four years. This content analysis revealed that Carter began with an optimistic view that underwent a reversal over the course of his time in office. This shift appeared to result from the interplay of personality, the impact of world events, such as the seizing of American hostages in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the influence of domestic forces at home. Content analysis can also be used to study foreign leaders, which adds language translation to the list of complicating factors. High interrater reliability among translators is a prerequisite for the effective use of content analysis in cross-linguistic contexts. McClelland (1963) examined elites' need for achievement, affiliation, and power in Pakistan, India, and China and found high needs for achievement and power and low needs for affiliation. On the basis of these findings, McClelland predicted, in 1963, that this region would manifest above average levels of economic development, decreasing birth rates as public health improved, and authoritarian political structures in the future. Perhaps the most fascinating content analysis ever conducted took place in the most naturalistic setting, using real people, real incentives, and real money in the United States during World War II. On September 21, 1943, Kate Smith, a singer famous for her rendition of "God Bless America," made sixty-five national radio appeals in the course of an eighteen-hour drive to 23,000,000 listeners in an effort to sell bonds to support the war effort. As a result of her campaign, bonds worth $31,000,000 were sold in that one day. What was it about her, or her appeal, that generated such a huge and immediate response? Merton et al. (1949) explored the nature of this real-life mass persuasion through interviews with those who bought bonds that day, polling, and content analysis of her appeals. They argue that a very personal social dynamic was stimulated in people by the emotional nature of Smith's appeal. Apparently, this dynamic produced a reciprocal effect that catalyzed Smith herself to make even greater efforts over the course of the drive. The obvious problem with a strategy that relies on mostly

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public documentation lies in the difficulty of inferring private psychological states or traits from public documents (Jervis 1989c). Public documents, such as speeches, may not even be written by the person giving them. In addition, speeches are often designed to elicit a particular public response; the goal of the speech may be to rally public support for a particular issue, and thus it serves more as propaganda than as projective material. Many public speeches or press conferences hold a strategic purpose that makes inferring private states complicated at best. Further, diaries, biographies, or interviews with the person or his close associates can be biased not only by failures of memory but also by strong desires to create and sustain a positive image of the subject. Content analyses may offer a more realistic environment and direct avenue for studying the person of interest, but they do not allow for the kind of control found in experimental studies. Such studies tend to have lower internal validity, even when they report high levels of agreement between coders and appear to possess high degrees of external validity. Despite the naturalistic character of much of the data in content analysis, a certain skepticism must be applied to the underlying purpose or motive of the expression whenever strategic incentives or impression management goals might hinder honest exposure. When other possible explanations emerge for interpreting the meaning of a given expression, those explanations must be addressed before confidence can be placed in more hidden meanings. Although content analysis may have greater external validity, in examining the person of interest directly, and thus offer greater generalizability from the study to the real world, it loses power to the extent that it approaches the subject less systematically. More important, content analysis loses validity to the extent that the utterances observed are not actually the product of the person of interest but rather of a secondary figure like a speech writer. In general, the more information obtained from a wider variety of sources (transcripts of press conferences, speeches, interviews, diaries), the more agreement among these sources, and the more robust and ubiquitous the themes that emerge, the more confident the investigator can be in the validity of the results. Observer Ratings of Policymakers

Observer ratings of policymakers involve the systematic collection of a number of observers' impressions of particular traits or char-


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acteristics of leaders. The goal of these observer ratings has been the "development of a wide array of personality assessment procedures that complement the case study method by permitting objective, quantitative comparisons across individuals and groups of individuals" (Historical Figures 1977). Observers are typically asked to report their impressions of policymakers along certain predetermined scales or descriptions of traits. One of the most popular of these scales is called the Q-sort. The Q-sort allows a variety of people to rank descriptors from a list of adjectives in the order that they believe most accurately reflects the person under investigation. Typically, subjects are asked to group these adjectives from most to least descriptive of the person under investigation. Subjects might view a videotape of a debate between presidential candidates such as Al Gore and George Bush. Afterward, subjects are asked to rank-order a list of perhaps a hundred adjectives such as "friendly," "aggressive," "smart," "strong," and so forth from most to least descriptive for each candidate. The goal of these studies is to combine the idiosyncratic responses of individual observers with the nomothetic descriptors provided in the checklists by the investigators. McKeown argues that "Q Methodology is ... especially suited for an empirical approach to the psychoanalytic study of political subjectivity" (1984, 415), although this method can be and has been used in service of other theoretical approaches. Investigators then use established statistical analysis to relate observed traits with each other for interrater reliability as well as to predict particular behavioral dependent variables, such as policy preferences or political outcomes. There are serious concerns about the utility of such observations. Ross (1977) argues that many people fall prey to the fundamental attribution error (that individuals tend to overestimate the impact of personality on behavior while simultaneously underweighting the impact of the situation). Along with other cognitive biases (chap. 4), error would predispose people to attribute greater causality to the person than to the situation in their assessments and observations of others. In addition, just because people agree that an individual portrays a particular trait in public does not mean that such a characteristic is true for the person in private; as with verbal expressions, other impressions, including body language and gestures, can be managed and calculated to elicit a particular effect. Many politicians strive to appear in control and authoritative in their appearances; this does not necessarily mean that such characteristics are

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representative of the private person as well. Care should be exercised in assessing personal psychological traits based on staged public appearances. Further, there is no clear evidence that such traits, either personal or professional or both, translate directly into specific policy preferences. Such speculations remain open to further empirical investigation. Nevertheless, sometimes Q-sort methodology can be used in combination with other methods to provide another piece of evidence in a multiple method study. Tetlock et al. (1992) conducted such a study when they used Q-sorts to explore the empirical underpinnings and theoretical logic behind Irving Janis's (1982) theory of groupthink (chap. 9). Basically, the theory argues that ingroup pressures toward unanimity and cohesion can make it more difficult for contrary positions to be advocated because no one wants to be censored by the group. Because of this dynamic, the objective quality of decisions can be compromised. Tetlock et al. (1992) examined ten episodes that might support Janis's theories of groupthink. They conducted a LISREL statistical analysis of the results and found less support for the causal mechanism in the group think theory. Specifically, they found that group cohesion and situational stress were not independent predictors of groupthink as would be predicted by the theory. But they did find that the structural and procedural forms of the organization predicted the operation of a groupthink mentality. In addition, they found little support for Janis's claim that the Mayaguez incident and the Iranian rescue mission decisions were plagued by group think. Advocating further use of multiple methodology, the authors argue that a case study method would allow others to test various theories of group dynamics, including group think, to inform the interpretation of history in ways that accurately reflect social psychological concepts and research methodology. Certainly synthesizing historical casework and social psychological theory can enrich the study of decision making in this way. The use of multiple methods to integrate such work can only add to the interdisciplinary strength of any discovery. Case Studies

Case studies are a favorite method of political scientists, but have been less widely used in the discipline of psychology. Alexander George and William McKinley Runyan have pioneered the conceptual definition and use of the comparative case study method.


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Cases are compared along either their most similar or most different dimensions in order to examine how certain conditions affect the variables of interest. Psycho biographies constitute a form of case study as well, in that they use the single case of a particular person's life to investigate that person's life, events, and character. Single case studies allow an investigator greater freedom to examine those people, events, and relationships that are of interest. Rare events almost demand case studies because there are few, if any, comparable examples to use for reference or analysis. If someone is interested in explaining the details of a particular event, such as the origins of World War I, the case study method may be most appropriate. However, if a scholar is interested not so much in the origins of World War I as in the origins of war in general, more cases need to be added to the analysis in order to find factors that covary with the occurrence of war in general in a systematic way. A large number of cases may be needed to undertake such a study. Case studies can be especially useful in the early stages of a research project, when it is still unclear which aspects of a particular event or problem are important, what evidence should be sought, and which factors may playa role in explaining outcomes. In this early stage, having an open mind in approaching all the data in a particular case can be helpful in generating useful ideas and hypotheses, so long as this same case evidence is not the only test of the theory. When this occurs, tautological reasoning occurs and viable inferences cannot be drawn. Jervis et al. (1985) used case study methodology to explore the interrelationship between psychology and deterrence. Using case studies of World War I, the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Falklands War, these analysts reached the conclusion that national leaders were often more cautious as well as more reckless than rational theories might predict. Deterrence often backfires by stimulating insecurity in an opponent, and this brings about the very result that the strategy was designed to prevent. However, precisely because of the lack of controlled comparison, case studies remain vulnerable to the same kind of inferential biases and errors that can plague content analysis and observer rating methodologies. The intuition of the analyst may bias the interpretation of results in the absence of a more systematic scientific method. Scholars must be careful not to impose their preexisting theories onto the evidence they discover and confront, lest they see only what they expect. This could cause them to miss

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important facts, misinterpret or misconstrue others, and create still others where they don't really exist. In addition, it is not possible to infer causation from the investigation of a single case; more cases that compare cause and effect are necessary in order to establish enough correlations to work with. Often, causation must be left to the realm of the experimental situation. Survey Research

Survey research typically consists of a large-scale form of selfreport measures. Its methodology has been much more widely used in the area of political psychology in American politics than in international relations. However, because the method itself is not restricted in its utility, we will cover some of its more important aspects. How do people go about answering questions on a survey? Tourangeau and Rasinski (1988) argue that answering is a fourstage process: interpreting the question, figuring out what attitude the question is about, retrieving relevant thoughts and feelings from memory, and then applying those thoughts and feelings to the particular question to select a response. These authors argue that all these processes can be dramatically affected by prior questions, which can prime particular frameworks, thoughts, and feelings for later questions. In addition, prior questions pose consistency pressures for a respondent. These problems can complicate obtaining reliable answers from subjects. Two main issues plague survey research: problems with response instability over time (people fail to provide consistent responses to the same questions) and framing and response effects (people give different answers to the same substantive question when it is formulated in different ways). These problems compromise both the reliability and validity of surveys, and thus they limit, at least theoretically, the implications and ramifications that can be drawn from the results. Survey research methodology teaches the implicit lesson that not all surveys, and not all findings, are equal or true. Several scholars have noted the impact of various aspects of this phenomenon on survey results. Krosnick (1999) argues that framing effects-that people alter their responses based on the wording, order, number of available responses, labeling of alternative responses, or open versus closed formats-pose a major methodological concern in survey research. In particular, he notes


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the impact of the agreement response set bias, which means that less-educated people are more likely to agree to a question regardless of content. Social desirability concerns also limit the extent to which individuals will be truthful about ideas and beliefs that they perceive to be politically or socially unattractive or incorrect. That fewer numbers of people endorse racist items over time does not necessarily mean that society has become less racist, for example; such shifts in endorsement may result from individuals' attempts to appear socially desirable to the experimenter, as societal norms change in ways that preclude explicit endorsement of racist or sexist items. Other aspects of the population also must be considered in interpreting survey data, including the competence of citizens, the ingredients of opinion, the power of the social and political discourse around the issue, and the way in which public opinion translates into political action, according to Don Kinder and his colleagues (1998). There are several explanations for these problems in survey research. Krosnick (1991) discusses the impact of satisficing in survey research, whereby people give incomplete, biased, or no information at all when queried about particular topics. He notes that people invoke certain strategies in answering surveys in order to minimize the time and effort required. These strategies include simply agreeing, choosing "don't know," or picking randomly from among options. Zaller and Feldman (1992) discuss several of these concerns in depth. They note three reasons for response instability (people not giving the same response over time). First, the ambivalence axiom means that most people hold opposing views on most issues, and these views can push them to decide a particular issue in either way. Depending on what is salient or dominant at the moment they are asked, they might respond in one way, and then respond in the opposite way several weeks later when the opposing concern is more salient for whatever reason. Second, the response axiom argues that people answer surveys by averaging the salient considerations that come into play in making their decisions. New information between polls might easily sway a person toward an opposing position by changing the averages or the weights of the considerations that go into answering a particular question. Third, the accessibility axiom states that accessibility (what is most available to people in their minds at the time they are asked) depends on what the person has most recently thought about. If a person saw a report on the news, or read an article in the paper, or had a con-

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versation about crime, then this topic would be more salient and accessible to her at that time than several weeks later when she is asked about crime and the recent news has focused on sexual investigative journalism, for example. Because accessibility and salience change constantly, answers to the same questions can change, and these shifts result in response instability over time. There are various kinds of response (framing) effects, where people change their answer depending on how the question is asked. Zaller and Feldman use the termfrarning in the same way it is used in the context of prospect theory (chap. 3). In the context of the media, the phrase framing effects typically refers to the way something about the question or interviewer establishes an environment in which the issue is addressed. These contextual variables can prove quite powerful in influencing the content of the responses given, even if they should not be relevant to the substance of the question at hand. Zaller and Feldman argue that four issues can influence the frame in which people understand and contextualize the question, which thus affect the substance of their response. First, the race of the interviewer can affect someone's response to a question. A white person would be much less likely to express racist views against black people to a black interviewer for obvious reasons. The same thing can be true of the sex of the interviewer. Women might be more likely to tell the truth about domestic abuse, for example, to another woman than to a man. Second, reference group effects can influence responses to questions. Religious or ethnic affiliation serve as reference groups that influence how certain questions are perceived or cue certain responses. A question about Catholics might be interpreted differently by a Catholic than by a Muslim. Third, priming effects from the television news can affect the way that people think about, respond to, and frame particular issues. Priming refers to external cues or sources of information, including television, radio, newspapers, talking with friends, and so on, that, while not necessarily directly relevant to the topic at hand, nonetheless influence respondents' answers. Priming effects are related to the accessibility and salience issues raised in the discussion of response instability. Finally, framing effects where the order or method of presentation of a question result in robust differences in the way people perceive and respond to particular questions affect the answers obtained as well (see also chaps. 3 and 4). But for now suffice it to say that the order, method, and context of presentation can easily alter individual responses to the same substantive question.


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In summarizing, Zaller and Feldman note the critical dependence of attitudes on memory. Attitudes are clearly based on what is readily available, salient, and present in someone's memory or consciousness. Second, salience proves critical in attitude surveys as well. People are most influenced by what they have encountered most recently, as well as what matters most to them. Finally, these considerations lead to the implication that surveys that offer and encourage the opportunity for greater thought might elicit more stability in attitudes as people take the time and attention to reflect more deeply on what they believe and why. The difficulty with asking people what they think and why is that often people don't know or don't care about the topic being queried. In many cases, people may generate an answer, however false, simply because the question was asked, not because they have a real opinion or preference about the issue or topic. In this case, people are not really discovering and revealing true and hidden preferences; rather, they are creating superficial ones on the spot in order to answer the question. And when they do express thoughts and opinions, they may not even be aware of the source of their reasoning. Nisbett and Wilson (1977) show that often people are willing to "tell more than they can know" about what they think. They experimentally demonstrate that people are often unaware of the presence or influence of a given stimulus, especially of how these stimuli influence their responses. In one example, subjects were asked to learn word pairs, such as "moon-ocean." Later, they were asked to name a laundry detergent in the midst of other questions. Those who had learned the preceding word pair were more likely to mention Tide as the detergent. When asked why they made that choice, none of the subjects attributed the choice to the earlier word pairing that they learned, and yet they were clearly influenced by it. Nisbett and Wilson (1977) argue that people do not introspect about the causes of their behavior so much as they apply theories of causality to it. They are accurate to the extent that the right cause is salient and theoretically probable, and inaccurate to the extent that causation is subtle or theoretically implausible. Does this mean that it is impossible to obtain accurate or reliable responses to attitude surveys? Not necessarily. Jarvis and Petty (1996) argue that stable individual differences do exist in the chronic tendency to engage in evaluatory responses. In this way, some people are systematically more likely to report having attitudes toward a wide variety of political and social issues and more evaluative thoughts in general.

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Cacioppo, Gardner, and Berntson (1997) argue that there are positive and negative evaluation processes that underlie many attitudes; they claim that these processes are distinguishable, and stochastically and functionally independent. These processes are characterized by distinct activation functions that undergird the positivity and negativity bias principles that have been previously discovered. They argue that these valenced evaluation processes are differentially related to attitude ambivalence and have distinguishable antecedents. When underlying beliefs are the target of deliberation or a guide for behavior, people tend to gravitate from a two-variable to a bipolar belief structure. This tendency is referred to as the principle of motivational certainty. Conclusions

This chapter has sought to outline some basic methodological approaches to the study of political psychology in international relations. These strategies include laboratory experiments and simulations, self-report questionnaires, content analysis, observer ratings, case studies, and survey research. These methods can be combined in a single study for more fertile results. One final point deserves mention. Tetlock (1994) has pointed to the importance of maintaining ethical checks on the influence of political or social values in this kind of research. Because many political psychologists are motivated by particular social and political problems and issues, it is critical to maintain high ethical standards in the conduct of research. This may not always be as simple or easy as it seems at first glance. Tetlock suggests specific strategies to reach this goal. First, scholars should remain skeptical toward counterfactuals that underlie causal claims in historical analogies. Just because something might have been so does not mean that it would have evolved as one would have liked or expected. Tetlock and others have conducting some very intriguing work on the use of counterfactuals in making causal claims about historical phenomena in particular. In one study using a sample of professional political analysts, Tetlock (1998a) found a relationship between cognitive style, theoretical orientation, and counterfactual reasoning. In particular, he discovered that experts who examined close-call counterfactuals were affected by the normative value of the implications in making their determinations. Specifically, professionals demonstrated a bias to reject counterfactuals that would


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have made them "almost wrong," while accepting those that made them "almost right." In other words, experts were more or less likely to consider close-call counterfactuals that would have changed history depending on whether their implications were consistent with their underlying beliefs about the world. In another study of counterfactuals specifically related to formulating public policy toward Russia, Tetlock and Visser (2000) found that counterfactuals about the past can influence and constrain judgments about the future as well. Comparing the responses of untrained and trained observers, they conclude that responses to counterfactual reasoning "are highly subjective, largely theory-driven and profoundly consequential" (173). Responses to counterfactual reasoning also relate to a person's sense of accountability for decisions (Markman and Tetlock 2000). Individuals who feel accountable for outcomes have stronger reactions to the difference between situations where they almost win or lose but do not clearly win or lose. In addition, they are less satisfied when they nearly lose, but more satisfied when they nearly win. Finally, they put less money into investments that nearly lost, and more money into investments that nearly won. These findings suggest that process accountability strengthens assimilative counterfactual thinking, whereas accountability concerning outcomes ameliorates it. They conclude that their results suggest that the context of decision making influences both the cognitive and emotional consequences of counterfactual reasoning. A second strategy for conducting ethical research in political psychology involves embedding experiments in representative sample surveys, This method can help isolate the determinants of public policy. Sniderman and Tetlock (1991) advocate this strategy in examining the processes of reasoning that take place when people are confronted with various political choices. Third, scholars should attempt to develop methods to translate case study findings into standardized data sets so that others can replicate, expand, aggregate or reinterpret the findings. Finally, it is imperative for scholars to keep an open mind about the possibility that patterns they uncover that appear to be acceptable, useful, and harmless in one political context might be used in service of abhorrent political goals in another. Science does not exist only in service of those with appropriate politically correct political and social goals; findings and methods can be invoked by those with opposing beliefs and desires. Recognizing that politically motivated work can be used against the original designs of the investigator should instill some

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degree of humility in those who seek to improve the world through the study of political psychology. Two more promising research methodologies lie in experimentation and experiments embedded in surveys, such as the work conducted by Tetlock, Sniderman, and colleagues. Laboratory experimentation offers the promise of systemic manipulation and control of variables in a way that allows investigators to make true causal assessments and arguments. Such work can be adapted to a variety of different substantive topics in political psychology, including the origins of framing effects, the impact of emotion on decision making, and signaling dynamics in crisis conflicts, among myriad other potential topics. The more political psychology comes to utilize this gold standard of methodology, the more quickly it can generate and test rival hypotheses in ways that allow for the cumulative development of theory. Experiments embedded in survey instruments offer a second promising, relatively new method by which to investigate a variety of different topics, including the nature of prejudice, political involvement and alienation, and the impact of certain political events on public opinion. Such work will likely provide a very useful and sophisticated method of investigation into a wide variety of phenomena in the future. The real problem with this kind of research is that it is very expensive to conduct, certainly well beyond the independent resources of graduate students or junior faculty. However, it is possible to conceive of conducting such experiments in smaller forums, either through mail or phone surveys in a more geographically restricted, albeit representative, area. Such research may take more time and effort but scholars should be rewarded by obtaining representative findings that combine demographic data with experimental manipulations. Independent research support organizations offer random digit dialing in some areas to facilitate this kind of work. These two types of methodological strategies certainly have promise for sophisticated and comprehensive investigation into the topics of greatest interest in political psychology.

CHAPTER 3

Theoretical Concepts in Political Psychology

This chapter will survey some of the dominant theories from both political science and psychology that are used in the study of political psychology. Theoretical ideas, like methodologies formats, provide yet another area of somewhat patchwork overlap between political and psychological ideas and interests. These theories are important for understanding the questions and approaches that various scholars pursue. Particular theoretical paradigms or positions, like methodologies, can shape the kinds of questions that are asked, the evidence that is sought, the methods that are chosen, and the answers that are reached. These theoretical prisms provide frameworks for the collection and interpretation of data; they offer a way to help make sense of a wide variety of information. The applications of specific theories to particular substantive topics in the political psychology of international relations will be discussed at length in the six chapters that follow. The purpose of this chapter is not to provide an exhaustive description of every theory that has been or might be used to study these topics. Rather, it provides a brief overview of some of the more important theoretical perspectives that emerge repeatedly in discussing the psychological impact of thoughts, actions, emotions, groups, and leaders on political processes. Though it is possible to think of ways that political ideas can impact personal psychology as well, this direction of research has not been followed as much in political psychology as the reverse. While the relationship between political science and psychology need not be fated to continue as a one-way street, with psychologists offering much and gaining little in return, more work will be needed on the part of political scientists to develop and offer political insights, theories, and ideas that will prove useful for psychologists. Following a short summary of various approaches in both international relations and psychology, discussion will focus on rational choice approaches as well as those drawn from social and cognitive psychology. For other influential theories, particularly in psychology, see chapter 6 on emotion. 45

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Theories in International Relations

Several approaches dominated the post-World War II study of international relations in political science. Those that ruled until the end of the Cold War, which were shown wanting in their failure to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union, have been quickly eclipsed by more recent theoretical approaches. The classic debate between realists and liberals appears well worn, although both approaches continue. Current arguments encompass rational choice and constructivism, with many of the livelier recent debates focusing as much on methodology as on theoretical substance. This discussion is not intended to provide an exhaustive or indepth treatment of these theories, but rather seeks to provide a brief summary of the central arguments of the main paradigms for purposes of comparison with psychological models. Nonetheless, the force of realism continues to persist in international relations theory, as often as not as a straw man to be knocked down by the new theoretical kid on the block. Realism (Waltz 1979) traditionally argues that states pursue their self-interest and that outcomes in the international environment are determined by the distribution of power in the system. In an anarchic, self-help system, states are unitary actors driven to pursue their security needs at all costs. Realism has been criticized for its lack of specificity in prediction, as well as its failure to explain the dynamic processes of change adequately. Liberalism traditionally focuses on the ways in which cooperation can emerge between states, especially states with similar political (democratic) and economic (capitalist) structures (Keohane 1984; Milner 1997). Institutions can provide a way to exchange useful information and reduce the transaction costs that might be associated with greater uncertainty. When all states can trade efficiently and profitably, everyone can get rich together. In this way, conflict becomes less likely under conditions of interdependence and cooperation. Marxist interpretations argued that class struggle would result in an overthrow of the ruling class by the workers (Marx 1954 [1848]). Ironically, the democratic revolutions of the 1990s in Eastern Europe were instead motivated by the desire to tear down the totalitarian political structure and command economy imposed by the ostensibly communist regime of the former Soviet Union. Marxist theories have held less theoretical sway since the end of the Cold War, at least in part because they proved so disastrous in


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practice in the former Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe. Domestic political arguments often seek the origins of foreign policy in domestic political structures or ideologies, including bureaucracies (Hartz 1955; Allison 1971). These arguments do not envision the state as a unitary actor, but rather in terms of fractionated coalitions and forces that strive to influence a particular policy. In Hartz's vision, American foreign policy runs aground when the tyrannical forces of liberal ideology attempt to recreate the world in America's image and retreat into isolation when they discover that the world does not always want to imitate the United States (Hartz 1955). In Allison's models (1971), crises in American foreign policy can occur as a result of accidents or unintentional consequences deriving from standard operating procedures or bureaucratic politics. More recent debates have focused on rational actor models that claim that decision making is the result of expected utility calculations: leaders make choices based on what they believe will result in the greatest likelihood of their highest preference being achieved. In Bueno de Mesquita's model, these assessments involve such factors as the desire of politicians to be reelected and the power and attention that leaders bring to a given problem (2000). When rational actors engage in bargaining, conflicts, and negotiation, such exchanges are often modeled in terms of game theory, which represents the strategic interaction between players (Morrow 1994). Such approaches are currently the dominant paradigm in the field of international relations. Many rational choice theories rest on assumptions of human decision making and behavior that psychologists consider inaccurate. Nonetheless, rational choice advocates argue, their analyses have demonstrated impressive predictive accuracy. Because many of the theories discussed in this book run contrary to the perspective offered by rational choice models, this approach will be discussed in more detail later. Constructivism (Wendt 1999; Katzenstein 1996) offers a new alternative to rational choice models in international relations. Constructivist approaches draw on a more sociological tradition, as opposed to the economic literature on which most rational choice models are based, and place greater emphasis on the role of identities and interests in state behavior. Culture comes to represent an important variable in defining the norms that shape actors' identities and interests.

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Finally, some analysis in international relations has focused on the impact of the individual leader on the outcome of the political processes. Such perspectives typically call on theories from psychology in seeking to explain the behavior of these individuals. These theories comprise the bulk of the arguments in this book. The History of Theoretical Approaches in Psychology

Freud was responsible for the most significant early theorizing in psychology. His psychodynamic, or psychoanalytic, perspective focused on the importance of unconscious mental activity. Arguing that childhood experiences determine adult behavior, Freud concentrated on sexual and aggressive impulses in particular. In conceptualizing human personality into three structures, Freud created a mental architecture that was inevitably at war with itself: the internalized parental superego always striving to restrain the hedonistic impulses of the id, leaving the ego to balance these powerful forces in a way that is consistent with the social constraints of wider civilization. Freud's formulation ofthe unconscious remains one of the most pivotal insights in the history of psychology; while many psychologists now conceive of the unconscious in ways that differ from Freud's original constructions, modern psychology would not exist without this seminal observation. While many of Freud's other ideas and notions may no longer hold much appeal for modern experimental psychologists, they have retained a powerful grip on popular culture, popular psychology, literary criticism, and the arts. Behaviorism reacted against the dominance of psychoanalysis, and the work of B. F. Skinner was instrumental in helping to turn the tide of academic psychology away from the psychoanalytic paradigm (1938, 1953, 1972). Skinner focused on what was visible, and thus he attended to behavior. Unconscious thoughts and motivations could not be so easily measured or tested, and their impact was hard to predict in any systematic way. As a result, these factors were left aside in the behavioralist paradigm. The behavioral revolution of the 1950s relied on experiments, many with animals, in order to test various hypothesis and build theoretical models of human behavior. Humanistic psychology began to rebel against the cold determinism of behaviorism in the wake of the vast political and cultural changes of the 1960s (Maslow 1968; R. May 1969). The human potential movement viewed individuals as richly endowed


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with natural intuitions, dreams, aspirations, motivations, and emotions that were not always well characterized in terms of behavior. Humanist psychologists like Carl Rogers shifted the focus of psychology away from behavior back toward emotions, albeit positive emotions as opposed to the more negative drive states emphasized by Freud earlier (Rogers 1961). The next revolution brought thought and mental processes back into the picture. Cognitive psychology attempted to examine complex mental processes in systematic experimental ways beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky 1982; Kahneman and Tversky 2000a). Attempts were made to integrate findings from earlier work in psychology into a more coherent and cohesive framework in order to understand how cognition might mediate behaviors and actions. However, like behaviorism, the early work in cognitive psychology tended to give short shrift to the impact of emotion, although here the emphasis lay instead on thought as opposed to the action stressed by earlier behavioralists. Relatively recent technological advances in brain imaging, in particular, have vastly advanced what we now know about neuropsychology and about how the brain functions (Damasio 1994, 1999; LeDoux 1996). These studies have begun to bring emotion back into the analysis and understanding of cognition in a new way that highlights their interaction in the decision-making process. Psychology has traditionally been divided into several subdisciplines that use variants of these theories in their areas of investigation. Developmental psychology studies the intellectual, social, emotional, and physical development of the child into adulthood (Maccoby 1980). Personality psychology, which has ceased to exist as an independent subfield in many research universities, tends to focus on the development of theories about the personality structures of individuals (Mischel 1968, 1984). Social psychology emphasizes the social behavior of seemingly normal individuals, or how people behave in dyads and groups in their social world (Nisbett and Ross 1980; Ross and Nisbett 1991). Cognitive psychology concentrates on the internal mental processes of individuals (Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky 1982; Kahneman and Tversky 2000a). Obviously there can be a tremendous overlap between the internal mental processes of individuals and what happens when those individuals interact with each other in their social worlds; thus, the large overlap between cognitive and social psychology has been

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mutually productive. Finally, neurological, neurocognitive, and physiological psychology, exploding in the wake of technological advances, continually offer new contributions to our understanding of the structure of the brain and how genetics, hormones, and neurochemicals interact to produce thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (Damasio 1994, 1999; LeDoux 1996). The theories that have been most widely used in political psychology derive from work in social and cognitive psychology. Theory development thus far appears to be a largely one-way street, with psychology offering theories to political psychology in a way that political science has largely failed to reciprocate. Some of the psychological theories that have been most influential include attribution (Kelley 1967, 1972a, 1972b; Jones 1976; Jones and Davis 1965; Jones et al. 1972), judgmental heuristics (Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky 1982), and prospect theory (Kahneman and Tversky 2000a). Each of these theories and its relevance for political psychology will be discussed in turn. Rational Choice

Rational choice theories, especially expected utility theory, have informed the study of political psychology, either in advocacy or in opposition, in many ways. 1 Some argue that rational choice and psychological approaches are incompatible and that their underlying theoretical assumptions and underpinnings cannot be reconciled (Kahneman and Tversky 1979, 1984). Others see many psychological models as mere subsets of rational actor models. Still others contend that if the more stringent assumptions of rational choice models are somewhat relaxed, they become more consistent with psychological findings without overly impeding their predictive accuracy. Yet many of the findings in experimental psychology challenge the validity of some of the basic assumptions of rational choice models, such as expected utility. Before discussing the ways in which some psychological theories question the foundations of rational choice models, however, it is useful to outline some of the basic premises of this theoretical approach. Most rational choice models argue that individuals act rationally in the pursuit of what they believe to be their own best inter1. This section draws heavily on notes and materials from Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's Summer Institute at Hoover Institution in 1995. class notes from his course in rational choice approaches to international relations in 1987 and 1997. and extensive personal conversations. All errors or misrepresentations are my own.


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est. In some sense, this requires that decision makers are able to ascertain what their options are, make judgments about how likely it is that each of these options will occur, hold a preference over each option concerning its desirability, and apply these contingencies to their choices. But what does it mean for someone to act rationally? It simply means doing what you believe is in your best interest. You might be wrong and pursue an option that does not bring about your best interest. But making a wrong choice based on a miscalculation of probability is an error, not an irrationality. And even accurate calculations can lead a decision maker astray if external reality results in a low-probability event occurring. Rationality does not require that the decision maker have complete information, necessarily, or that she engage in an exhaustive search. Indeed, it would be irrational to pursue additional information if the marginal cost of obtaining that information is likely to exceed the marginal benefit that might be gained from possessing that information. This idea is similar to Simon's familiar notion of satisficing, or bounded rationality, where a person is likely to stop searching for additional information or choices once she has found an acceptable option (1982). Imagine that you want to buy a new car. How much research would you do, and how far would you travel, to get the best price? While you might be able to do an exhaustive search more efficiently on the Web than by driving around to various dealerships, there comes a point where the money that you save is not worth the time that it costs you to find such a savings. This cutoff point may be different for different people, but someone who stops searching once an agreeable price is found, or who does not search beyond a reasonable geographic distance, is not irrational, even if a car exists somewhere that is five hundred dollars cheaper but would take another ten hours to find or require a five-hundredmile drive to pick it up in another state. Indeed, we are much less likely to think of such a person as "irrational" than the grandmother everyone knows who spends eight hours a day clipping coupons out of the newspaper in order to save forty cents on orange juice. Such an allocation of resources does not make sense to someone with lots of money but no time, but might make sense to the grandmother with lots of time and little money. Rationality does require that a few conditions be met. Choices must be able to be connected according to a relationship of preference or indifference. Preference means you know that you like one

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thing, or want one choice, more than another. Indifference means you don't care, that either choice holds the same value for you, even if that value is very low. Must everyone hold the same preference order in order to be rational? No. In most rational choice models, preferences are not the product of information or rationality. This differs from realist models in international relations, which assume that all leaders are interchangeable and share the exact same preference, which is to maximize their state's power and security. In rational choice models, rational people are not expected to make the same choices, even in the same situation, because preferences vary. A person who values time might be willing to pay more for a car in order to save the effort of searching for a cheaper dealership; a person who prefers money might drive several hundred miles in order to save more money on the same car. Rational choice theories remain limited by their failure to supply a theory for the origin of preferences, although psychology does not have a much better record of accomplishment on this question either. However, most rational choice advocates are not stymied by this because they are not interested in where preferences come from; rather, they are intrigued by what choices people make given the preferences they have. With a certain set of preferences, what can we predict about people's choices and behaviors? Rational choice models typically assume that preferences are fixed and given; in other words, preferences are modeled to be exogenous and unchanging. What witnesses observe as changes in behavior on the part of a decision maker do not result from changes in preferences but rather emerge from shifts in expectations and actions due to external constraints. In addition to requiring that choices be connected by preference or indifference, rational choice models typically require that choices also conform to the norms of transitivity, invariance, and dominance. Transitivity means that if a person prefers A to B, and B to C, they must also prefer A to C. Dominance requires that a person must prefer an option that is superior to another option on the relevant characteristics. And in variance demands that the person holds the same substantive preference regardless of the order, method, or form of presentation of the various options. Rational choice analyses often combine formal mathematical models with statistical analysis in order to investigate the phenomenon under consideration. Why do rational choice practitioners advocate modeling? Most proponents of rational choice believe


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modeling is an appropriate strategy to uncover the relationships between variables. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita argues that social science is engaged in a different enterprise than history (1996). According to this perspective, history seeks to explain events, but international relations is more interested in prediction. In order to predict the outcome of certain events and interactions, it is necessary first to discover the relationship between variables, and modeling aids in that process. For rational choice practitioners, events constitute sources of evidence used to examine whether variables relate to each other as predicted. History often seeks to explain the single event, such as the origins of World War I, the dynamics of the Cuban missile crisis, or the collapse of the Soviet Union. If that is the goal, it is appropriate to look only to the evidence from that particular case in order to understand the complexity of its unfolding. However, in these historical enterprises, the case is not seen as characteristic of a larger phenomenon, such as war, crisis, or political turmoil and regime change. When the concern is with the larger phenomenon, the single case study will not suffice. Case study methodology fails as the most appropriate method to evaluate how variables relate to one another. This is because a single case is constant, but it takes variation to explain differences in cause and effect across time or events (chap. 2). A single example simply does not allow a sufficient test of a theory. Most rational choice theorists emphasize and prefer large-number (large-n) case studies for these methodological reasons; a single event does not supply enough information to evaluate a hypothesis. Psychologists typically use a fairly large number of subjects in experiments in order to examine the relationship between independent and dependent variables; similarly, rational choice theorists too need large numbers in order to have confidence that their findings do not result from mere chance, and that the controlled manipulations they have undertaken do indeed cause the effects they observe. More-representative populations require fewer subjects to achieve statistically significant results, but experimental studies never rely on one person alone to discover meaningful results. Given these methodological concerns, how does modeling aid in the development of rational choice theory? Bueno de Mesquita argues for the following benefits of modeling. Modeling helps simplify reality. When assumptions are explicit, it is easier to test the likelihood that a result is either accidental or significant, which is

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done by falsification. Modeling promotes internal consistency by making relationships clear. It minimizes hindsight reasoning because scholars are encouraged to concentrate on prediction. Propositions must be deduced logically, and contradictions and unsupported leaps of faith are more transparent in a mathematical format. Models are designed to explain behavior and to reveal relationships between variables. Finally, models help ensure that hypotheses are independent of the data that are used to evaluate them. This reduces the risk of tautological reasoning by verifying that the data used to generate the original hypotheses are not then used to test them. How does an analyst go about modeling a particular problem? Mathematical formulas are typical, but they are not required. Legitimate modeling can be based entirely on careful verbal logic. However, regardless of format, several processes are important. First, assumptions must be stated explicitly and clearly. Second, analysts need to derive testable hypotheses about the relationships under consideration. Third, data independent of the data used to generate the hypotheses must be generated. Last, the hypotheses should be tested against this independent empirical data. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and colleagues have reported impressive accuracy in predicting political outcomes using his international interaction game based on expected utility theory (1985). This model combines elements of the median voter theorem with an expected utility bargaining model. The intuition behind the median voter theorem is that people whose positions lie in the middle of some unidimensional distribution are more likely to be able to pick up more supporters than those whose positions lie at extreme points on the line. This is because positions in the middle are better placed to pick up a wider variety and greater number of votes than outlier positions. Bueno de Mesquita combines the insights derived from this theorem with an expected utility bargaining model that assumes that actor's preferences are fixed and given, and that actors will seek to make choices that maximize their probability of getting what they want the most. Decision makers will assess the options available to them in terms of what they want or the inherent utility of the choices based on their preferences and the probability of obtaining each option. Once they choose based on the option that is most likely to give them what they want the most, decision makers may bargain with others within the context of a median voter model in order to achieve their goals.


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Bueno de Mesquita's model requires only four variables in order to achieve its predictive power. This kind of information is typically extracted from experts on the area or topic; in this way, work in comparative and international politics is integrated with mathematical modeling to achieve compelling results. In this study the first variable comprises the individuals or groups who are interested in influencing the decision under investigation. The second variable relates to each stakeholder's stated bargaining position. The third variable assesses the potential resources, influence, and power that each player brings to the bargaining table; this is measured relative to the other stakeholders. The final variable concerns the salience of the issue to each actor, relative to the other issues that are on each decision maker's plate. Bueno de Mesquita's model makes heroic assumptions, but he argues that these assumptions are justified by the predictive accuracy he achieves in his forecasts. In fact, he demonstrates over 90 percent accuracy in over 2,000 real work cases (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 1985). Much recent influential work in international relations has utilized rational choice models to examine important issues in international relations. James Morrow has undertaken important work on the impact of uncertainty on alliances (1991) and in relation to capability and resolve (1989). Capability refers to the power that a state can bring to bear in a conflict, which might involve monetary and cultural factors as well as military ones. Resolve typically estimates how important a conflict is to a particular side and how much they are willing to sacrifice to achieve their goals. For example, in the U.S. conflict in Vietnam, the United States might have had greater raw capability, but it did not possess the resolve that the Vietnamese demonstrated. James Fearon's groundbreaking work using rational choice to explain a wide variety of occurrences in international relations from war (1995) to escalation of conflict (1994) has provided tremendous insight into the nature of conflict by demonstrating that many seemingly chaotic, bizarre, or odd occurrences arise from the rational calculations of different people espousing different preferences. For example, Westerners may have a hard time understanding why someone would commit suicide for a political goal, but from another perspective where life is bleak and the prospect for improvement slim, suicide may seem like a rational act in order to make life better for the family members who remain. When Harrison Wagner (2000) examined the relationship

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between bargaining and war, he concluded that fighting presents another form of bargaining in conflict. Andy Kydd (2000) examined the nature of arms races and arms control from a rational choice perspective. He argues that deterrence had been a largely overlooked theory in formal modeling. Deterrence represents a combination of conflict of interest between states and some degree of uncertainty about the capabilities of at least one state in order to sustain the level of military spending required by fighting. He concludes that arms control becomes most difficult when it seems most necessary and that arms races don't necessarily increase the likelihood of war. Instead, arms races may reduce the likelihood of conflict by decreasing the level of uncertainty about each side's capabilities. Susan Sample also investigated the nature of arms races from a rational choice perspective in her work on dispute escalation (1997) and war (1998). Suzanne Werner (1998) has studied war aims and bargaining in international conflicts between 1816 and 1980. She found that both war aims and bargaining can influence the negotiated terms of settlement. Paul Huth (1998), in one of a series of papers on great power wars (see also Huth et al. 1993), examined incidences of major power interventions in 272 international crises between 1816 and 1988. He found that realist explanations of conflict should be supplemented by explanations that incorporate domestic factors. Reiter and Stam (1998) investigated the relationship between democracy, war initiation, and victory using cases of international conflict between 1816 and 1982 and found that democracies are more likely to win conflicts, although other factors including strategy, territory, and capability also appear to have an impact on outcomes. Despite an impressive body of work that has greatly advanced cumulative knowledge within the literature of political science in general and international relations in particular, some questions remain relatively inaccessible using rational choice methodology. In particular, questions that seek to investigate particular single events may be more amenable to psychological analysis. Some of these unique concerns, whether they involve a particular leader or drastic event, may be among the most important and interesting issues, people, and events to examine. In addition, cases where leadership appears to be distorted or pathological in some way may demand psychological, as opposed to rational, analysis, especially where the consequences of such irrationality remain extensive. This is not only the case when a leader may take crazy risks,


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as in the rescue mission of the American hostages in Iran, or throw good money after bad, as in Vietnam. It also occurs when leadership becomes impaired because of psychological or medical illness. Robins and Post (1997) have written extensively, for example, on the phenomenon of political paranoia in leadership, examining leaders including Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and others. Sometimes the analysis remains complicated: was Hitler totally crazy, or was he completely rational, albeit evil in his motives and intentions? In such cases, rational and psychological analyses might profitably be combined or counterposed to shed light on otherwise incomprehensible behavior. Finally, some of the assumptions of rational choice theory have been challenged by psychological findings because such assumptions lack empirical descriptive accuracy in real tests of human behavior and decision making. Thus, we will review theories derived from social and cognitive psychology before examining how these various models have been applied to specific areas of inquiry in later chapters. Social and Cognitive Psychology

A broad array of work in cognitive and social psychology has been applied to political and other issues: information processing (Broadbent 1958), attribution (Kelley 1967, 1972a, 1972b; Jones 1976; Jones and Davis 1965; Jones et al. 1972), schemas (Kelley 1972b), social cognition (Fiske and Taylor 1991), and judgment and decision making (Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky 1982; Tversky and Kahneman 2000a). Because much of the most politically relevant work, in terms of international relations, has been done in the areas of judgment and decision making, particular attention will be given to those topics. Unfortunately, much of political psychology has involved the export of ideas, concepts, and theories from psychology into political psychology, with less traffic going from political science into political psychology. Some of that is beginning to change (though there is a lot of room for more work in this area), but most of the theoretical insights in political psychology continue to be borrowed from the realm of social and cognitive psychology. Judgment

Judgments and decisions are critical to our understanding ofleadership behavior and public policy outcome. Many realist models in

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political science assume that the individual does not make a difference; analysts need only understand the structural and external constraints of the situation in order to understand decisions and choices (Waltz 1979). But psychology and, more recently, neuroscience and biology, have generated numerous insights into how and why people make the judgments and choices they do. While some of these analyses derive from older psychodynamic notions, much of the more recent work has centered on particular cognitive biases or heuristics that people use in their decision-making strategies. Judgment and decision are related but not interchangeable concepts. Judgments happen prior to decisions. Judgments involve assessments of the external world; decisions are choices based on those judgments as they are evaluated with reference to internal values and beliefs. Often decisions are based on judgments about various options and how likely they are to occur. These judgments become important in the construction and framing of options for the decision maker (discussed later). Judgments are fundamentally about the probability or likelihood of a certain outcome occurring. What is the chance that it will rain today? What is the chance that you will win at your sports event today? Who will win the presidential elections? These questions relate to judgments people make every day about whether or not certain events that they care about will happen. As these questions imply, judgments often happen under conditions of uncertainty, where the judge cannot ascertain the objective likelihood of a particular outcome, as could be done on the toss of a fair coin. As a result, many judgments are based on a subjective, personal, or idiosyncratic notion of likelihood. Decisions, on the other hand, often involve internal trade-offs between values. In deciding whether to take a higher-paying job that requires more hours, the trade-off involves money versus personal time. Different individuals can make different choices based on different values, even if their assessments about how much money and how much time are involved are identical. Often decisions are made under conditions of risk where something important might be lost if the wrong choice is made. Judgments are often rendered according to certain heuristics or rules of thumb about how likely things are, based on other features of the context. These heuristics, or judgmental biases, are mostly functional; they reduce the time and effort it takes to make good judgments. However, these heuristics can lead to systematic


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biases that can distort assessments of the frequency and likelihood of certain events in predictable ways. There are three main judgmental heuristics that have been extensively documented experimentally (Kahneman, Tversky, and Slovic 1982). Each of these biases-representativeness, availability, and anchoring-can affect judgment in predictable ways. Representativeness Representativeness refers to the way in which people judge the probability that one object or event belongs to a particular category based on the similarity between that object and the category (Tversky and Kahneman 1974). Much of the time, similarity can be a powerful cue that things belong together; they have been paired in our experience and memory on many occasions. However, in certain circumstances, this propensity to judge frequency based on similarity can lead one astray. Imagine a variant on the original representativeness experiment. You enter a political participation class that you know to be filled with Republicans and Democrats. You are asked to judge the political affiliation of a particular student, Jack. While you know Jack to be a freshman, he is wearing a suit and tie and has buzz-cut hair. He is carrying a number of magazines, including a hunting magazine and The Economist. You decide, with high probability, that Jack is a Republican because certain aspects of his appearance and behavior are more similar to your stereotypes of Republicans than Democrats. Now suppose I told you that 90 percent of the students in the room are Democrats. Do you still think Jack is a Republican? Maybe one time out of ten you are right about Jack. But nine other times you are wrong. How does that happen? What difference does that make? Making an inaccurate judgment about the nature of Jack's identity results from underusing the base rate. What does it mean to underutilize the base rate? The base rate is the prior probability that a particular person or event belongs to a particular category, knowing nothing else about the situation. If you know, for example, that 90 percent of students in a room are Democrats, then the base rate of Democrats is 90 percent. If you had to guess what Jack is, optimal judgment would require you to assume that Jack is most likely, 90 percent likely in fact, to be a Democrat. If you knew nothing else about Jack, you would easily make this guess. But once you have some specific information about Jack that contra-

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dicts your stereotype of Democrats, or fits the stereotype you have of Republicans, it is easy to make the judgment that Jack is a Republican. Indeed, when judges have salient or vivid information about the person or event to be assessed, they are likely to throw the base rate out of contention, and assume that similarity overrides the objective value of the base rate. In fact, there may be other reasons that Jack is dressing and acting like a Republican, even if he is a Democrat; for example, he might be on his way to a job interview, or to a meeting with a conservative, wealthy relative. Representativeness typically does not allow the time for observers to reach these more considered alternatives before jumping to the stereotyped categorical assumption. Falling prey to the representativeness heuristic can lead to at least three systematic biases based on underusing the base rate in making judgments, which can have important political consequences in international relations. The first bias is the conjunction fallacy (Tversky and Kahneman 1983). The conjunction fallacy takes place when specific scenarios are judged more likely than more general ones, even though by definition general descriptions are more likely than specific ones, because they are seen to be more representative, or more similar, than they are in actuality. What does this look like? Again imagine a variant on the original experiment. You are asked to judge whether a woman, Linda, is an investment banker or both an investment banker and a feminist. You are then told that Linda's hero is Gloria Steinem, that she turned down a marriage proposal from someone she loved because she refused to change her last name as he demanded, and that she is an active member of NOW. You decide Linda is more likely to be an investment banker and a feminist. But you would be wrong, because the subset of women who are investment bankers and who are also feminists must be, by definition, smaller than the number of women who are solely investment bankers. This is because there are some female investment bankers who are not feminists, as well as some who are. This truth is a simple matter of probability. Notice how quickly your opinion can shift when individuated information about Linda is provided. Even after knowing why the single, as opposed to the conjunctive, description is more likely to be accurate, people often remain psychologically resistant to the notion that a person who fits one stereotype but not another is more likely to meet the uncharacteristic description than the combination one. This merely demonstrates how these biases often function like visual illusions, as Kahneman and Tversky (1984)


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note. Even when educated people are aware of the existence of these biases, it remains challenging to resist their pull. But because the stereotype is so strong and so salient, most people judge the conjunction to be more likely than the solitary event. Why is this a problem? The conjunctive fallacy leads judges to systematically overestimate the probability of a particular event, which in turn can lead to undue optimism in planning and to insensitivity to adequate failure analysis planning. The second bias that results from underutilizing the base rate is what is known as the law of small numbers (Tversky and Kahneman 1971). Chance does not self-correct: the likelihood of a fair coin turning up heads on the next toss remains 50 percent even if the previous nine tosses have revealed tails. Small samples are more likely to yield biased samples than larger samples. For example, there are typically 105 boys born for every 100 girls born in the United States. Yet this ratio would not necessarily be represented within each hospital. The likelihood that slightly more than 50 percent of the babies born in a given hospital will be boys increases as the number of babies born in that hospital increases. It would not be all that unusual for all six babies born in a small hospital on a given day to be girls. It would be much more unusual if all one hundred babies born in a larger urban hospital on a given day were girls. 2 One of the more controversial demonstrations of how difficult it is for people to understand, or accept, the law of small numbers was undertaken by Gilovitch, Vallone, and Tversky (1985) where they showed that there is no such thing as the "hot hand" in basketball. The hot hand ostensibly refers to players who are more likely to make a shot after making one than they are to make one after missing one. These psychologists showed that fans, players, and coaches of the Philadelphia 76ers saw shooting streaks where none existed statistically. Similar results were found among free throws with the Boston Celtics team and with gymnasium experiments with the Cornell University basketball team. Gilovitch et al. (1985) were able to demonstrate that subjects looking at strings of X's and O's (like hits or misses) misperceived chance variations. In fact, 62 percent of the subjects classified a 50 percent ratio as something akin to the hot hand; most subjects considered 70 percent or 2. This assumes natural birth rates and does not include countries like India and China where birth rates for males far exceed those for females due to high levels of prenatal sex-selected abortions favoring boys (Hudson and Den Boer 2002).

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80 percent variation in hits and misses as being the most representative of chance events, when in fact they are nowhere near the 50 percent ratio required by chance. A third example of the way in which people can fail to use the base rate is called nonregressive prediction (Kahneman and Tversky 1973). It refers to the fact that over time, a given measurement will likely revert to the mean, or average, measurement of the population. In other words, every given measurement results from some combination of the true measurement and some degree of random error. Because this error is random, sometimes it will raise the measurement and other times it might lower it. So, for example, if an average student does very well on the midterm, she may be more likely to do less well on the final. Over time, measurements will regress toward the mean, whether it is height, IQ, or some other value. Amos Tversky's experience with the Israeli air force provides an interesting illustration of how this bias might manifest in realworld problems (personal communication). In the mid-1980s the Israeli air force began to have some problems with losing jets and pilots in crashes and could not understand what was going on. They called Tversky in as a consultant to examine the problem. Tversky learned that after pilots made good flights, they were praised, and then proceeded to make worse flights the next time. When pilots made bad flights, they were criticized and then proceeded to make better flights the next round. The military reached the conclusion that praise made the pilots soft and weak, while criticism improved their skills and performance. Tversky noted that these shifts in performance were attributable to regression toward the mean. After a great flight, the pilot is likely to revert to average and make a less good flight the next time, just as a pilot who makes a bad flight is likely to improve the next round regardless of the degree of criticism or praise they receive. Through this observation, Tversky was able to help the Israelis improve their training regime for their fighter pilots. What does this all have to do with politics? Well, one of the ways in which representativeness can influence political decisions in decisive and suboptimal ways is by the invocation of historical analogies. Several scholars have written on how historical analogies inform decision making by offering instructions for future actions based on past experience (Khong 1992; Levy 1994; Jervis 1976, 1989c; Herrmann 1986a; E. May 1973). Powerful historical analogies can influence leaders who try to learn from past mis-


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takes. Whenever a politician raises the specter of Munich or Vietnam in making an argument for or against foreign military intervention, respectively, he is implicitly drawing on representativeness to advocate his prescribed policy. By arguing that the cause or event in the present somehow resembles that of the past, the resulting conclusion is supposed to reflect the lessons learned from that past experience. Yet the idea is rarely that leaders should conduct policy in the present as it was undertaken in the past; rather, the typical argument is to avoid the mistakes of the past by taking a different direction in the future. So, for example, leaders before World War II appeared reluctant to fight Hitler when he made his first aggressive forays into the Sudetenland at least partly because they were concerned about sparking an unnecessary conflict that might quickly lead to a wider war, as had occurred twenty years prior in World War 1. These leaders were trying to avoid earlier mistakes by pursuing a different policy. Obviously, one can never know the outcome of the counterfactuals: whether calm and appeasement might have prevented World War I or if countering Hitler militarily from the outset might have delayed or ameliorated World War II. However, it is not always clear that making up for the mistakes of the last conflict in the policy toward the current conflict constitutes wise or judicious decision making because even similar situations often differ in important and meaningful ways that may make the precise lessons of the past counterproductive in the current situation. While present and the past situations may be similar (although probably less so than argued because of the sheer complexity of events), this does not mean that the policy of the past, or the policy that should have been used in the past, is the correct one for the present. Yet that is precisely where representativeness can lead the unsuspecting advocate or listener astray. In foreign policy judgments, however, Jervis (1986) argues that problems of representativeness might not be as pervasive in reality as they appear to be in the laboratory because of external political constraints on behavior. Availability The second judgmental heuristic that can influence an individual's assessment of probability is the availability heuristic (Tversky and Kahneman 1973). In this heuristic, frequency is judged according to the ease and speed of associations in memory or imagination. The strength of these associations is then used as a basis for judging the likelihood or frequency of a given event or outcome. But

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there are several factors that can interfere with how quickly or easily an idea or image comes to mind that may have nothing to do with the objective likelihood ofthe event. These forces can bias the judgmental process by artificially inflating or deflating estimates that are based on the ease of association. There are several processes that can systematically bias the mental availability of information in ways that are not closely correlated with real-world frequency. First, vivid and emotionally compelling facts and information hold greater impact than pallid, abstract, or statistical information. Personal, emotionally involving events are much more likely to be remembered than information that is less immediate or concrete (Borgida and Nisbett 1977). This explains why clinical data is often overweighted relative to actuarial data. For example, a smoker might know that smoking increases her risk for heart disease, cancer, emphysema, and other health problems but may also know someone who is ninety years old and has smoked all his life. This vivid, salient example of someone who has always smoked and yet lived a long life might be seen as a counterexample to bland statistics suggesting otherwise. Often this phenomenon is referred to as the "man who" effect, because someone can ignore a great deal of pertinent information because they know a "man who" has had a different experience. For example, someone who wants to buy a car might read all the data in Consumer Reports and other statistical sources, then decide to buy a particular kind of car, say a Saab. But on the way to buy the Saab, the person runs into an old friend who asks what he is doing, and when he tells her that he is going to buy a Saab, she proceeds to tell him all about her lemon of a Saab and how it was always in the shop, and how it cost a fortune and never worked right, and how she really regretted having purchased it. She explains that she finally had to junk the car, bought a Volvo, and has never had a day's trouble with it. The buyer may then be stuck between what the statistics tell him is likely to be a good, safe car and what his friend tells him about her personal experience. Ifhe then decides to buy a Volvo instead of a Saab, he may have inadvertently fallen prey to the "woman who" effect. This bias often can be found in psychological as opposed to psychiatric assessments of clinical conditions, treatments, and medications. Psychologists tend to rely on large-n studies of such phenomena, while psychiatrists tend to privilege "their patient who" defied the odds in a particular situation. Such a patient is then often held up as a more representative example than he or she


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is in reality. Such discrepancies in understanding and interpretation can block communication and advancement across a wide area of discussion. A second way bias interferes with mental access is the relative retrievability of various instances from memory. Human memory processes privilege certain memories over others. So, for example, primacy effects (Asch 1946) and recency effects (Miller and Campbell 1959) mean that the first and last instances or examples mentioned or discussed in a list are more likely to be retrieved from memory, and thus are more easily and readily available to a decision maker, than those in the middle of a list. Events, people, and processes that are familiar or salient, because they have been seen repeatedly or recently, are more likely to be more available in memory as well (Heider 1958; Taylor and Fiske 1978). Yet, as anyone knows who watches the nightly news, certain events such as murder may be more salient than they are frequent because of their noteworthy and repetitive quality in the media (Litchenstein et al. 1978). In these sensational media cases, certain events, such as shark attacks for example, become more accessible and available mentally than they should be given objective probabilities. Third, certain events may simply be easier to imagine than other events, and yet this ease ofimaginability may have little to do with actual frequency. Events that have already occurred, for example, are much easier to imagine than events that have never occurred. For this reason, it remains easier to plan for the last terrorist attack, for example, than the next one. Similarly, it is easier to imagine what a conventional war would look like than to imagine the full-scale catastrophe of a nuclear war (PIous 1989). Part of the reason some events are easier to imagine and retrieve than others relates to the fact that individuals carry stereotypes in their heads about which kinds of events or classes of events go together. Therefore, in the presence of one associated item, another is more likely to be assumed, imagined, or expected. One of the best examples of this comes from the work of Chapman and Chapman (1967, 1969) on illusory correlations. In experiments with clinicians, the Chap mans asked subjects if there were any correlations between a particular kind of patient and the person's responses on a standard projection test, the Draw-a-Person test. Clinicians reported that paranoid patients were likely to draw large eyes, whereas individuals who were concerned about their intelligence were likely to draw big heads. Naive subjects assumed similar associations, showing that the stereotypes are widespread.

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In fact, there is no evidence that such associations exist in the Draw-a-Person test. The assumed correlation was in fact "illusory." Moreover, in a similar study with clinicians, the Chapmans asked subjects to use the Rorschach projective test to find male homosexuality in a particular group of patients (until 1973 the APA considered male homosexuality a form of pathology). These clinicians were experienced using the Rorschach with male homosexuals and other patients. Subjects reported that patients who were homosexual were more likely to report seeing buttocks and anuses, genitals, female clothing, and androgynous or sexually indeterminate figures in the inkblots. In fact, none of these images is more likely to be seen by male homosexuals than by others. Furthermore, the two correlations that do exist between inkblot interpretations and male homosexuality-monster figures and halfhuman, half-animal figures, such as mermaids and satyrs-were not recorded by the vast majority of clinicians as associated with male homosexuals in the patient groups they reviewed. In other words, even experienced clinicians saw illusory correlations that did not exist, and failed to see associations that did exist but did not fit into prior stereotypes or patterns of association. Thus, such stereotypic patterns of association are often judged to be more likely and thus more available than they are, while some true associations are not recognized at all. These features of the availability heuristic influence judgment in politics through their impact on the nature, sophistication, and accuracy of best- and worst-case scenario planning. People tend to use the ease, speed, and strength of associations as cues to the likelihood of certain events taking place. These judgments inform the plausibility of certain scenarios. Certain events that are easy to imagine receive careful attention and planning, while others that are hard to imagine occurring might be ignored. For example, some critics accused the United States of not being sufficiently prepared for the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, but prior to that date, few could imagine the possibility of hijacking four commercial airliners to use as high-speed missiles. Subsequent to such an attack, many government and law enforcement agencies had spent a lot of time trying to plan for the worst, but it can be very hard to imagine something that has never occurred before until it does happen. Imagining an attack of chemical or biological agents in the subway was easier because the cult group Aum Shinrikyo did just that with sarin gas in the Tokyo


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subway in March 1995. But few people could have predicted the anthrax outbreak via the mail after the September 11 attacks, partly because it had never occurred before, and no one knew whether this mechanism of delivery would work. After the outbreaks, medical officials seem unable to do appropriate follow-ups with the survivors of inhalation anthrax because no one was known to have survived such an attack before. Such availability biases can quickly restrict the creativity of planning when it comes to war, in particular battle preparation. Anchoring and Adjustment The phrase anchoring and adjustment refers to predictions about frequency or likelihood that are based on initial values (anchors) that are then insufficiently adjusted to reach new estimates. Tversky and Kahneman (1974) demonstrated that even when monetary incentives are offered for accuracy in judgment, or extreme anchors are presented, effects persist. Everyone who has been late for a deadline, thinking it would only take a weekend to write a paper that ended up taking much longer, knows at an intuitive level how difficult it can be to adjust upward from initial anchors. Tversky once said that the best estimate of how long it would take to get some important academic work done was to figure out how long it would take you, multiply it by four, and then double it. Indeed, even when people are aware that the initial anchors are arbitrary and have little to do with the estimate they are required to make, such initial anchors continue to influence their later estimate in substantive ways. As PIous notes, "These findings suggest that negotiators, advertisers, politicians, and other persuasion specialists will generally be most successful by staking out extreme initial positions" (1993, 146). Extreme positions provide anchors from which people will adjust, thereby considering moderately extreme positions to be more reasonable than if the politician had started with a more median position. Anchoring and adjustment affect political planning and judgment in an important way: people tend to underestimate the probability of independent events combining to increase the likelihood of an overall outcome. When a single anchor is used as the basis for adjustments to a more complex system, those adjustments are often insufficient to prevent failure in the larger system. This process of insufficient adjustment becomes critical for failure analysis and planning; many people fail to realize that a system with one hundred parts, each with a one in a hundred chance of

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failure, does not have an overall chance of failure of one in a hundred; rather, failure is eventually almost certain, given that in many systems the failure of one part causes failure of the whole system. When many component parts must work together for the overall system to operate correctly, such combined effects can lead to critical errors because designers fail to implement enough backup systems. This may have played a part in the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, because although each O-ring may have had a very low probability of failure, enough O-rings were required to work flawlessly in concert with other highly complex components over time to drastically increase the probability of at least one of them failing at some point, with obviously disastrous consequences. The important point here in terms of anchoring and adjustment is that most people are not Bayesians; they do not mathematically calculate the odds of future failure based on past experience prior to decision making. Critiques There are definitely those who do not agree with the Kahneman and Tversky position on judgmental heuristics. One of the most prominent critics, Gerd Gigerenzer, argues that "biases are not biases" and "heuristics are meant to explain what does not exist" (1991, 102). Gigerenzer (1996) goes on to propose that Kahneman and Tversky use narrow norms of sound reasoning to diagnose cognitive illusions. In addition, he suggests that Kahneman and Tversky depend on vague heuristics that explain everything and nothing at the same time. Gigerenzer (1996) claims that Kahneman and Tversky incorrectly assert that Gigerenzer's studies that clarify frequency formats make cognitive illusions disappear altogether. Rather, Gigerenzer states that he proposed and tested models that predicted when frequency judgments would be valid and when they would not be valid. He argues that the issue is not whether or how often cognitive illusions disappear, as Kahneman and Tversky suggest, but rather how to translate detailed models of cognitive processes to explain when and why such illusions disappear when they do. Kahneman and Tversky (1996) reply that judgments of frequency, and not just subjective probability, remain susceptible to large and systematic biases. A second set of criticisms of the work of Kahneman and Tversky come from the evolutionary psychology camp. These critics also suggest that Kahneman and Tversky place too much emphasis on human deficiencies that only emerge under precise labora-


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tory conditions but do not occur in the real world. Leda Cosmides and John Tooby (1996) argue that representations done in terms of freqencies cause cognitive illusions to disappear. This occurs in a wide variety of areas including overconfidence, the conjunction fallacy, and base rate neglect. They offer evidence that subjects displaya high level of correct Bayesian reasoning when offered frequentist versions of classic studies. They note that clarifying nonfrequentist representations does not produce the same effect. Rather, when an experimenter asks for answers in frequencies rather than as single-shot probability events, as many of the Kahneman and Tversky studies do, and presents probability information as frequencies, cognitive illusions disappear. Decision Making

After judgments have been made about the various available options and their likelihood, choices must be made based on these judgments. Such decisions are fundamentally internal processes involving value trade-offs between various options. There are many theories of decision making in psychology. Prospect theory has proved the most influential and important of these models in political science and political psychology recently and so will be discussed in depth. Clearly, prospect theory is far from the only psychological theory of decision making. However, because prospect theory has been used in a number of political applications, and because it presents an empirical challenge to the more normative, dominant theories in international relations, such as expected utility, it deserves the most in-depth discussion. Prospect theory is a psychological theory of decision making under conditions of risk. Many daily small or trivial decisions revert to habit, including what to wear or eat. But most complex decisions involve a potential element of loss; the question remains how much might be lost, and how much does that loss cost. Prospect theory, developed by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (1979), makes several predictions about the choices people are likely to make under such conditions of risk. Prospect theory has two phases, an editing phase, often referred to as "framing effects," and a subsequent evaluation phase. The first refers to how decisions are presented, the second to how choices are made. Framing refers to the way options are represented. Contrary to normative claims that assume dominance, invariance, and tran-

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sitivity in choice, such as those common in rational choice models, decisions can be substantively affected by the method, order, or manner of presentation. Trivial shifts in elicitation procedures can have a dramatic impact on choice. A clever adviser who knows how to manipulate the presentation of choices might easily ensure that his preferred option receives a privileged position among the options raised. For example, Tversky demonstrated that most people possess a natural aversion to extreme options or situations (Simonton and Tversky 1992). Thus, just by creating one more extreme option, a manipulative adviser can encourage a decision maker to choose the middle option that would have previously appeared unacceptable without the contrast effect of the even more extreme additional option. In their classic demonstration of framing effects, Tversky and Kahneman (1981) conducted an experiment where they asked subjects how they might respond to the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease. When the options were presented in terms of how many people would die, subjects made a different choice than when the exact same numbers were presented in terms of how many people would live. More striking, perhaps, is that doctors and their patients changed their real-life choice about whether to undergo radiation or chemotherapy as treatment for their real-life cancer based on simple shifts in the framing of options in terms of survival versus mortality rates (McNeil et al. 1982). Indeed, politicians reformulate issues and topics when they realize the importance of framing the debate in the most useful way for their cause. The importance of such rhetorical constructions cannot be doubted by any who have witnessed the evolving language of the abortion debate, where great effort has been put into recasting abortion opponents as "pro life," or abortion supporters as "pro choice." Similarly, while businesses often advertise "cash discounts," they are very unlikely to promote "credit surcharges." Evaluation represents the second phase of prospect theory. This process involves two distinct functions, the value function and the weighting function. Figure 1 shows the graph of the value function. The value function presents at least three notable properties that distinguish it from expected utility models. First, outcomes tend to be evaluated in terms of gains and losses relative to a status quo reference point, rather than in terms of final outcome positions. From a theoretical perspective, the reference point need not be the status quo; it can refer to a level of aspiration or expectation on the part of the decision maker. For most practical con-


Losses

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Gains

1. Relative versus absolute gains 2. Risk aversion in gains; risk seeking in losses 3. Loss aversion

Value Fig. 1. Value function curve (Adapted from Kahneman and Tversky 1984, 342, fig. 1. Copyright © 1984 by the American Psychological Association. Adapted with permission.)

siderations, however, it is typical for the reference point to remain synonymous with the current status quo position. In most expected utility models, final outcome position is more crucial than change from the previous position. In other words, in most rational choice models, what you end up with is more important than how much you gained; this is often represented in the international relations literature as the difference between absolute and relative gains seeking. Expected utility argues that absolute gains are what matter most; prospect theory would argue for the psychological primacy of relative positioning. The difference is that the reference point for prospect theory is one's own previous position, not that of another. Therefore, change matters more than position. For example, an expected utility model assumes that a player at $1,001 is the same regardless of whether he started out with $1 and gained $1,000 or whether he started with $1,000 and gained $1. In prospect theory, the man who gained $1,000 would be understood to be much happier than the one who gained $1, because the change or shift represents a greater move away from the previous status quo position. Second, the value curve is concave for gains and convex for losses. In other words, people tend to be risk seeking for losses, and risk averse for gains. The intuition behind this prediction is that rich people vote Republican, while desperate people do desperate

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things. Rich people have something valuable that they want to protect and not lose; thus, they are cautious. Desperate people have nothing to lose, so they are more likely to risk what little they might have for a chance to recoup past losses or to gain new ground. While some models in rational choice allow for leaders to be risk averse, risk neutral, or risk acceptant (Bueno de Mesquita 2000), classic expected utility models assume that caution represents the better part of prudence, and risk aversion should dominate rational decision making at all times. Indeed, classic expected utility models do not posit separate domains for gains and losses; rather, all choices take place in the quadrant that prospect theory reserves for the domain of gains. Last, the value curve is much steeper for losses than for gains: a loss hurts more than an equivalent gain pleases (i.e., losing $10 hurts more than finding $10 pleases). This finding, called loss aversion, is the most robust finding in the experimental literature on prospect theory. Loss aversion represents a particularly powerful and robust manifestation of the theory writ large. Expected utility models make no accommodation for notions of loss aversion, nor do they allow for different outcomes on the basis of domain. The weighting function transforms the expected utility notion of subjective probability assessments into more descriptively accurate psychological terms (fig. 2). In prospect theory's weighting function, low pro bability events tend to be given too much subjective weight, while medium and high probability events are not given sufficient weight in decision making relative to standard normative probability models. However, because people overweight low probability events, reverse predictions can occur within their realm. For example, under conditions of low probability, people can become risk seeking in gains and risk averse in losses. This transformation in the realm oflow probability events explains phenomena like insurance and lotteries. With insurance, people accept a small, certain loss in order to ward off the small possibility of a larger loss later; in a lottery, they take a small, sure loss now for the even smaller probability of a huge gain later. Similarly, frequent flyers may know that the objective risk of a plane crash is quite low, but the subjective risk may feel much greater at least partly because low probability events are given more importance psychologically than they deserve. On the other hand, given the moderate to high probability of heart disease, not nearly as many people exercise and eat right as should. Indeed, given that two-thirds of Americans are now officially overweight, obesity will soon over-


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Decision Weight

1. Does not behave well

near endpoints 2. Overweight low probablilites; underweight moderate and high probabilities

o Stated Probability: p Fig. 2. Weighting function curve (Adapted from Kahneman and Tversky 1984, 345, fig. 2. Copyright © 1984 by the American Psychological Association. Adapted with permission.)

take smoking as the number one preventable source of illness in America. And yet people are not nearly as scared of a supersized order of french fries as they are of plane travel, thus overweighting the probability of a crash and underweighting the probability of heart disease. Here, people are giving less attention to reasonably high probability events than they objectively deserve. Furthermore, in the weighting function, the endpoints are not well behaved. This phenomenon contributes to the certainty effect, where events that are either certain or impossible are given much greater subjective weight in decision making than would be normatively justified. This bias is nicely illustrated by Zeckhauser's experiment where he demonstrated that people will pay much more money to remove the first or the last bullet from a six-shooter game of Russian roulette than they will pay to remove any of the intermediate bullets, although each bullet reduces the overall probability of death by the exact same amount, a little over 16 percent (cited in PIous 1993). As a psychological theory of decision making under conditions of risk, prospect theory has been applied to a variety of situations in political science (Jervis 1994b; McDermott 1994; Boettcher 1995; Berejikian 1997; Kowert and Hermann 1997). Theoretical implications of prospect theory for political application have been explored in areas such as loss aversion (Levy 1994; Jervis 1994b); the status quo bias (Jervis 1994b); framing issues (Farnham 1994; McDermott 1994); deterrence and bargaining negotiations (Stein 1992); and American foreign policy (McDermott 1998). These applications have included new analyses and

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reinterpretations of such wide-ranging events as Roosevelt's behavior in the Munich crisis (Farnham 1994); Japan's decision to launch a war on the United States in 1941 (Levi and Whyte 1997); the impact of the domestic context on military intervention (Nincic 1997); economic restructuring in Latin America (Weyland 1996); the U-2 crisis; the Suez crisis; and the Iranian hostage rescue mission (McDermott 1998). Prospect theory has also encountered many challenges in its application to political science (see Levy 1997 for a review). For example, one oft-noted criticism of the applicability of prospect theory to real-world conundrums is its failure to delineate some of the underlying mechanisms of framing effects, which remain one of its central theoretical suppositions. While past attempts to predict frames have not met with much success (Fischhoff 1983), perhaps the microfoundations of framing can be forced to give up their secrets with enough time, dedication, sophistication, and cleverness in experimental design. Clearly, the genesis of framing remains an important and fertile area for future research. However, the failure of prospect theory advocates to provide a fully delineated theory of framing should not render its descriptive and predictive insights meaningless; after all, few critics would invalidate expected utility models for their failure to develop a theory of how preferences originate. Another important challenge to the wider utility of prospect theory in comparison to rational choice models (Bueno de Mesquita, McDermott, and Cope 2001; McDermott and Kugler 2001) lies in attempting to expand the application of prospect theory from individuals to group interaction. If prospect theory is going to compete with game-theoretic models of strategic interaction in situations of bargaining and negotiation, or in seeking to understand the behavior of groups such as legislatures and bureaucracies, experimental and mathematic theoretical extension becomes vitally important. A final theoretical quest for the further development and application of prospect theory to political topics involves more work to explore and refine the notion of the reference point. When is it the status quo? When does it shift to be a point of expectation or aspiration? How does this relationship between the status quo and the relevant reference point play out in real-world considerations? Further refining of the contextualization of these concepts can provide crucial insight into the conditions under which prospect theory might prove helpful in analyzing political issues


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such as the loss of territory, political power, economic status, or material resources. As Tversky argued (personal communication, 1995), the relevant question for the usefulness of a theory is whether any component part of it sheds new light on explanatory concepts or tools that prove helpful in thinking through a given phenomenon in a new way. Which elements help to promote a more intelligent or nuanced discussion of the events, processes, and people of interest? Does the theory point to new areas of inquiry, raise different kinds of questions, or elicit searches for different kinds of evidence? Prospect theory does this through its particular focus on framing, reference points, loss aversion, dynamic processes, and relative outcomes. Conclusions

Different theories can illuminate different aspects of a problem. Certainly no one theory is best for all issues and events of interest. There are still trade-offs between richness and rigor in the depth, breadth, accuracy, and precision of understanding and analysis that a given analyst might desire. Regardless, an individual level of analysis remains the best approach for empirical accuracy about human decision making and behavior. This notion remains fundamental to any meaningful analysis of leadership in particular. The theories presented here, ranging from those that dominate political science in international relations, like rational choice, to those that dominate political psychology, derived mostly from cognitive and social psychology, offer a wide range of options for a given investigator. Later we will explore the application of these various theories to cognition, behavior, emotion, leaders, and groups (chaps. 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9). Additional theoretical concepts and explanations, including attribution and information processing, will be offered throughout the text as they pertain to particular areas of discussion. The theories and methods invoked to investigate a particular issue or phenomenon substantively inform the kinds of questions that are asked, the nature of evidence that is sought, and the quality of answers that are reached.

CHAPTER 4

Cognitions and Attitudes: WhatWeThinkWe Know andWhy

When someone asks you what you think about something, or why you did something, you can usually come up with a ready opinion or reason. Most people are pretty sure they know what they think about things that are important to them, and why. But what if we were wrong a lot of the time? What if the true reasons behind many of our beliefs and behavior are hidden, even to us? What if this were true even about important beliefs and behaviors that we might really want to change, like prejudice and racism? The conventional model explaining prejudice argues that prejudiced people behave in a discriminatory fashion. In other words, if you don't like blacks or gays or Jews, for instance, you will discriminate against them unless something prevents you from behaving in this fashion. This understanding derives from a broader model that assumes that attitudes directly shape behavior. However, many social psychologists dispute this model and prefer a more complex explanation of the relationship between attitudes and behavior. Alternative psychological models rest on the importance of the power of the situation, or environment, in directing behavior. In political psychology, most models and investigations that study attitudes, attitude change, and cognition draw upon these more complex interpretations of the relationship between attitudes and behavior. These examinations are typically designed to help explain, understand, and possibly even intervene in important social processes like prejudice and discrimination, obedience, conformity, social roles, norms, and expectations. This chapter begins with a review of some of the classic findings and experiments in attitude change research. The next section proceeds with a more substantive exploration of the application of these models to understanding prejudice and discrimination. Finally, this chapter ends with a discussion of some of the studies that have applied these and other models to problems in 77

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international relations, assuming that if individual people and leaders matter in the outcome of international relations, then their thoughts, values, and beliefs become worthy of investigation. Classic Work in Attitude Change Research

Why would psychologists want to complexify the relationship between attitudes and behavior? Why can't the relationship between attitudes and behavior be direct and simple? For one thing, people do not always act according to their beliefs. A classic experiment illustrates this point. In March 1964, more than thirty-eight people in New York City watched as a killer repeatedly stabbed and ultimately murdered a young woman, Kitty Genovese. In his first two attempts, he was scared off by the sound of bystanders. But each time he returned, and the third time he succeeded in accomplishing his malicious goal. During the half hour that it took him to kill his victim, only one person called the police. The report of this story the next day shocked the nation (Rosenthal 1964). Latane and Darley (1970) designed a clever experiment to try to determine why so many bystanders failed to intervene on behalf of Kitty Genovese. Male college students were brought into a room by themselves that had an intercom that was ostensibly connected to another student in a separate room. During the course of their discussion, the student in the other room sounded like he was having a seizure, finding it difficult to breath or talk. The experimenters wanted to determine how quickly the subject students tried to help. They determined that the main factor had to do with how many bystanders the student thought were present. The more people the student thought were around, the slower he was to react to the emergency. Specifically, almost everyone in a two-person condition reported the event in under three minutes. However, more than 40 percent of those who thought they were part of a larger group never reported the event at all. Latane and Darley attributed this failure to respond in their subjects, and in the witnesses to Genovese's murder, to a diffusion of responsibility. If more people are present, many people assume that someone else will do something, and therefore they don't have to do anything themselves. In order for bystanders to act, they must first notice the event, label it as a problem, feel some responsibility to do something about it, and also believe that the costs of helping are

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not too high (Zimbardo and Gerrig 1996). The main lesson that emerged from this line of research was that if someone sees another hurt or injured, even in a large group of people, that person should take personal responsibility for getting help. In addition, assigning specific bystanders jobs like calling for help or undertaking other tasks greatly increases the likelihood that those people will help. Darley continued to investigate this phenomenon by examining what it took for someone to notice an event. Darley and Batson (1973) conducted an experiment subsequently known as the Good Samaritan experiment. In this study, divinity students at Princeton were asked to read and prepare a sermon on the following biblical passage. A certain man, while traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, was set upon by robbers, who stripped him and beat him and left him on the road, half dead. And a priest happened to be going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And a Levite, too, came to that place and saw him and passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan who was traveling that way came upon the man. And when he saw him, he was moved with compassion, and he went over to him and bound up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them, and put him on his own donkey, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And on the next day, he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper and said, "Take care of him; and if it costs more than this, I will reimburse you when I come back." The lessons of this passage are familiar to those who have heard it: the Samaritan, the outsider and foreigner, is the only one to stop and help an injured man. He takes care of the helpless stranger, at considerable cost and effort to himself, and with no expectation of reward. The moral of the story centers on the importance of helping others with compassion and without regard to the consequences or rewards for oneself. Presumably, divinity students who had just prepared a sermon on this topic, and who want to pursue ministry as a career, should be especially sensitive to the message of this parable. After students were finished writing the sermon, each one was given a time and place to come and give their talk. On the way to the talk, the experimenters had a confederate who laid down on the side of the path,

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clearly injured and in need of help. The parallel to the biblical story could not have been more obvious. The experimental manipulation involved how much time students had to get to their talk. Those subjects with lots of time to get to their sermon stopped to help the injured stranger, while most of those divinity students who were told that they had hardly any time to get to their sermon ran ahead, ignoring the injured person by the side of the road. These students appeared more concerned with making sure they would deliver their sermon on the Good Samaritan in time rather than stopping to be one. What can we conclude from this study? Were the students who were in a hurry somehow less compassionate as people than those who had more time? Were the students who ignored the injured stranger somehow more malicious or mean-spirited than those with more time? These suggestions appear unlikely, since there was nothing before the incident to distinguish those who were given more time from those given less; time was the randomized experimental manipulation. Rather, the investigators can argue that the primary determinant of behavior, at least in this situation, derives from the temporal situation in which it occurs, and not an underlying difference in the attitudes of those divinity students who had more or less time to get to their sermon. In this experiment, we assume that divinity students have chosen their profession because they want to help others, at least in part, and that the story of the Good Samaritan is especially salient to them when they go off to give their sermon because they have just written about it. And so we know that there is no difference between subjects except the time they are allotted to get to their sermon. This clever experiment showed that social situations exert significant control over individual behavior and can dominate the individual's personality, values, beliefs, and past history oflearning, at least in some circumstances. Roles and Rules in Social Situations

If the environmental situation can overwhelm individual disposition, at least sometimes, exactly how are attitudes and behavior constrained by social situations? There are several ways that social processes can overcome an individual's preferences or inclination and shape attitudes or behavior in a different direction than personality might otherwise dictate. Social roles and rules are two of the most important factors in directing attitudes or behaviors.


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Social Roles

Social roles are socially defined patterns of behavior that can control an individual's responses within a particular setting or group, usually through a process of expectations. Sometimes these roles contain obvious constraints: we know what it is to be a child, sibling, friend, lover, or parent. But sometimes roles are more subtle, and often we only discover their existence when we violate aspects of the standard that we were not previously aware of and find ourselves subject to certain kinds of social sanction, including disapproval, anger, isolation, or humiliation as a result. When you start a new job, for example, everyone else may have already learned what the job role requires, but it may take you a while to figure it out; if everyone eats lunch at their desk, and you go out, you may find others giving you glaring looks, or gossiping about you behind your back, at least until you learn to eat lunch at your desk too. Different social situations also require different roles. For example, when you are in a classroom, you may accept the role of student, which may include some constellation of activities such as coming to class, writing papers, taking exams, doing reading, contributing in class, and so on. Preparing a lecture is not typically part of the student role, but rather that of the teacher. The activities required in the role of child are quite different from those of being a student and may include things like helping around the house, living up to your parents' expectations, and so on. But if your parents approached you for money, that would seem like a role reversal for most, since supplying money is typically the role of the parent, not the child. As children grow up, they commonly complain about how going home makes them revert to more childish behavior. That may be because the social role of child in that situation is not only familiar but hard to break away from once the person is back in that family situation, around people playing the parent role. Stories like this abound and are even present in the Bible. From there he went to Nazareth, his native town, and his disciples followed him. And when the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue and many people who heard him were bewildered and said: "Where does this fellow get such stuff?" And "What makes him so wise?" and "How can he be a miracle worker?"

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"Isn't this the carpenter, Mary's son, the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon, and aren't his sisters here with us?" And they were prevented from believing in him. And Jesus said: "A prophet is not rejected except in his own town and in his own family and in his own house." And he was unable to do any miracle there because of their disbelief. (Mitchell 1991, 114) A similar story of the power of social roles in controlling behavior comes from the famous Zen master Ma-Tzu. Don't return to your native town: you can't teach the truth there. By the village stream an old woman is calling you by your childhood name. (Mitchell 1991, 53) Social Rules

In addition to social roles, situations are characterized by social rules. Again, some rules are explicit, as when signs tell you not to smoke or not to drive over sixty-five miles an hour. But many other rules are implicit. Many social rules, for example, revolve around how to treat authority figures. You are not supposed to insult a teacher to his or her face. It is best not to tell the police officer who has stopped you for speeding that he should leave you alone and hit the sale at Dunkin' Donuts. Clearly, these kinds of rules evolve because they help prevent repercussions that we don't want. Some social rules appear to manifest universally, such as the taboo against incest. Other rules derive from cultural norms and thus vary from place to place. For instance, the Japanese typically don't open a gift in the presence of the giver, for fear of not showing sufficient appreciation. These kinds of social roles and rules can exert dramatic effects on behavior. A particularly powerful example of this impact is found in the Stanford prison experiment (Haney and Zimbardo 1977) conducted in 1973, only months before the famous Attica riots at a prison in upstate New York that left several guards and inmates dead. This experiment began with an advertisement in the local newspaper, seeking participants for a two-week experiment on prison life. Respondents were administered a battery of psychological tests to make sure that all subjects were similarly mentally and physically healthy. Only those judged to be "law abid-


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ing," "emotionally stable, physically healthy, and normal average" in intelligence were chosen. Then, the experiments assigned volunteers randomly to one of two conditions: guard or prisoner. Zimbardo arranged for the local Palo Alto police department to have real police officers go to the homes of the "prisoner" subjects and charge them with a felony, read them their rights, cuff them, and drive them off in a police car. At the police station, they were fingerprinted and booked. Then they were blindfolded and led to a cell in the basement of the psychology department building on the Stanford campus, which had been converted into a simulated prison. Once the prisoners reached the cell block, they were stripped, sprayed with disinfectant, and issued a uniform that was a short hospital gown open in the back, with an identification number. "Guard" students were brought to the cell as well. They were briefed and given uniforms, dark glasses (which were not necessary in the basement but served to make the subjects feel deindividuated) , and batons. They were told to "keep order" but were not given specific instructions about how they should go about doing that. They were told they could use any method short of beating the prisoners. What happened to these subjects who were indistinguishable at the start of the study and were randomly assigned to the two conditions? The guards quickly began to behave sadistically. They insisted that the prisoners obey all the random rules they imposed arbitrarily. When prisoners refused to do so, they were punished. Such rebels lost "privileges" including the right to read, talk to others, sleep, eat, and wash themselves. As time went on, the sadistic behaviors began to spiral out of control. Guards demanded pushups, roll calls in the middle of the night, and solitary confinement in a very small janitor's closet, and they made prisoners clean the toilets with toothbrushes or their bare hands. The prisoners similarly became constrained by their role. At first, they attempted to resist the authority of the guards. One prisoner went on a hunger strike. They began to demand their release through an "appeal board" made up of Zimbardo and Carlo Prescott, a former inmate at a California correctional facility. Some parents even came to petition for their son's release from prison. When the rebellion strategies failed to reduce the brutality of the guards or bring about release from prison, the prisoners became passive. They numbly began to do what they were told. Their self-esteem dropped. Some even began to cry uncontrollably. The situation became so bad that the experiment had to be

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ended after only six days instead of the intended two weeks. Why didn't any of the participants think to simply stop the experiment? Clearly they were all so involved that they failed to see outside the experimental situation. No subject, prisoner or guard, and no parent demanding the release of his or her son said, "I quit the experiment." No one appeared able to see outside of the situation and to remember that the basement prison was not a real prison, but rather a compelling experiment. No one except one graduate student, Christina Maslach, who emerged as the real hero of this story. After the sixth day, all the experimenters were leaving the building, and she found the courage to tell Zimbardo, her dissertation adviser, "I think it is terrible what you are doing to those boys." At first he was angry at her and refused to take responsibility for his part in allowing the sadism that was rife within the experimental prison. But he thought about her remarks all night and returned the next morning to stop the experiment. Zimbardo and Maslach later married. Conformity: Social Norms

Conformity emerges as an outgrowth of the power of social rules and roles. When you adopt social rules, you are to some extent conforming with social expectations about how to think or behave. People often tend to assume the behaviors and opinions of the group. In return for such subservience, members ofthe group hope to obtain the help, approval, support, and even affection of other group members. Two types of forces may lead to conformity: normative and informational. Normative influence processes include the natural human desire to belong: to be wanted, liked, accepted, and approved of by others. Informational influence processes revolve around the equally human drive to know, to be correct, and to understand how best to act in a certain situation (Zimbardo and Gerrig 1996). Expectations that are embodied in the stated or implicit rules or roles of a group constitute social norms writ large. These social norms cover attitudes and govern conduct. For instance, to join certain groups, you may be required to espouse a particular kind of attitude. Or it may be that through a process of self-selection, only those individuals who hold certain beliefs join particular groups. Those who support gun control, for example, are as unlikely to join the NRA as those who oppose abortion are to join the


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National Abortion Rights Action League. A conservative paper may want only Republicans with conservative values to be writers, while pro choice groups may only want political liberals to join. Norms govern conduct in many other situations as well. For example, CIA agents who flew U-2 surveillance planes over the former Soviet Union during the Cold War were expected to kill themselves if they crashed or were forced to eject over enemy territory. Each pilot was provided with a coin that had a pin dipped in cyanide taped to it. Pilots were expected to pull off the pin, prick themselves with it, and die of cyanide poisoning rather than be captured by enemy troops. When Francis Gary Powers was in fact shot down over Sverdlovsk in the former Soviet Union on May 1, 1960, he refused to commit suicide. This caused all sorts of problems for the Eisenhower administration, which had made all kinds of decisions based on the assumption that the pilot was dead, when in fact he had been captured by the Soviets and brought to Moscow to be put on trial for espionage. Khrushchev pulled off a diplomatic coup by waiting until Eisenhower denied the existence of the plane before producing the pilot (Beschloss 1984; McDermott 1998). This example points to the difficulty of adjusting to certain social norms. Most of the time, people learn social norms through a process of observation. Individuals watch for uniformities in certain behaviors among members of a group they want to belong to. How do others act? What do they say? Who do they try to impress, and why? What rewards do they receive for good behavior? What don't they do? In particular, aspiring members look for the negative consequences that befall those who violate certain unspoken norms. What happens when someone does something bad? We frequently learn vicariously by watching others do things before we try to do them ourselves. The function of these norms in society is to orient members and regulate their social behavior and interactions. Sometimes, their function is merely to separate group members from outsiders so that participants feel special. These group norms guide each member in how to behave, who to talk to and who not to engage with, what to say, how to interact, what to do or not to do, and so on. Norms thus help members to feel more comfortable in these environments. In fact, usually when you find that you feel uncomfortable in a new situation, your response is a natural reaction to uncertainty. New members don't yet know the norms, and so they risk sanctions if they act before learning the group norms. Observation allows members to assimilate to the group and feel com-

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fortable within it over time without risking sanctions by acting blindly. The creation and maintenance of group norms has been studied a great deal. In fact, one of the first important early experiments in social psychology examined this phenomenon. Muzafer Sherif's autokinetic effect experiment demonstrated the evolution and power of social norms, even among strangers (Sherif et al. 1961). The autokinetic effect refers to a natural physiological illusion whereby a person viewing a stationary point of light in total darkness comes to perceive that the light is moving. In his experiment, Sherif had individuals first observe the spot by themselves. Next, he placed the individuals into groups. He asked them to state out loud their judgments about how far the light appeared to move. The results were striking. Very quickly, the group converged around a restricted range of estimates. They reported that the light moved in similar directions-up or down, right or leftand similar distances. Even more remarkable, once these groups break up, the convergence persists, such that individual members acting alone for a second time still report judgments similar to those of their earlier group. These results were quite suggestive, but how do they apply to the real world outside the laboratory? Some answers to this question were provided by Newcomb and his colleagues (1967) in a study of students at Bennington, a small liberal arts college for women in New England. Newcomb studied the attitudes of women over four years. He then went on to study the attitudes of these same women some twenty years later. His story remains remarkably similar to the one told by Sherif in the laboratory. The prevailing social norm at Bennington at the time was very liberal, both socially and economically. Most of the women came from privileged homes; as a result, most of these women first arrived at college espousing the markedly conservative attitudes that tended to prevail in their wealthy families. For instance, among the first-year students who matriculated, over 60 percent supported the Republican presidential candidate, while fewer than 30 percent supported the Democratic candidate. This was at a time when Franklin Roosevelt was getting over 60 percent of the vote nationwide as the Democratic candidate. Compared to the national norm, then, these incoming Bennington women were quite conservative. However, as time went by during their stay at Bennington, these women became more liberal, in conformity with the college social norm. Second-year students were equally divided between Republican and Democratic candidates. By their fourth


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year, only 15 percent of these students supported the Republican candidate, while 54 percent supported the Democratic candidate. Even more extreme, 30 percent of senior women supported the socialist or communist candidate. Perhaps these shifts were partly due to the fact that these young women were isolated from their families and away at college. But what happened twenty years later, after they had had a chance to reintegrate with their families of origin? Most of them continued to support the liberal candidate and liberal policies of their college cohort, as opposed to reverting to their original family values. How can we account for this shift and for its enduring nature? Several factors may playa part. First, the norms at Bennington were relatively uniform. Most upper-class women were liberal. There were few conservative dissenters available to offer comfort and solace to students who might have wanted to remain more conservative. Second, Bennington was a close-knit community that was physically isolated from the rest of the world. Thus, the local college political norms could exert strong influence over the new students. Third, Bennington students possessed a strong sense of school spirit. Students could not just hide in their rooms and study, nor could they dissolve into the outside community. They were essentially forced into school activities, where new students had to interact with older and more liberal students. Fourth, natural pressures toward uniformity were reinforced by the importance of social acceptance and the fear of social isolation and rejection in such a remote, isolated community. Last, the liberal values that students encountered and adopted at Bennington for purposes of social acceptance and avoidance of social sanctions appear to have become internalized. What started as adherence to external norms came to be accepted by students as their own beliefs and values. Because of this internalization, adoption of liberal norms and values persisted beyond the time spent at Bennington itself. In the Bennington study, conformity to social norms had an adaptive advantage. If you adopted the norms and values of the established community, you were liked and accepted. Failure to do so meant rejection and isolation. Thus, the Bennington study provides a clear example of conformity through a normative process. On the other hand, conformity can be based on other, informational needs. We need to make sense of the world around us. We want to know how to make sense of incoming information and how to interpret various signals that we receive. We want to know what is the right thing to think or do. And when we are uncertain

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about how to do that, it is natural to turn to others to help satisfy that need and provide some external reality testing. Solomon Asch (1940, 1956) conducted one of the most important and influential studies in the history of social psychology. His experiment provided an impressive demonstration of the power of group conformity on individual behavior. Drawing on insights suggested by Sherifs autokinetic effect experiment, Solomon Asch wanted to see what would happen when physical reality and group perception of reality clashed. To investigate, he led male college students to believe that they were in a study about visual perception. He put these subjects in a room with six to eight others, who were confederates of the experimenter. All subjects were seated next to last in line. Each person in the semicircle was shown a card with a standard line length and then a card with three lines of different lengths on it. Subjects were asked to indicate which of these three lines was closest in length to a standard line. On the first three trials, all the confederates gave the right answer and so did the subjects. On the fourth trial, each confederate intentionally gives the same wrong answer. That is, each confederate identifies the same line, which is wrong, one by one until it is the subject's turn. The subject is then asked what the right answer is. Thus the subject faces a real dilemma: Should he say the objectively right thing or go with what the others have reported as correct? Subjects proceed to face this dilemma several more times as the situation repeats itself. Each time, subjects express absolute shock and disbelief that so many others give the same wrong answer. Imagine the situation: the right answer is absolutely clear, but everyone else before you is giving the same wrong answer. You have to ask yourself: are these other people crazy or blind, or am I? Do you believe in your own senses or others'? What happens? About a quarter of people remain independent in each trial, giving the objectively correct answer. About 50 to 80 percent, depending on the trial, conform to the incorrect judgment at least once, and about a quarter of the people conform to the socially sanctioned incorrect answer every time. Thus, even under very clear and simple circumstances, involving total strangers, conformity emerges quickly, and much more strongly than might be expected. Obedience to Authority

Studies discussed previously have examined the effect of groups on an individual's choices. Conversely, certain individuals can exert


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considerable power over a group of followers. The paradigmatic example in this regard is Adolf Hitler, who inspired and controlled millions of Germans before and during World War II. How was Hitler able to exert such power over so many? Initially, many psychologists focused on the attitudes of the population, or on the constellation of personality traits assumed to be present in Germans in particular. Some hypothesized that perhaps some people just hate minorities, such as Jews, more than others do. Work on the authoritarian personality became the most famous statement of this set of propositions (Adorno et al. 1950). This work, conducted in the early 1950s at the University of California, Berkeley, by German-Jewish refugees, argued that there was such a thing as an antidemocratic personality. This personality was understood to encompass a constellation of traits that included political and economic conservatism, anti-Semitism, and tendencies toward fascism. This personality type bows to authority figures but is happy to kick everyone below them on the food chain. In the case of Hitler, that hierarchy was understood to flow from God through Hitler to Germans and ultimately to Jews at the bottom of the pile. This work later was criticized for biases inherent in the questionnaires designed to test and elicit these ostensible personality traits (for a review, see R. Brown 1986). More recent psychological studies attempting to examine obedience to authorities have tended to focus on the power of the situation to influence and control behavior. Under this model, attitudes become a non-issue, in that Nazis are assumed to be no different than anyone else in their basic beliefs, attitudes, and values. As Hannah Arendt (1994 [1964]) argued in her famous book on the trial of Eichmann in Jerusalem, evil is banal. Anyone is capable of committing great evil under the right set of circumstances. George Orwell has described this detached quality of evil. As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me. They do not feel any enmity against me as a individual, nor I against them. They're only doing their duty, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kindhearted law abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any worse for it. (In Milgram 1974, 11-12) What was discovered by the psychologists who studied the power of the situation to induce obedience? Kurt Lewin (Lewin et

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al. 1939) conducted an important study on the impact of leadership style on group dynamics. Lewin was a German-Jewish refugee who sought to understand the power of Hitler over his former countrymen. He wanted to understand why the Germans behaved as they did toward the Jews before and during the war by investigating the way that leadership style alters or changes the behavior of individuals. He randomly assigned boys to one of three different groups. In all three groups, the leader was a confederate of the experimenter. In the first group, the leader kept an autocratic style. He was trained to make all the decisions and designate work assignments. He did not participate in any group activity. In the second group, the leader possessed a democratic style. This leader was trained to encourage and assist in group decision making and planning. The last group was led by a laissez-faire leader, who had been trained to allow complete freedom and to let all members do exactly what they wanted. Lewin's results were intriguing. In the autocratic group, the boys worked very hard, but typically only when the leader himself was watching. Interestingly, there were high levels of aggression in this group. Boys in this group displayed over thirty times more hostility than boys in either of the other groups. Specifically, they were more likely to destroy their own property and more likely to scapegoat others. In other words, they were more likely to use weaker boys as displaced targets for their own frustration, anger, and aggression. In the laissez-faire group, the boys just goofed off, fooled around, and accomplished nothing. In the democratic group, the boys were most efficient. Under this form ofleadership, the boys were more original and more creative than in either of the other groups. They worked more without surveillance than boys in the authoritarian group. They were more likely to show group loyalty and friendliness toward one another. In addition, there was much more mutual praise than in either of the other groups. A second important study to explore this issue was Milgram's (1965, 1974) obedience experiment. This and Asch's experiment on the effect of group conformity on individual judgment were among the most important and influential studies ever conducted in social psychology. Milgram was also trying to explain German obedience to authority. He planned to do a large-scale cross-cultural study involving American, Japanese, and German subjects. The American group was run first to establish a control group against which the presumably more compliant Germans could be compared.


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From the beginning, Milgram believed he was on to something big, and he conducted these experiments largely without telling others what he was examining. Given the shocking nature of the American results, Milgram never completed his original plan for a crosscultural investigation. Milgram began with a very simple research question: Will people follow an order even if it violates a clear moral imperative? Specifically, will people administer harmful electric shocks to innocent strangers? In his experiment, Milgram had subjects arrive in pairs at Yale University. Subjects were instructed by an experimenter in a white lab coat that they would be participating in an experiment about learning and memory. This cover story indicated that they were going to examine the question of whether punishment affected learning. One individual would play the teacher and the other the learner. The experimenter would remain with the teacher to oversee the process. The learner's role would be to learn and memorize certain word pairs. The learner would then give the correct second word when given the first word by the teacher. The teacher's role was to give the learner an electric shock when the learner made a mistake. The intensity of the shock was to increase by 15 volts every time a mistake was made. Once the roles were defined, lots were drawn to determine who would play the teacher and who would act the part of the learner. The lots were rigged so that the real subject always received the role of the teacher. The second individual, a confederate of the experimenter, was a mildmannered man of about fifty years old who was always chosen to be the learner. Both individuals were brought into a room that included an "electric chair." Before the learner was strapped in, the teacher was given a sample 45-volt shock to see what it felt like. The learner was then strapped into the chair. The teacher was then led into a separate room and shown the shock machine, which was a large, box-shaped machine with a row oflevers on it that begin at 15 volts and went up by IS-volt increments all the way to 450. Once the experiment began, things at first appeared to be going relatively smoothly. Then, the learner started to make mistakes according to a prearranged schedule. Every time he made a mistake, the subject teacher was supposed to increase the shock by 15 volts. Unbeknownst to the subject, no shock was actually given to the learner, but the subject believed that he was giving the learner real shocks. In anticipation of the expectation that some subjects might try to terminate their participation in the study, the

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experimenter was told to say to any subject that protested, "The experiment requires you to continue," or "You have no choice. You must go on." The results were deeply disturbing. In the first version of the experiment, every single subject cranked the voltage all the way up to 450 volts. There was no variance at all. Milgram was appalled. So he created another version of the experiment with a few modifications. First, the increments of shock on the box were labeled. For instance, the last three increments, all the way up to 450 volts, were labeled, "Danger severe shock XXX." Second, the confederate, the person who played the learner, was instructed to mention that he had a heart condition. The confederate showed distress at the following rate: at 75 volts, he began to moan and grunt; at 150 volts, he demanded to be released from the experiment; at 180 volts, he cried out that he could not stand the pain anymore; at 300 volts, he screamed. He yelled about his heart condition and demanded to be released. He said he refused to answer any more questions. At this point, the experimenter is instructed to tell the subject that no response constitutes an incorrect response and to order him to increase the shock in response to any refusal on the part of the subject to answer a question. This new variation on the experiment proved very stressful for subjects. They paced, cried, and yelled at the experimenter. They became extremely upset and agitated. In one example, the subject said to the experimenter after 180 volts had been delivered and the learner complained about the pain, "He can't stand it. I'm not going to kill that man in there! You hear him hollering? He's hollering. He can't stand it. What if something happens to him? ... I mean, who is going to take responsibility?" The experimenter said that he would take responsibility. After 195 volts, the subject continued to complain to the experimenter, "You see he's hollering. Hear that. Gee, I don't know." The experimenter replied, "The experiment requires that you go on." The subject replied, "I know it does, sir, but I mean-huh-he don't know what he's in for. He's up to 195 volts." Nonetheless, despite the agitation and protests, most subjects complied in the end. The average subject went to 300 volts, but two-thirds of the subjects went all the way up to 450 volts. These results shocked and appalled the psychiatric community. Prior to the experiment, Milgram had polled forty seasoned psychiatrists to predict what subjects would do. They estimated that most subjects would not go beyond 150 volts. They estimated that no one would continue to 450 volts. They stated that only the abnormal would


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go above 300 volts. In other words, they predicted that only the most sadistic or psychopathic individuals would go above 300 volts. College students who were polled on a similar question agreed with these assessments as well. As a result of the discrepancy between the findings and the predictions, Milgram had to weed out alternative explanations for his results, including the most prominent criticism that the subjects did not really believe that they were administering real shocks to the learner. Debriefing interviews conducted with subjects after the experiment, when the truth was revealed, indicated that this was not so. For example, consider this postexperimental interview. Experimenter: At what point were you most tense or nervous? Subject: Well, when he first began to cry out in pain, and I realized that I was hurting him. This got worse when he just blocked and refused to answer. There was I [sic]. I'm a nice person, I think, hurting somebody, and caught up in what seemed a mad situation ... and in the interest of science, one goes through with it. Every time I pressed the button, I died. Did you see me shaking. I just dying here [sic] to think that I was administering shocks to this poor man.

Another subject provided an alternative response in his posttest interview. Well, I faithfully believed the man was dead until we opened the door. When I saw him, I said, "Great, this is great." But it didn't bother me even to find that he was dead. I did a job. One of the interesting observations about this experiment is that subjects had no easy way to exit the situation. If the shock machine had had a big Stop or Exit button, subjects could have extracted themselves from the situation more easily (Ross 1988). Most subjects were not docile, passive, evil people, but rather actively upset, interactive, agitated individuals who were not necessarily malicious in intent. Cognitive Dissonance

Perhaps the most influential experiment in attitude change was conducted by Leon Festinger and Merrill Carl smith at Stanford

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University in the late 1950s (Festinger 1957; Festinger and Carlsmith 1959). Their model of cognitive dissonance revolutionized the attitude change field and spawned decades of productive research into indirect linkages between attitudes and behavior. Festinger was a smoker, and news was beginning to come out at the time that smoking was supposed to be bad for you. Yet he was not motivated enough to stop. He noticed this behavior in others and began to wonder how it could be that people could hold inconsistent attitudes and behaviors for long periods without being forced to shift one or the other, either by quitting smoking or by believing that smoking was not bad for you after all. There are many other behaviors of this type, such as eating disorders and substance abuse. In a famous experiment, Festinger recruited sixty undergraduate males to participate in an unbelievably boring set of tasks. First, they had to spend half an hour putting twelve spools into a tray, dumping it out, and repeating the task over and over, using only one hand. Second, they had to use one hand to turn each one of forty-eight pegs on a board one quarter of a turn, over and over. Each subject was run with an experimenter present, timing things with a stopwatch and taking notes. After the time was up, the experimenter talked with each subject. 1'd like to explain what this has all been about so you'll have some idea of why you are doing this .... There are actually two groups in the experiment. In one, the group you were in, we bring the subject in and give him essentially no introduction to the experiment. ... But in the other group, we have a student that we've hired that works for us regularly, and what I do is to take him into the next room where the subject is waiting-the same room you were waiting in before-and I introduce him as if he had just finished being a subject in the experiment .... The fellow who works for us then, in conversation with the next subject, makes these points: . . . It was very enjoyable, I had a lot of fun, I enjoyed myself, it was very interesting. The fellow who normally does this for us couldn't do it today-he just phoned in, and something or other came upso we've been looking around for someone that we could hire to do this for us. You see, we've got another subject waiting (looks at his watch) who is supposed to be in that other condition ... If you would be willing to do this for us, we'd like to


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hire you to do it now and then be on call in the future, if something like this should ever happen again. We can pay you a dollar (or twenty dollars, depending on condition) for doing this for us, that is, for doing it now and then being on call. Do you think you could do this for us? The subjects were placed in one of three conditions: they were offered $1 for the task, $20 for the task, or a control group that only engaged in the tedious tasks. Remarkably, everyone in a money condition agreed to help out the experimenter. After they lied to the next subject about how enjoyable the task was, they were then asked to evaluate the task. Much to everyone's surprise, the subjects in the $1 condition judged the task to be significantly more enjoyable than those in either of the other two conditions. Why? Festinger argued that the subjects in the $1 condition experienced cognitive dissonance because they held two inconsistent cognitions at the same time, namely that the task was boring and that they had lied about it to another student for only $l. In order to continue feeling like an honest person, these subjects actually changed their attitudes to become more consistent with their behavior. They could not change what they did, but they could change what they thought about it later. Subjects in the $20 condition had a much stronger justification for their behavior and so did not need to change their attitudes in order to justify their behavior to themselves; they lied for the money. Festinger argued that people strive to avoid inconsistent attitudes and behavior because this caused a "negative drive state." In order to reduce this negative state of arousal, subjects in the $1 condition changed their attitude about the task in order to make it more consistent with their behavior toward the other student. In other words, Festinger's model was a fundamentally motivational theory of attitude change. What subjects did not fully realize in this experiment was the power of the situation over their behavior. They did not realize that the reason they were asked to lie to another student was less about the monetary reward and more about being asked by an authority figure, the experimenter, to do so. In comparison, Milgram's experiment documented the power of obedience to authority in quite graphic detail in his experiment. If the subject had been consciously aware of that fact, he might have been able to either refuse the request or attribute it to the power of the situation, and thus not feel quite so much dissonance. Indeed, for real dissonance to occur, individuals must be in a situation where they perceive

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themselves to have high choice and low external justification. If a person either feels forced into a given behavior or else feels sufficiently rewarded for it, dissonance is less likely to occur. But often people believe that they have more choice than they in fact do. Compliance then easily leads to attitude change in the wake of inconsistent behavior. Self-Perception Theory

Daryl Bern (1972) proposed an alternative explanation for the findings reported by Festinger and Carlsmith. In his self-perception theory, attitude change results not from negative emotional states but rather from cold inferential processing. In this model, individuals infer their attitudes through a process of observing their own behavior. From this perspective, subjects in the $1 condition merely observe their behavior and subsequently generate a causal attitude to explain it: if! told someone that the task is enjoyable for $1, I must have found it reasonably enjoyable. Thus the difference between the two models is that Festinger and Carlsmith assume a motivational state that people desire to reduce or avoid, whereas in Bern's model, individuals merely reason backward to their attitudes from their prior behavior. Bern's model also assumes that to the extent that people have weak or uncertain or ambiguous cues, they make attributions about their own behavior just as an outside observer would; individuals can't claim special privilege to internal knowledge about their own behaviors or attitudes that others do not have. Bern and others were able to demonstrate that by manipulating people's behavior, they could convince people that certain values, feelings, or thoughts were idiosyncratic to them, when in fact they are not. This debate between a hot motivational model of attitude change versus a cold cognitive one spawned a great deal of experimental testing and debate, but no one has been able to create the definitive experiment proving which model is superior. Probably both models can explain certain aspects of attitude change within different nonspecified situations and environments. However, some important research by Nisbett and Wilson (1977) goes back to our original question about how we think we know our attitudes but may in fact be incorrect in those assumptions. Nisbett and Wilson found that people often "tell more than they can know" about the origins of their preferences, among


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other factors. They argue that individuals often do not know why they espouse the attitudes they do and that they rely on extant theories about how and why others behave as they do. They then use this information to explain, justify, and infer the reasons behind their own attitudes and behaviors. In one example, Nisbett and Wilson had subjects learn word pairs, including a pair that matched moon-ocean. When later asked which laundry detergent they preferred, a significant proportion of those in the moon-ocean word pair replied, "Tide." They offered Tide as the detergent of choice at a significantly higher rate than those who were not given the moon-ocean word pair to learn. When asked why they preferred Tide, not a single subject suggested that this preference was related to the word pair matching moon-ocean, which they had learned earlier, although clearly it was related, as experimentally demonstrated. In subsequent work, Wilson and Schooler (1991) went on to argue that introspection actually reduces the quality of decisions. In two experiments that asked students to assess the qualities of various jams or college courses, they found that students asked to provide reasons for their choices provided assessments that correlated less with expert opinions than those offered by students who were merely asked to assess various attributes of the things they judged. The authors concluded that individuals who focus on reasons attend to introspection in ways that impede accuracy. Encouraging individuals to focus on attributes improves the quality of their assessments. Wilson (Wilson et al. 1989) has advanced similar arguments about the disruptive effects of introspection with regard to feelings as well as thoughts. White (1981) has challenged the findings of Nisbett and Wilson. He argued that the theory was not clearly formulated. As a result, unwarranted assumptions about the relationships between conscious awareness, cognitive process, and verbal reports remain unclear and unspecified. White concludes that the original experiments provide no actual information concerning the nature of conSCIOusness. There are other limits to this attributional style argument. It has been shown, for example, that people use their attitudes more than their behavior in constructing attributes about themselves (Andersen 1984; Andersen and Klatzky 1987) and consider their thoughts and feelings more characteristic of themselves than their behavior (Andersen and Ross 1984). This may be because people

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see their own behavior as constrained by the external environment, but they do not recognize restrictions on their internal thoughts and feelings. Prejudice and Discrimination

Prejudice is an attitude or set of attitudes that is often formed on the basis of incomplete information about the targeted group. Prejudice tends to remain immune to contrary information or input. In general, prejudice assumes that any individual who is part of a negatively evaluated group possesses all the negative characteristics that are ascribed to the group. Discrimination refers to the behavior that can arise from such prejudice. Such prejudice and discrimination can lower the self-esteem of members of the targeted groups. Racism is one example of prejudice, although certainly not the only one. Racism is often a system that has been perpetuated by laws and treaties as well as group norms and customs. Such prejudice based on race serves to provide informational support and social endorsement to the perpetrators, despite personal or societal evidence to the contrary. In this way, racial intolerance can become a matter of unquestioned assumptions that are not seen as biased opinions but as self-evident truths by members of the dominant group. Moreover, prejudiced and racist individuals typically fail to seek out disconfirming information, for example, by spending time with a member of the targeted group so that they could learn that their opinions and biases might be wrong. Cases of overt racism in history abound: colonial oppression and enslavement of blacks; decimation of and theft of land from the Native Americans; internment of the Japanese during World War II; and, of course, a variety of ethnic genocides, including Hitler's genocide of the Jews. In these instances and others, social segregation of certain groups leads to isolation and an increased sense of "strangeness" when viewed by the dominant group. Reality testing of these biased beliefs becomes increasingly rare, and thus fewer opportunities to counter the prevailing stereotypes emerge. Symbolic Racism and Political Tolerance But racism exists in covert forms as well as overt ones. As certain minority groups have made legal and cultural progress, the prejudice that still remains is more hidden, often in "silent" forms. For


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purposes of safety, people choose to live in gated communities that just happen to be all white. Parents send their children to private schools for a better education, which again happen to be majority or exclusively white. Blacks rise through corporate America but fail to reach meaningful positions of power in Fortune 500 compameso Several scholars have conducted research on this more covert form of racism, often referred to as symbolic racism. According to McConahay and Hough (1976), individuals showing high levels of symbolic racism are correlated with negative affect and appear to demonstrate no identification or sympathy for underdogs. In addition, their racism is correlated with high levels of repression and traditional religious and secular values. Kinder and Sears (1981) tested two alternative hypotheses about the prejudice that whites demonstrate toward blacks. First, they examined the realistic group conflict hypothesis, which argues that blacks pose some realistic threats to the interests of whites. Second, they tested the symbolic racism hypothesis, which focuses on more abstract, moralistic resentment of blacks by whites. Symbolic racism points to motivation that is not based on material self-interest or financial gains but rather is psychological in nature. Such racism supposedly derives from childhood socialization experiences. Kinder and Sears examined white voting behavior in two mayoral elections in Los Angeles. They determined that in both cases, symbolic racism was primarily responsible for the whites voting against black candidates. Direct threats failed to account for the voting patterns of whites. Dovidio and Gaertner (1991) also argue that manifestations of racism have become less direct, but no less common. They claim that more subtle and indirect methods of racism have replaced more traditional overt expressions. In their view, modern racism takes a symbolic form. Sidanius et al. (1992) conducted some work comparing symbolic racism with social dominance orientation to explain the source of racial attitudes in 234 subjects. Social dominance orientation refers to how comfortable individuals are with hierarchies. People high on social dominance orientation tend to endorse items asking if they believe that people should know their proper place in society or whether it is natural for some people to have power over others. This research has demonstrated impressive sex differences indicating that men tend to have much higher levels of social dominance orientation than women. In this study, Sidanius et al. (1992) found that social dominance provided a superior explanation for

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the origins of racial attitudes. However, these authors argue that symbolic racism remains an important legitimating myth in American culture. Taking another perspective, Bobo (1983) argued that racism is based on assessments of real threats. He claimed that earlier demonstrations of symbolic racism employed narrow definitions of group interest that ignored the symbolic threat and psychological challenge to self-interest that blacks might pose to whites. Once those subjective threats are included in estimates of group interests, realistic threat can provide an adequate explanation for racism. In addition, he posited that racial attitudes in previous studies were assessed on a single continuum from prejudice to tolerance. According to Bobo, such an assessment overlooks the importance of the civil rights movement as a threat to white interests. Supportive evidence for this alternative claim comes from Sniderman and Teltock (1986). They argue that earlier work that demonstrated the existence of symbolic racism suffers from some serious empirical, methodological, and logical shortcomings. First, theories of symbolic racism lack a clear definition of terms. Second, there has been inconsistent operationalization of variables, and, as a result, serious confounds in the nature of the independent and dependent variables have emerged. Next, many of the items used to assess racism contain politically controversial questions. As a result, it can be difficult to distinguish traditional notions of racism from more symbolically motivated ones. In addition, like Bobo, they contend that the concept of self-interest in many studies of symbolic racism appears restricted. Sniderman and his colleagues (1991) examined other elements of racism using the sophisticated methodology of embedding experiments in national surveys. They found, as expected, that political conservatives are more likely to oppose government assistance to help blacks. They were also more likely to hold negative images of blacks, such as being lazy. But they also found that conservatives are more likely to prove willing to help blacks who espouse traditional values. Those who held no ideology were most likely to reject assistance for blacks. Interestingly, they found that one of the key conditions for the actual expression of racism in the form of discrimination was focusing on group, as opposed to individual, needs and benefits. This last finding is consistent with work on issue framing conducted by Nelson and Kinder (1996). They found that focusing on groups as beneficiaries of public policies increased group centrism, while emphasizing elements of policy


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that remained unrelated to group beneficiaries decreased the amount of group centrism. Further work by Kuklinski et al. (1997) examined attitudes toward affirmative action using experiments embedded in national survey samples that employed unobtrusive measures of racism. They found that blatant racism remained pervasive among American whites, opposition to affirmative action went well beyond the mere extension of such racism, and white resistance to affirmative action appeared amenable to change. In exploring the political attitudes of whites toward blacks in the context of crime and welfare policies, Peffley, Hurwitz, and Sniderman (1997) surveyed 1,841 whites. They manipulated the information about race in several scenarios concerning welfare mothers, welfare recipients, and drug users. They found that whites with negative perceptions of blacks viewed blacks more harshly than their white counterparts in these scenarios. These authors also found that focusing on individual recipients reduced the harshness of judgments made by whites with negative stereotypes toward blacks but did not make a difference in the attitudes expressed by whites who had rejected racial stereotypes. Work on racism overlaps substantially with work on the nature and foundations of political tolerance. In a seminal piece on the sources of political tolerance, J olm Sullivan and colleagues (1981) found the bases of political tolerance in two factors. First, the level of perceived threat and the commitment to general norms affected the level of tolerance. Second, psychological factors appeared to provide a source of political tolerance as well. Hurwitz and Peffley (1992) argue that prejudice represents a set of values regarding the acceptance of social diversity. Further, they claim that these values encompass more than simply traditional values such as individualism. They find that conformity and social intolerance remain better predictors of racial stereotypes and racial political attitudes than traditional values like individualism or egalitarianism. They contend that such values also influence ethnocentric responses to international outgroups in areas like foreign affairs. These authors purport that political intolerance conditions the pervasive and general nature of values that reject diversity in all its forms. Further, Sullivan et al. (1979) argue that tolerance pressures result when an individual objects to a given idea or group. When no such objection exists, no tolerance problem evolves. Despite some earlier research that indicated that political tolerance had

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increased over the course of the recent past, these authors found that if they allowed subjects to pick their own groups, rates of political tolerance had not changed much between the 1950s and the 1970s. Earlier research produced skewed results because most of the questions related to leftist sentiments. Sniderman et al. (1989) on the other hand found consistent levels of political tolerance. In contrast to Sullivan's model, which proposed that political tolerance results from genuine shifts in attitudes and feelings held toward certain groups, Sniderman and his colleagues argue that individuals demonstrate consistent levels of political tolerance on the basis of principle alone. They distinguish this kind of political tolerance from more situationally based forms of tolerance, which may appear less consistent over time. Kuklinski, Riggle et al. (1991) found that group activity seems more affected by emotional feelings than thought processes concerning the consequences of political tolerance. This finding appears consistent with recent work in neuropsychology that will be discussed at greater length later (chap. 6). Unexpectedly, these authors discovered that deliberation reduces the level of tolerance. This finding seems consistent with earlier work by Ross and his colleagues (Lord, Ross, and Lepper 1979; Ellsworth and Ross 1983) showing that deliberation on such topics as capital punishment and the Arab-Israeli conflict only exacerbated preexisting differences. Kuklinski, Riggle et al. (1991) suggested that less tolerance might result from greater deliberation because such discussion allows individuals to consider a variety of factors in reaching conclusions, and some of these factors may be contradictory to norms of tolerance. Social Categorization

Why is prejudice so common and so entrenched? From a social psychological standpoint, the answer relates to the natural, ubiquitous, and largely efficient process of social categorization (Wilder 1986). Social categorization is a process by which people organize their social environment by categorizing themselves and others into certain categories, including race, sex, and age. Groups in general can be defined in terms of external or internal factors. External criteria can include work, hobbies like singing in a choir or playing Little League, or characteristics like the color of your eyes, hair, or skin. Internal criteria might include people joining groups based on personal religious, political, or social


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identification. Group identification takes place when an observer has some awareness of a person as belonging to a particular group and associates some sense of value with that identification. This evaluation can be positive, as when people gravitate toward others they perceive to be rich or powerful or beautiful. Often, an emotional sense of attachment is connected to this awareness and valuation (TajfeI1982, 2). In-group bias occurs when a person evaluates his or her own group members as being better than others (Brewer 1979). This identification with the group conveys to its members feelings of security, status, and affiliation. In addition, group membership gives members a basis for reality testing. Even when explicit conflict with other groups does not exist objectively, feeling superior to another group (on whatever basis) can increase in-group members' sense of self-esteem and belonging (TajfeI1982, 31). In a series of experiments conducted by Perdue et al. (1990), psychologists found that simply pairing in-group words like us and them with nonsense syllables led subjects to evaluate those syllables as more pleasant. Further, in-group and out-group words influence the time it took for subjects to evaluate particular adjectives. In particular, they found that subjects reacted faster to positive traits associated with in-group words. Interestingly, out-group words did not increase the reaction time of subjects judging negative traits. These results suggest that in-group bias increases the perceived positive characteristics of group members without necessarily harming the perceptions of out-group members. Mackie et al. (1990) found that subjects were more persuaded by messages coming from in-group members, even if the content was weak, than messages coming from the out-group, even if those messages contained strong content. This phenomenon was enhanced when the content of the message was relevant to group membership itself. There were no conditions under which members were persuaded by any messages coming from the out-group. This study suggests how hard it may be for members of minority groups to persuade members of the dominant group of the value of their positions. Wilder and Shapiro (1991) found that in-group attitudes are facilitated by the presence of other group members. Judgments of a member of the out-group were much more consistent with stereotyped images in the presence of other group members than when the subject was alone or in the presence of "experts." They conclude that the salience of group membership increases stereotyped images of out-group members. This obviously occurs in situations

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where groups of people tend to act more aggressively than most of them might alone, as in groups of fraternities or sports fans. These out-group stereotypes can be particularly detrimental in international relations. Automatic negative images of the enemy may convey inaccurate information that can influence perceptions and dictate behavior. Many scholars argued about this problem with regard to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Richard Hermann (1986) found that images of the Soviet Union offered a more potent predictor of all kinds of policy preferences than several other variables. Brett Silverstein (1989a, 1989b) argued toward the end of the Cold War that psychologists had a moral responsibility to inform others about the ways in which established and stereotypic enemy images of the other side might exacerbate the perceived threat posed by the other side. Silverstein (1989a, 1989b) conducted a great deal of research on the formation of enemy images. His studies included attitude measurement and investigation of the beliefs and opinions of his subjects. He wanted to explore the sources of enemy images and examine whether they were directed toward individuals, races, or nations in hopes of beginning to change these images. He argued that enemy images were part of a theory of war that included three aspects. First, many people believed in a folk ("Rambo") theory of war as an epic struggle between the forces of good and evil, with "our" side being good. Second, realpolitik sees war as a sequence of political games, where people are more easily killed if they have already been dehumanized, seen as the evil enemy, or like an insect or animal. Hitler's early propaganda against the Jews began with portrayals of Jews as vermin, for example. Third, a model of scientific systems might characterize war as an important observed disturbance in a complex international system. Other scholars (Flanenbaum and Flanenbaum 1989) also explored the notion of enemy images in order to examine the basis of perception of an enemy's behavior. Flanenbaum argued that enemy images can affect any phase in information processing, including aspects of attribution, encoding, memory, assessment of the credibility of threats, analysis of hostility, and expectations about future action. Authors such as the Flanenbaums claimed that enemy images can affect a leader's information-processing abilities in ways that lead to an inaccurate understanding of the actions of an enemy. These out-group stereotypes, at either an individual or national level, can provoke automatic processes of prejudice.


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Patricia Devine's (1989) work, among others, has demonstrated that high and low prejudiced people are equally aware of negative cultural stereotypes about race. Moreover, these stereotypes are automatically triggered in both sets of subjects. She presented subjects with a story about one person stabbing another where the race was ambiguous. When subjects were prevented from being able to monitor their stereotypes, both types of individuals produce stereotypes consistent with negative evaluations of the target group. She also showed that only low prejudice subjects inhibit automatically activated prejudicial thoughts and replace them with more equality-based opinions and thoughts that negate the stereotype. Obviously, if her model is correct, it is not the case that some people are prejudiced and some are not; rather, everyone is prejudiced to some degree, but certain individuals are much better at inhibiting these thoughts than others. These automatic prejudicial beliefs develop as a function of the messages the person has unknowingly internalized throughout his or her whole life, from family, friends, teachers, communities, and the media. Obviously, these beliefs can have violent and horrific outcomes when they lead to discriminatory behavior and aggression directed toward the out-group. Sometimes these forms of violence are more systematic and well-planned, as was the case with the Ku Klux Klan burning crosses, bombing black churches, and stringing people up from trees in the American South. But it can also emerge in almost automatic fits of rage, as the Matthew Shepard murder in Wyoming demonstrated, when two men took him out and chained him to a fence and beat him to death for being gay. Reversing Prejudice

M uzafir Sherif's Ro b ber' s Cave (Sherif et al. 1961) experiment was one of the first attempts to systematically study the origins of intergroup conflict and strategies to overcome these behaviors. In this experiment, Sherif took boys to a summer camp in Oklahoma and created minimal groups named the Eagles and the Rattlers. There were no intrinsic differences between the boys at the outset, but minimal groups quickly developed as the boys engaged in competitive activities like tug-of-war and other sports competitions. Hostility quickly escalated into violence. The boys began to get into food fights with each other, raid each other's cabins, and so on. Minimal groups such as these tend to form very quickly and

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can do so even in the absence of any real difference between groups. Researchers have shown this simply by dividing people into categories based on arbitrary colors, like green and blue (Rabbie 1981; Tajfel 1982). Members of these groups will then quickly establish bonds that make them believe in the superiority of their group members. If resources need to be shared, in-group members will do everything in their power to deprive out-group members of any benefits. This happens regardless of how much contact there may be between groups. In-group biases like these happen even when certain members of the in-group are friends with individual members of the out-group (Park and Rothbart 1982; Quattrone 1986). Jane Elliot, a grade school teacher in Iowa, employed a similar device in trying to teach her all-white students about prejudice and discrimination. She divided her class into groups based on eye color: blue or brown. The "elite group" was given special treatment and attention, while the other group was penalized. The next day she switched groups, so that the elite group became the lower group and vice versa. Very quickly, her fourth-grade children began to demonstrate disruptions in social structure and changes in performance, such that the elite group performed better and the dominated group began to decline in performance. This outcome occurred even among the most gifted students. This anecdotal evidence is supported by Claude Steele's (1997) research demonstrating how stereotypes affect intellectual achievement. He argued that students need to identify with schools in order to advance academically. Such a process of identification can be thwarted by a stereotype threat when others' judgments or one's own actions impair performance in certain domains. This holds, for example, not only for African Americans in general, but also for women in advanced courses in quantitative skills. Steele's research showed that such stereotypes reduce performance on standardized tests and cause a failure to identify with school. These destructive effects can be ameliorated by procedures designed to reduce the existence of stereotype threats. Sherif tried various attempts to reduce the hostility between the boys once it emerged. But neither propaganda attempts nor efforts to create noncompetitive circumstances were effective in reducing hostility between groups. Indeed, later work by Diab (1978) and others showed that mere contact is not sufficient to overcome entrenched animosities when the underlying divisions are salient or resilient. Sherif eventually planned a situation where


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the boys would have to work together in order to escape from a bad situation: he had a truck break down with both groups of boys on it, and they had to work together to pull it up a very steep hill to rescue themselves. This strategy of inducing cooperative action in service of a shared goal was successful in reducing hostilities. The lesson drawn from this experiment was that the elimination of prejudice takes more than mere contact between rival groups, it requires the pursuit of shared goals. Eliot Aronson designed his jigsaw classroom in Texas based on this model (Aronson et al. 1978). He went into a school in Texas that was suffering from a lot of racial hostility. He designed an educational method where students worked in integrated groups. Each member was given a piece of a project, and students were required to work together and share information in order to do well on the assignment. This strategy worked well in overcoming entrenched hostilities, at least within the classroom setting. However, Tajfel (Vaughn, Tajfel, and Williams 1981) notes that after the boys in the Sherif experiment collaborated they no longer had ongoing reasons to compete. Indeed, later work by Worchel (1977, 1978) among others, has shown that when previous identities are salient, group cooperation alone may not be sufficient to overcome ongoing disputes. Remedies

What are the remedies for prejudice, discrimination, and racism? The question is complex, and while there are some prospective answers, they are not always clear. First, based on Sherifs experiment and Aronson's classroom experience, it may be that changing the actions of the parties involved can help ameliorate conflict between groups. However, contact between these groups needs to be both voluntary and rewarding in some way to achieve maximum benefit. Participants, like the children in the jigsaw classroom, should have shared goals and equal status. However, such conditions can be very hard to structure, especially if it is important for the setting not to appear to be too artificial. Progress is not likely to be achieved by reinforcing existing dominance hierarchies or by forcing unwanted contact. Second, it sometimes helps to change the rules. In this case, politics can work against natural psychological inclinations in some to achieve a more just outcome. Laws that punish those who discriminate (whether it is by race, sex, religion, or sexual orienta-

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tion) help to level the societal playing field. Affirmative action laws, while often controversial, have even sought to provide some kind of compensation for generations of inequality. Under these circumstances, the goal would be to try to put people on a more equal footing so that existing hierarchies cannot simply continue to perpetuate themselves. Third, efforts to improve the self-image of the targets of prejudice can help a great deal, without having to change the broader society itself. Movements such as the Black is beautiful campaign in the 1960s or the more recent gay pride events and parades are excellent examples of ways that targeted communities can begin to find support and affirmation within themselves. Last, given the experiences reported by Sherif, Aronson, and others, it may be worthwhile to try to shift competitive encounters into cooperative ones. Finding an external enemy has been shown to reduce internal conflict within groups. As Sumner first pointed out in 1906, "The relationship of comradeship and peace in the wegroup and those of hostility and war towards other groups are correlative to each other. The exigencies of war with outsiders are what makes peace inside" (Tajfel 1982, 15). A more recent review reaches essentially the same conclusion. Stein writes: There is a clear convergence in the literature in both the specific studies and in the various disciplines that suggests that external conflict does increase internal cohesion under certain conditions. . . . The external conflict needs to invoke some threat, affect the entire group and all its members equally and indiscriminately, and involve a solution .... The group must be able to deal with the external conflict, and to provide emotional comfort and support to its members. (Stein [1976], cited in Tajfell982, 15) Obviously, this strategy can backfire ifleaders use an external war to repress or redirect internal dissension. While this phenomenon might decrease fighting between some groups, it inevitably leads to conflicts among other groups. When governments, for example, want to prevent uprisings by the masses against the elite classes, elites often provoke foreign wars to unite potentially rebellious groups into cohesive forces that might serve, rather than annihilate, the rulers. However, the potential remains for the originally rebellious factions to splinter at a later time when their interests no longer coincide. Once they begin fighting among them-


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selves, the elite groups may become threatened once again; this dynamic certainly happened among the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan following the defeat of the Soviet army in 1989. Applications of Models to International Relations

This discussion will examine two main areas in which work on attitudes and cognition has been applied to issues and problems in international relations. First, work on attribution has been applied to a variety of concerns. Second, work on models of information processing and salience will be discussed. Attribution Theory Attribution theory refers to a wide variety of models that largely focus on people's attempts to provide causal explanations for why things happen the way they do. Some models concentrate on the ways that individuals process information and perceive their social environments in order to explain events (Fiske and Taylor 1991). Trying to explain why things happen as they do is important in order to understand, predict, or even control future events (Heider 1958; Kelley 1967). In addition, causal attributions are important so that people can plan for the future and make goals. Indeed, causal attributions can provide the basis for thoughts, feelings, and actions (Jones et al. 1972). In generating his attribution theory, Harold Kelley (1967) examined three components to explain behavior: the person, the situation, and the event. He believed that people render these judgments based on three types of information: consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency. For example, a woman may try to figure out what caused her spouse to cheat on her, because the answer may affect her willingness to stay in the relationship. Consensus asks whether other people in the same situation behave the same way. Do all husbands cheat on their wives? Do all wives stay with cheating husbands? If not, maybe something about the husband or wife can explain the behavior. Distinctiveness questions whether other situations provoke the same behavior. Does he always cheat when he goes to conferences? If so, maybe something about this particular situation explains the behavior. Finally, consistency asks whether the same thing happens all the time. Has he cheated in the past with other women? If not, maybe it is something about the other woman that elicited the behavior. Kelley argued that people made causal attributions based on their judgments of covariation

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or the extent to which variance occurs in one or more of these areas in response to a certain situation. Several scholars have applied these models to political behavior in the international realm. For example, Walker et al. (1999) compared Bill Clinton's and George Bush Sr.'s attributional styles in foreign policy conflicts during the Cold War. Using speeches, Walker and his colleagues coded for attributions that the two leaders made about themselves and others and for the different manners in which they exercised political power. They found that Bush manifested a less cooperative, more inflexible approach to conflict management in foreign policy. On the other hand, Clinton demonstrated greater cooperation and flexibility. The authors argue that these leaders' orientations toward power interacted with certain variables in the situation and their opponent's behavior in directing decisions concerning U.S. foreign policy in Panama, Haiti, Bosnia, and the Persian Gulf. Further, they argue that a combination of favorable power and the perception of vital strategic interests enhanced the effect of a given president's operational code. In another study, Feather (1993) examined three political leaders in Britain, including a former prime minister, Robert Hawke, the then-current prime minister, Paul Keating, and the then-leader of the opposition, John Hewson, over 204 events. In examining the rise and fall of political leaders, he found that a sense of deservingness was related to causal attributions, as well as to personality attributes of leaders' perceived sense of responsibility. He argued that these factors allow prediction of official reactions to policy challenges. Another study (Linger and Lencey 1991) examining attributions of blame for the Gulf War looked at a period of time from two weeks before the war started until its end. They found that individuals who made more positive attributions and supported the war more were less likely to blame Bush for the war, and more likely to blame Hussein. These authors note that a constructivist interpretation would assume that voters should distribute blame evenly between leaders. Information Processing Work on information processing in psychology grew out ofinvestigations into how people learn information and skills (Broadbent 1958). Scholars were to break down mental processes into a series of stages that could each be investigated in sequence. The goal was to examine the series of mental processes that take place between


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stimulus and response. This is different from a behaviorist approach, which would not be interested in examining cognitive events between stimulus and response. Several political models explicitly take an information-processing perspective to analyze political decision making. One, called JESSE (Sylvan et al. 1990), has been used to model Japanese decision making in the realm of energy supply security. This model uses a systematic language to more precisely express theories and models about values, attitudes, beliefs, interests, and influence. It then allows for computations to help determine outcomes. The first sequence of the model classifies information about threats to the Japanese energy supply, while the next selects different options and plans that have been previously stored. Various outputs are possible. The authors argue that this model is best applied to situations where there is not a lot of institutional rivalry, the members of a decision-making group have similar backgrounds and values, there has been a lot of prior planning for the second sequence to operate properly, and the decision is relatively restricted in domain. A second information-processing model, POLl (Policy Arguer) uses an expert system approach to u.S. foreign policy (Taber 1992). This model, which has been applied to u.S. foreign policy decisions in Asia in the 1950s, attempts to represent policy debate in the form of arguments and counterarguments in order to examine the prior beliefs of decision makers. This model is designed to explain foreign policy in terms of beliefs, arguments, and decisions. In addition, much of the work on political attitude change takes a more implicit information-processing approach. Work by Krosnick (1988), for example, shows that attitudes about topics that are important to people are much more stable over time than attitudes that are not as significant to them. He argues that less consistency over time in less important attitudes does not result from greater ambiguity, or a lack of willingness to report attitudes accurately, but rather results from true attitude changes. Kuklinski, Luskin et al. (1991) launched a lively debate on the meaning and importance of schemas in information processing. Schemas are knowledge structures involving people, processes, or events. They simplify complex experiences into more simple generalizations that often provide a map for behavior. For instance, you might have a schema about going to a restaurant, which involves going to the place, sitting down, choosing from a menu, eating food, and receiving and paying a bill. Many variations on this theme are possible: making reservations first, choosing food from

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a buffet, and so on, but the basic procedure remains similar enough to be recognized as familiar by the diner across restaurants. Kuklinski, Luskin et al. argued that schema theory did not provide the most satisfying progress in political psychology research. Although schemas have been used to study political attitudes, beliefs, and values, these authors questioned the contribution that the theory had brought to deeper understanding of political attitudes and behaviors. Several scholars wrote responses to Kuklinski et al. Lodge and McGraw (1991) contributed a cognitive perspective on schema theory. Conover and Feldman (1991) considered problems of measurement in schema theory, and Miller (1991) presented an information-processing perspective on the use of schemas in political analysis. Larson (1994) examined the difference between schema theory and belief systems in investigating information processing in individual decision makers. She argued that while both models are cognitive and structural in nature and vary with degree of expertise, schemas, which are preferred by psychologists, exist at a higher level of generality and are more closely related to complex cognitive processes than arguments based on belief systems theory, which tends to be preferred by political scientists. As a result, she argued, schema theory is superior for research into information processing, memory, and expertise. She claimed that greater use of schema theory might help build a bridge between political scientists and psychologists on research about cognitive structures. Furthermore, schema theory, in particular, can help explain analogical reasoning, like adherence to the Munich analogy, and abstract reasoning. It can also help suggest hypotheses about the use of information and its interpretation in decision making. Schema theory can increase rigor by explaining both data-driven and theory-driven information-processing effects. Finally, schema theory can provide more specific predictions about when cognitive structures can change than belief systems theory appears to be able to do. In other areas of information processing, Masters (1991) and his colleagues have done groundbreaking work on the impact of facial expression on voter evaluations. While some of this work rests on neuropsychological processing, some examines cognitive responses as well. For example, in one study, Masters varied the leader's facial displays and elicited different cognitive and judgmental responses from subjects. Specifically, responses to the leader's affect were associated with the sociocultural background


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of the individual. In particular, cultural differences led to particular patterns of evaluative responses. Personality differences appeared to bring about different perceptions as well, and gender changed how the interactions were seen. Concern with voter evaluations emerges as an important theme in the literature on attitudes as well. Lavine et al. (1996) and others examined the impact of attitudes on candidate appraisals based on attitude accessibility and salience in both foreign policy and domestic issues. They found that candidate evaluations depended on the personal importance, relevance, or salience of the issue or leader. In other words, more salient information was more influential because it was more cognitively accessible in memory. In addition, domestic issues were more accessible and thus generated more self-interest than foreign policy issues. Thus, it may be that attitude accessibility may be more closely related to issues of personal as opposed to national importance. However, Nincic and Hinckley (1991) find that the influence of foreign policy issues on the outcome of presidential elections compares favorably to economic issues. This may be true in times of international conflict but may prove less true in times of peace. Further, other scholars (Tim and Miller 1986) found that perceived trust, similarity, and shared national interest are significant determinants of public opinions toward foreign countries. In particular, perceptions of recent foreign policy actions in areas with high personal salience playa significant role in public opinion ratings toward that country. Important work on the foreign policy attitudes of both American elites and the mass public has been undertaken by Holsti and Rosenau (1984, 1988, 1990). They posited that political cleavages brought about by the Vietnam War divided American elite foreign policy beliefs into three types-Cold War internationalism, post-Cold War internationalism, and semi-isolationism-which they called the three-headed eagle. They found that these beliefs remained relatively stable over time and were tied to ideology, such that conservatives were more likely to support Cold War internationalist positions. Later, Holsti and Rosenau adopted a classification offered by Wittkopf (1986, 1987, 1990), who divided foreign policy opinions into two classes, militant (MI) and cooperative internationalism (CI), which in turn produced four classifications. Hardliners support MI and oppose CI; internationalists support both MI and CI; accommodationists oppose MI and support CI; and isolationists oppose both MI and CI. They argued

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that this four-headed eagle was also strongly associated with political ideology as well. Using content analysis of foreign policy and national opinion journals from 1980 through 1989, Rosati and Creed (1997) have attempted to move beyond this earlier classification. They developed six categories, including global crusaders, global containers, selective containers, global reformers, global transformers, and selective engagers. Rosati and Creed find a strong correlation between these attitudes and political ideology, as Holsti and Rosenau did with their four-headed eagle model. However, Rosati and Creed argue for the existence of much greater complexity and diversity in the range and content of elite views of foreign policy than Holsti and Rosenau found. In fact, while they find both some continuity and some change in elite foreign policy opinions, they state that existing schisms indicate that divisions among elites over these issues are much more serious than previously understood. Farnham (1990) notes the importance of retaining a sense of the political context while analyzing the cognitive and informational styles of particular leaders. She criticizes previous work in analytic, cognitive, and motivated individual decision making for failing to take account of the structural, material, and institutional constraints that are present in any political context. She argues for the reincorporation of political exigencies into psychological analyses of the reasons for individual decisions. Tetlock has undertaken a great deal of work in the area of information processing as well, attempting to explicitly incorporate both psychological and political variables into his analysis of decision making. Much of his work in this area has focused on conceptual and integrative complexity in thought processing. In one instance, for example, he undertook a cognitive structural analysis of political rhetoric to examine the conceptual and integrative complexity in given decision makers (Tetlock 1993). In another study examining the Japanese decision to attack Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Levi and Tetlock (1980) argued that cognitive performance in government decision making decreased during the war because of crisis-induced stress reactions. They hypothesized that stress would lead to simplification in information processing. They tested this theory through content analysis looking at the cognitive complexity and cognitive mapping of the decision makers, based on the translated documents of key decision makers. They found that between early and late 1941,


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there was little evidence of increasing cognitive simplicity among Japanese decision makers. However, they claimed that social context influenced the degree of cognitive complexity. Within the liaison conference involving policy formation, cognitive processing was less complex than within the imperial conference, where policy options were presented to the emperor for approval. In a further study with Tyler (Tetlock and Tyler 1996), Tetlock examined the degrees of integrative and cognitive complexity in the policy statements of Churchill and his political adversaries during two key foreign policy debates in the early 1930s. They found that in public and private Churchill was less integratively complex and more cognitively complex than his adversaries in Nazi Germany or in self-governed India. Further, they found greater consistency in Churchill's integrative complexity in both public and private settings over time and across issues than in his degree of cognitive complexity. Some further work examining the impact of information processing on foreign policy has been conducted by others as well. Vertzberger (1990) noted that information processing organizes information and weighs validity, importance, and relevance for decision makers. In examining the u.S. involvement in Vietnam and the Israeli involvement in the Yom Kippur War, he analyzes intelligence failures and military surprises, as well as broader risk assessments, looking in particular at ambiguity, uncertainty, complexity, and risk. He argues for the importance of avoiding biased and faulty information processing by central decision makers. Drukman (1990) used an information-processing approach, along with attribution of intentions, to examine the conditions under which unilateral initiatives in arms control might lead to reciprocation and cooperation with adversaries. He found that reciprocity alone was unlikely to be an effective strategy. Second, unconditional unilateral initiatives were unlikely to be taken. Last, the effectiveness of initiatives depends on the nature of the relationship between adversaries and the international climate. Conclusions

Given the rich history and current diversity in attitude change research and work on human cognition, where do we go from here? Carl Hovland (Hovland et al. 1949) began his study of attitude change in the late 1940s at Yale University by altering the

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content and method of presentation of arguments in order to determine which combinations proved most persuasive. This early work produced few reliable results. However, the field was overturned with Festinger's (1957) model of cognitive dissonance that combined attitude change with motivational drive. During this period, the behavioral revolution in psychology reigned, the cognitive approach gained dominance shortly thereafter, and not as much work combining the impact of emotion and thought on attitudes and behavior was undertaken. With new brain imaging and the further development of work in neuropsychology, researchers are now beginning to return to the importance of affect in shaping and maintaining all kinds of cognitive processes. Indeed, the richest avenue for future research is most likely the interaction of cognition and emotion, as scholars begin to reincorporate the notion of affect into the decision-making process. This might not be the form of affect that would have been recognized by Freud, although as a neurologist, he predicted and would have approved of such technological advances, but such work will begin to draw new links between thoughts and feelings in mutually reinforcing ways. This intersection between emotion and cognition in the arena of attitude formation, maintenance, and change offers a wealth of new opportunities for scholars seeking to do work in political psychology (also see chap. 6 on emotion). How and what we think will remain important components of decision-making analysis, in everything from voting decisions to leadership conflicts with foreign countries. Clearly we feel that our attitudes and beliefs are important parts of our identity; they somehow help define who we think we are in the world and in relation to others. The way that our attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs help establish and transform our sense of self and become the basis for affiliation and group formation is a promising area for future research. This process and its interconnections with other areas such as memory, feelings, behaviors, and values will be better understood as more specific brain imaging work proceeds. It is not that everything of importance will take place at the neurophysiological level; clearly, past histories, learning, networks of associations, and political exigencies will continue to exert their impact on the attitudes, beliefs, and cognitions of individual leaders. However, neuropsychological work will help begin to illuminate the processes by which some of these attitudes and beliefs are created, transformed, and triggered.


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Madison Avenue may continue to research which factors entice attitude change in consumers so as to sell more products. But more applied research is likely to expand its focus on the neurological basis of attitude formation and change, the interconnections between thoughts and feelings, and the impact of attitudes on our sense of identity and group formation.

CHAPTER 5

Behavior: Do Actions Speak Louder Than Words?

After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, most Americans gained a new appreciation and sensitivity about what the behavior of a few committed individuals can accomplish. After the attacks, political leaders, the media, and ordinary citizens wondered collectively how and why anyone would do something so horrific and kill so many innocent people. Most people could not understand what might lead another to commit a suicidal action in such a violent homicidal fashion. This question remains, although some work in social psychology and political psychology had begun to examine some of the forces behind fanatic behavior previously. We now move from the realm of attitudes, beliefs, cognitions, and values into the arena of actions and behaviors. Having examined some of the links between attitudes and behavior (chap. 4), we now explore how some of those actions play out in the real world of international relations, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Obviously, there are many kinds of behavior that take place in international relations, and while we cannot address them all, we will look at some of the more important ones. Often actions take place in response to crises, and so this chapter will begin with a discussion of how defective decision making can lead to crises. Then it will cover various aspects of crisis management and strategies of conflict resolution. Finally, a more in-depth investigation of terrorism, including recruitment strategies, will be undertaken. Many other topics that political psychologists work on also fall under the rubric of behavior. The commonest is probably voting behavior, and much important work has been conducted in that area (Iyengar and McGuire 1993; Ottati, Tinsdale, and Edwards 2002). However, since this book's focus is international relations, these topics will not be discussed at any length here.

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Defective Decision Making

Defective decision making can often precipitate a crisis. It does not necessarily cause a crisis but can often contribute to the level of hostility or the degree of escalation between warring factions. While it is by no means the only factor that instigates conflict, it is one of the psychological factors that can exacerbate it. There are at least seven factors that can lead to defective decision making (Holsti 1979, 1990). Not every feature need operate in every situation, but one, even one can complicate a given interaction. First, leaders can make gross omissions in surveying the data available to them. Decision makers typically rely on channels of information that they have used successfully in the past. Further, they tend to rely on personal relationships to obtain information; it is often easier and less work to hear something from someone else than to sift through mountains of paper by yourself in order to extract the meaningful information. Leaders with time limitations are forced to rely on the estimates provided by the country's intelligence agencies, which are often operating under wildly incorrect assumptions; the failure of any agency to foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union provides a dramatic recent example of this kind of systemwide failure and the catastrophic consequences that can result. Obviously, leaders do not always get the most accurate information. Channels that were valuable in the past may no longer be available or current, particularly in times of civil war or domestic unrest in other areas; it may be particularly hard, for example, to determine the accuracy of information derived from sources that used to be in power, but are no longer. Also, friends and advisers often want to press their own personal agendas, or they themselves may only have access to biased information. Indeed, certain leaders may seek out those advisers who share the same worldview, and thus they do not always receive all the relevant information. For example, in the early days of his administration, President Carter preferred to be briefed by Secretary of State Vance rather than National Security Adviser Brzezinski because the former was more of a dove, like Carter himself (Sick 1985). Second, leaders can make omissions in surveying objectives. Especially in situations where priorities have long been established, decision makers do not always reevaluate their goals, or what the likelihood is of obtaining them, before planning a response. Rather than taking proactive action based on an inde-

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pendent assessment of important national security goals and value, leaders often grant the initiative for action to the opposition. In other words, leaders often simply react to actions of the opponent, seeing threat wherever the adversary makes a move, rather than stepping back to ask whether a given action really constitutes a clear threat, whether the issue of contention really creates a genuine challenge to national security, or whether the opponent might be acting for domestic reasons with no intention of threatening the other side. The most obvious example of this type of thinking can be seen in American policymakers' response to the actions of the nationalist North Vietnamese in the 1960s. In this instance, the real goal of u.s. intervention there, and what price the United States should have been willing to pay for it, appear never to have been discussed. Rather, because an anticommunist objective had been long established in U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union, and all forms of communism were immediately assumed to radiate from Soviet expansionism, the appearance of what was perceived to be communism in North Vietnam seemed automatically to demand a response. Third, leaders often fail to examine the costs and risks of the preferred outcome. Once a particular strategy is decided upon, leaders rarely go back to reevaluate the choice in light of subsequent information or developments. In other words, leaders often persist with a particular course of action long after it has proven ineffective. In many instances, they do so because of the sunk costs already invested in a particular campaign, both in terms of material resources and lives lost. It can be very hard politically for a leader to pull out of a conflict where many soldiers have died without making it seem as if their loss was in vain. Vietnam again provides an instance of this phenomenon. Another example comes from the experience of the U.S. hostages held in Iran. In that case, American decision makers, led by President Carter, made the choice to launch a rescue mission and went ahead with it, even after the CIA estimated that the probability of getting the hostages out without loss of life to Americans was 0 percent. These estimates proved correct when the rescue attempt had to be aborted, no hostages were rescued, and eight American soldiers lost their lives in the action (McDermott 1998). A more recent example involves the American surveillance plane that had to make an emergency landing on Hanan Island in China in early 2001. The Bush administration expressed concern about the status of the plane and the crew early on. Yet conserva-

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tive commentators in that case argued that the United States should be encouraged to respond to the crisis without regard to the potential loss of the life or liberty of the crew. The administration had to examine the potential risks and benefits of their options in greater detail before responding. In this case, there were obviously both military and political costs involved with any action or nonaction, and as often is the case, they were inversely related. In other words, actions with high military costs, like a rescue mission, may have relatively low political costs, while doing nothing, which presents negligible military risk, often poses unacceptably high political risk. However, once a public commitment was made to bring the crew back alive, this preferred outcome was not reexamined, and actions were taken to maximize this outcome. A different set of leaders, however, might have started with a different set of assumptions regarding acceptable risks and benefits and reached a different choice, as the conservatives advocated. The fourth factor in defective decision making involves poor information search. Obviously, it is not realistic to search out all the information available before reaching a particular decision, because there may not be enough time, or the cost might be prohibitive. In buying a car, you might be able to find a cheaper car 3,000 miles away using the Internet, but the cost of shipping or driving the car such a distance, or taking the time to do so, may not be worth the money saved. In addition, if the cost of the search exceeds the value of the information, the search is not cost effective. However, in many cases, the search is stopped well before that point is reached. In many cases, satisficing operates to stop the search at the first acceptable alternative reached, even if better alternatives are easily available (March and Simon 1958). Alternatively, some people extend a search for information long past the point where it is worth the cost (Tversky and Shafir 1992). A good demonstration of this comes from Tversky, who found that people often seek additional information to justify and explain a choice, rather than to actually change or inform the decision. For example, often academic departments have a first- and second-choice candidate for a job. They often want to know the decision of the first candidate before making the offer to the second, even when the offer will be made to the second regardless of the decision of the first. However, this strategy may cost the department the second candidate altogether, since that person may take another job while waiting to hear from the first department. So why might a department risk losing altogether a candidate they

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value? By definition, the first candidate's decision will not affect whether or not the second candidate is offered the job; all that shifts is the timing of the offer being rendered. However, the reason why the department wants to hire the person may differ depending on whether or not the first candidate accepts the job. If the first candidate takes the jo b, the second offer can be justified as strengthening the department with a spate of new hires in a particular area, or by broadening a particular field. However, if the first candidate declines the job, the decision to hire the second might be explained as an attempt to hire a specialist in a particular kind of area. The candidate does not change, but the reason and justification for their hire shifts. In this way, deferred decision making may seem important in order to properly justify a particular choice, but it may nonetheless end up costing the department greatly if they lose their second candidate altogether because of the wait. In addition, deferred decision making can induce paralysis, whereby procrastination rules the day and a new decision is never made, rendering the old, suboptimal choice continually operative. Fifth, leaders often engage in selective processing of information at hand. Decision makers tend to give more weight to information that confirms their preexisting beliefs and attitudes (Lord, Ross, and Lepper 1979; Nisbett and Ross 1980). They examine this information less carefully and critically than information that contradicts these prior beliefs and attitudes. Indeed, when individuals come across information that is in opposition to their previous beliefs, they often either ignore it or develop reasons to dispute its authenticity. This can happen even when the contradictory evidence comes through multiple independent channels. When people receive information that contains evidence both in support of, and in opposition to, their preexisting beliefs, they tend to bolster the confirmatory evidence while dismissing the contradictory evidence. This phenomenon helps explain why giving people more information does not necessarily change their mind. A clever experiment (Vallone et al. 1985) divided Arab and Israeli students and had them observe the exact same newscasts and report their responses. Each side felt that the newscast was biased against their position, even though it was the same newscast; each side processed the information in different ways. In this experiment, as well as others involving highly emotional subjects like abortion and capital punishment, psychologists showed that new information does not necessarily force individuals to revise their opinions about topics that inspire high degrees of emotional commitment.

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The sixth reason for defective decision making involves the failure to consider previously rejected alternatives. This is related to the third reason, the failure to examine the costs and risks of a preferred outcome. If leaders perseverate on a chosen path without reevaluating its appropriateness, then options that were set aside earlier may not be reenlisted later, even after changing circumstances make the earlier discarded options most suitable. Yet decision makers rarely mine the storehouse of previously rejected alternatives once they become committed to their original choices. The last reason for defective decision making comes from the failure to work out the details of implementation and monitoring. Leaders often don't follow up on orders. They assume that once orders are given, they are implemented as intended. Those in charge of carrying out the orders may knowingly or unknowingly sabotage those orders. For instance, in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy ordered that the quarantine around Cuba designed to prevent Soviet missiles from entering Cuban territorial waters be enforced by the navy. Without informing the president, the navy set its quarantine farther out than Kennedy intended, as a result of their standard operating procedure concerning quarantine (Allison 1971). Any of these reasons can contribute to the kind of misunderstanding that can quickly escalate a crisis into conflict. These factors do not need to be present for a crisis to erupt. However, these psychological factors can predispose decision makers toward exacerbating hostility among leaders and between nations. Crisis

Once defective decision making and other factors cause hostility to emerge, a crisis can erupt. A crisis is defined as a situation with the elements of surprise, high threat, and short decision time. In these instances, a leader and his immediate advisers hold a great deal of power unto themselves because there is little time to respond and consult others. A leader's freedom under such conditions also allows individual biases or pathologies to playa role in the decision-making process (chap. 8). We will use an example as a way to analyze certain elements within crises in general, and other forces and pressures that might come into play. In early 2001, a U.S. plane undertaking surveillance was shot down by the Chinese. It was forced to land on Chinese territory, where the plane and the crew were held in custody

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by the Chinese government. Obviously, the greatest concern for the average American was the safe return of the crew. The crisis quickly escalated as the Chinese continued to hold the crew prisoner and demanded an apology from the United States. In many ways, the initial days of the crisis resembled the U-2 crisis in 1960 when the Soviets shot down an American espionage plane piloted by Gary Powers, except in that case President Eisenhower had been assured by the director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles, that the pilot would have to be dead. In the more recent case, questions swirled around President Bush: Should he apologize to the Chinese? If so, what should he apologize for, exactly? Indeed, at first, it was not entirely clear what the Chinese wanted an apology for: the Chinese plane that was downed and the pilot who was killed (although given that the Chinese plane was much faster than the American plane, it was unlikely to have been shot down by the Americans); U.S. spying; or the United States landing its crippled plane without authorization on Chinese territory? Arguments about whether the U.S. plane was actually in Chinese or international airspace at the time it was disabled made the situation more complex. On the one hand, it appeared that Bush was trying to establish his reputation for acting tough by not apologizing right away. But this raises the many other issues that quickly appear in a crisis. For example, were the Chinese simply testing the new American leader to see how tough he would be? Who was Bush's audience? Was he signaling the U.S. public or a segment of it, like right-wing Republican conservatives; the Chinese; or world public opinion? Further, the United States had recently apologized profusely on multiple occasions to the Japanese for the sinking of their fishing trawler the Ernie Maru off the coast of Pearl Harbor in an accident involving the U.S. submarine Greenville, piloted by Commander David Wattle. The Chinese apparently felt insulted that the United States did not respond as quickly or as strongly to the Chinese as they had to the Japanese in the earlier crisis, even though the situations differed in origin. The Chinese wanted to make sure they were treated with as much respect and importance by the Americans as the Japanese had been; saving face remains central in many dealings in international relations. At that point in time, however, Bush had never been outside the United States and was very inexperienced in dealing with other cultures. Yet an apology is not just words; it holds different meanings in different cultures. In the United States, an apology can hold legal meaning as an admission of guilt. It can

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also signify weakness, deference, or submission. Conversely, in many Asian cultures, an apology is a very important mechanism of social interchange: it remains standard for the Japanese to begin presentations, for example, apologizing for their unworthiness. Yet there was another factor as well, since certainly China experts in the U.S. government were aware of China's fifty-year history of testing new leaders of the United States in various ways. Some may have felt the Chinese were simply using the request for an apology as a way to test the resolve of the new U.S. administration. The Chinese ambassador claimed that apologies are made from a position of strength, a view that the U.S. administration clearly did not share. Some in the Bush administration argued that the crisis over the plane and crew was really just a proxy fight over the real issue of impending American arms sales to Taiwan, which the Chinese wanted to prevent. If that was the case, then the central question of value to the new Bush administration was whether the United States wanted war or peace with China. And that question certainly constituted a crisis. There are several important points to make in analyzing this situation that might prove useful in the analysis of other crises as well. First, as noted previously in the example of the Cuban missile crisis, standard operating procedures often help shape decisions and especially their implementation. In this case, as in others, crisis simulations and other kinds of war games that are run in times of peace offer set responses to particular kinds or classes of crisis. Using the results of such games to help inform decision-making strategies can often prove quite useful. However, failure to realize and make appropriate accommodations for the ways in which the simulated crisis and the real crisis differ can lead to dangerous or problematic results. In this instance, many of the games that intelligence agencies had run were no doubt focused on the possibility of a crisis with China over Taiwan. The hostage situation may not have been expected. In this circumstance, history can sometimes provide guidance, as the U-2 affair might in this case, but often differs on enough dimensions as to be not altogether instructive. The cases resembled one another to the extent that both situations evolved out of U.S. spying, with pilots and planes being held by the adversary. But the crises differed to the extent that the U-2 incident involved only a single pilot whose primary mission was initially secret, whereas the Chinese incident involved a whole crew, and the incident was immediately reported to the world by CNN. Second, studies such as those by Irving Janis (1982) on group-

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think alert analysts to issues of group dynamics in decision making, even among relatively small advisory groups. Group dynamics will be discussed at greater length later (chap. 9), but here it suffices to say that the impact of pressures for cohesion, combined with desires not to alienate the leader, can lead to bias in presenting options or making choices by policy advisers. Conversely, internal divisions within an administration can make consensus difficult. In the 2001 case of the surveillance plane that landed in China, much had been made in the media at the time about the perceived differences in perspectives between the more moderate internationalist Secretary of State Colin Powell and the more hard-line isolationists Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, and President Bush. Third, Jervis's (1976) work on the perception of intentions and capabilities in situations of hostile communication presents two alternative models. First, the spiral model, drawing upon the World War I analogy, posits that states exist in a basic security dilemma. Each state's attempts to defend itself alert and frighten the adversary, who then builds up weapons in order to protect against the threat posed by the first state. The first state responds with new defensive buildups for the same reason as the first. Thus, an escalating spiral of inferring hostile intent and arms buildups results. Then, with the slightest spark, the escalating arms race can result in a war that no one wanted in the first place. The second deterrence model, using a World War II paradigm, argues that only displays of strength will contain an opponent from taking aggressive action. In this model, aggression unchallenged constitutes aggression unchecked, and only by signaling a credible threat to the adversary can a state protect its vital interests. President Reagan strongly espoused this belief in his Peace through Strength campaign in the mid-1980s. In recent work, these models were compared in a simulated crisis game (McDermott and Cowden 2001). In this experiment, two subjects role-played leaders of fictitious countries disputing over newly discovered oil on an offshore island. Each subject made decisions about how many weapons to eliminate or procure, took an action ranging from doing nothing to going to war, and sent messages to the other side. In addition, subjects made judgments about their own and their opponent's levels of hostility, aggressiveness, competitiveness, and trustworthiness. Over four rounds of play, subjects attempted to resolve the crisis. The results showed mixed support for the spiral model and no support for the deter-

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rent model. Support for the spiral model was limited to the finding that arms races do increase the likelihood of aggression. However, one side's procurement decisions did not appear to drive the other side's purchasing. In the 2001 Chinese crisis, there may have been elements of spiral escalation as each side made assumptions about the intentions of the other that were rooted more in fear and anger than in an honest assessment of threat. For example, the Bush administration clearly believed that the Chinese were trying to manipulate an apology by holding the crew hostage. They may not have appreciated the full extent to which the Chinese were genuinely angry about the original surveillance nor understood why the Chinese were upset about the Americans' spying. On the other hand, the Chinese may not have understood the context for the Bush administration's unwillingness to apologize: the legal implications of such an action in America. Indeed, under such circumstances, how can the real threat be properly assessed? In the larger scheme of things, the crew and the plane may not seem that big a deal, but the prospect of war with China over Taiwan (or some other precipitating cause) presents a genuine threat to the national security of both sides. Fourth, cost calculation models assume that each state can and does calculate the maximum amount that it will risk or might benefit in a given conflict before deciding whether or not to act. If the cost is greater than the benefit, action will not be taken. If the potential benefit is likely to be greater than the cost, action will be taken. Many rational choice models use these sets of parameters. This kind of analysis can tell an observer or decision maker whether a particular option is worth taking, given the probable benefits. The cost of doing nothing, often very high in political terms, must be integrated with the level of military risk from action in order to reach an appropriate calculation about the relative risks of potential choices. From this perspective, the option that has the lowest relative cost and/or the highest relative benefit should be chosen. For example, the Americans may have calculated that some sort of apology was less costly in real terms than losing the crew, the plane, and moderate American public opinion, in spite of a potential right-wing political backlash. The Bush administration eventually issued a statement of regret, which was translated to be a stronger apology than intended, and the crew was released. The Chinese kept the plane, inspected and dismantled it, and eventually shipped it back to the Americans, just as the

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Americans had done to a Soviet MiG fighter plane brought to the United States by a defecting pilot during the Cold War. Last, many studies have been conducted on the effect of individual stress on decision making. In particular, sleep deprivation is a common concern in crises when time is short and the threat is high. Yet sleep deprivation, among other factors, has been shown to have a negative effect on decision-making ability and quality. Stress in and of itself leads to a particular kind of cognitive rigidity wherein discrepant new information tends to be rejected, thus restricting creative problem solving (see also chap. 6). Because a person's attention span is narrowed under conditions of stress, an individual under stress cannot focus for long on one thing and often has difficulty considering more than one option at a time. As time horizons become foreshortened, the long-term implications of a crisis might not be sufficiently considered or taken into account (see Zimbardo and Gerrig 1996 for a review). In the instance described previously, both administrations clearly felt pressured by this crisis. Although no one talked explicitly about the prospect of war, concern about the situation with Taiwan clearly lingered in the background on both sides. With less sleep and more stress, options quickly narrowed, and tensions escalated. Although in this instance, a statement of regret on the part of the Bush administration lowered tensions and eventually brought about the release of the crew, it is easy to imagine how similar situations in the past or in the future might spin out of control. The start of World War I provides an excellent illustration of a case where most of the parties did not really want war, although all sides were afraid of losing in preemptive strikes, but no one was able to take an action or present an option that could ameliorate the July 1914 crisis and avert the conflict in time. Conflict Resolution

As we have seen, defective decision making can precipitate or exacerbate a crisis through processes of misunderstanding and misinterpretation. However, there are several very real problems that can cause genuine conflicts of interest between people or governments. Deutsch (1973) has identified five of these: (1) conflicts over resources, such as money, power, or territory; (2) conflicts over values, such as whether a democratic, capitalist, or secular state is best; (3) conflicts over beliefs or what is true; (4) conflicts over a relationship, such as who should be dominant or submissive; and

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(5) conflicts over preferences, such as those over banning land mines or restricting carbon emissions. Deutsch has conducted a great deal of research in this area. He argues that the central insight that psychology can offer into processes of conflict escalation and resolution relates to the discrepancy between real and perceived events and experiences (1973). There are many structural factors that can influence whether a conflict becomes constructive or destructive as well (Deutsch and Shichman 1986). These factors include first of all the size of the sides. The larger the group, the more conflict one can expect. In addition, the degree of conflict increases if the conflict is over principles, rights, or personalities; the resolution sets precedents for future action; the conflict is seen as a zero-sum game; the genuine interests of the parties are in conflict; or the conflict is vague or ambiguous (Fisher 1964). These kinds of conflict might be mitigated by strategies such as creating superordinate goals (as in the Robber's Cave experiment), increasing substantive communication, or making parties play role-reversal exercises or engage in group encounter sessions (Deutsch and Shichman 1986). Issue rigidity presents a second factor that can increase the degree of conflict. Conflict over certain issues, such as power or status, is more likely to become rigidly defined, and then it becomes challenging for parties to see many alternatives. Third, the centrality of the issue increases conflict; the more a conflict threatens a party's sense of self-esteem or well-being, the more likely it is that the crisis will escalate. Fourth, the number of issues increases the degree of conflict as well. The more issues involved in a given conflict, the less likely it is that a resolution will be found. However, when multiple issues are addressed, successful resolutions are more likely to result from simultaneous, as opposed to sequential, consideration. Deutsch (1973) also pointed to the importance of an individual's motivation in order to reach successful agreement. He argues that three types of motivational orientation exist: cooperative, where the person cares about what happens to the other; individualistic, where a person only cares about himself and is not concerned with the welfare of the other; and competitive, where the person wants to do better than others. Cooperative orientations are most likely to lead to successful resolutions and mutual gains. Part of the reason for this lies in the processes of communication between parties. Competitive orientations led to impoverished, deceptive, and misleading information. People with a com-

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petitive orientation do not share their thoughts or feelings. They might try to steal information that their opponent does not want to share. Little trust can emerge, and this atmosphere poisons the prospects for understanding and agreement. On the other hand, cooperative people tend to share information openly and honestly. This allows both parties to reveal and uncover the true issues of contention between them. However, as Deutsch and Shichman (1986) point out, motivational orientation, the personality of each player, and specific situational constraints help determine communication styles. In other words, communication alone does not guarantee a successful resolution to conflict. Perceived similarity in beliefs and attitudes, a willingness to be helpful, open communication, a trusting and friendly attitude, sensitivity to common interests, downplaying differences, and attention to absolute, as opposed to relative power all help encourage cooperation. But what happens when cooperation does not emerge? Deutsch (1983) refers to destructive conflicts as "malignant social processes." He points to a number of critical elements involved in such malignant conflicts: (1) an anarchic social situation; (2) a zero-sum orientation; (3) internal conflicts within one or both of the parties; (4) cognitive rigidity; (5) misperceptions; (6) conflicting commitments; (7) destructive self-fulfilling prophecies; (8) escalating spirals; and (9) gamesmanship, where the conflict becomes less about real issues and more about who wins or loses. How can such malignant processes be resolved? Deutsch (1983) points to several strategies for deescalation of conflict. One is Osgood's Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension Reduction (GRIT) strategy, whereby each side announces and then takes small steps toward deescalation in turn. Second, Fischer and Ury (1981) argue for the effective use of principled negotiation. Principled negotiation is comprised of four procedures: separate the person from the problem; focus on interests rather than positions; generate options for mutual gain; and evaluate outcomes on the basis of some objective standard unrelated to the parties' positions. Last, third parties can help to reduce or eliminate conflict through a variety of mechanisms, including allowing parties to save face; facilitating communication; regulating costs; finding additional resources; reinforcing norms; and proving legitimacy (Deutsch 1973). Each side might gain advantage in the negotiating process through a variety of strategies as well (Deutsch and Shichman 1986). Being ignorant, in reality or on purpose, can sometimes gen-

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erate more advantageous outcomes (Schelling 1960). Being tough by setting high goals, making strong demands, and offering few concessions can backfire. While lower demands and higher rates of concession might facilitate an agreement (Harnett and Vincelette 1978), it might also backfire if the other side interprets such efforts as a sign of weakness. Threats or promises might also be used to induce cooperation from the other side. Promises tend to increase the chances of reaching successful agreement, while threats appear to reduce the chances of reaching such an agreement. Promises lead to greater cooperation, greater efficiency, and higher joint profits than threats (Cheney et al. 1972; Lewicki and Rubin 1974). Legitimacy is also greater with promises than with threats. Credibility, on the other hand, appears to be influenced by several factors, including the strength, reliability, capacity, and commitment of the source. Clarity and precision in the specification of contingencies increases the chances of effective communication and persuasion (Deutsch and Shichman 1986). Biases in Negotiation

Once a crisis has gotten under way, many diplomats, negotiators, and government officials begin to try to find a peaceful resolution to the event. These negotiation strategies are often very complex (see Bazerman 2000 for a review). Several cognitive biases tend to persist in influencing negotiator behavior in ways that can lead to suboptimal outcomes. Max Bazerman (1986) delineated five cognitive mistakes that negotiators typically make that help explain why negotiations fail. The first and most important of these is the fixed-pie fallacy: a negotiator believes that the interests of each side are in automatic conflict. This assumption leads negotiators to believe that if they want to profit from the negotiation, the other side must lose. The conflict is viewed in zero-sum terms where one side's gain necessarily represents the other side's loss. Negotiations turn out to be much more successful when participants do not start with this notion. If they do not begin with a zero-sum assumption, they find it easier to avoid making escalating demands and to shift their thinking and their proposals into a more positive format. Bazerman (1986) presents additional problematic biases as well. These include the failure to develop the necessary expertise to gain as much information about the issue at stake as the other side possesses. In addition, failure to realize that continuing or escalat-

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ing the conflict may be a mistake can prove quite destructive in attempting peaceful resolutions to conflict. Overconfidence proves lethal for the ultimate success of negotiations as well. Negotiators benefit from trying harder to understand the other side's position. If negotiators remain aware of their tendency toward overconfidence, they are more likely to consider the other side's concerns and to attempt to change their perceptions in a more positive way. Reframing the situation in as positive a light as possible can find potential areas of overlap and cooperation; the failure to do this is a missed opportunity. In applying his analysis to environmental issues and concerns, Bazerman et al. (1999) argue that failure in negotiations can result from inhibiting a discussion of potential beneficial trade-offs that might combine each side's interests in a constructive way. Certain biases exacerbate this problem within the environmental domain in particular. These include the pseudo sacredness of the issue itself, egocentrism, overconfidence, unreasonable optimism, and the endowment effect. Encouraging each side to entertain trade-offs in a more realistic fashion can achieve successful conflict resolution by helping each side to see that the losses they might suffer will not be as great as the gains they will achieve. Leigh Thompson and Janice Nadler (2000) present ways to overcome the negative impact of biased cognitions on successful negotiation. They argue that negotiators can engage in tactics that can reduce the likelihood of intransigence and increase the probability of successful negotiation. First, negotiators should seek to simplify the conflict. Second, they should do their best to accurately perceive and understand their opponent. Third, negotiators should strive to get beyond the false dichotomy between cooperation and conflict. In particular, each side needs to understand that by agreeing to take small losses, larger gains can be obtained. Finally, egocentrism, particularly surrounding issues of fairness, can prove an incredible obstacle to effective conflict resolution. Thompson and Nadler suggest that performance feedback and analogy training can help ameliorate the negative impact of cognitive biases on negotiation in helpful ways. In particular, they argue that building trust, sharing information, asking questions, making multiple offers simultaneously, and continuing to find post-settlement solutions can achieve successful conflict resolution. Next, three psychological obstacles to effective conflict resolution processes will be discussed in greater length.

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Optimistic Overconfidence

Many negotiators suffer from a severe case of optimistic overconfidence (Stillinger and Ross 1991; Kahneman and Tversky 2000b). Negotiators assume that because they know about what is happening on their side, they can control and predict future outcomes affecting both sides. This is often closely related to the belief that their side will prevail. Obviously, this perspective fails to account sufficiently for what is going on with the other side in the dispute. Each side's belief in its ultimate success decreases the likelihood of concessions on both sides, even when resolution is desired and seen as likely by all sides. Each side believes it can get what it wants without having to give up much in order to do so. Resistance to offering concessions leads to behavior that can be quite counterproductive. For instance, when Israel bulldozed the Palestinian residences in the Gaza Strip in early 200l, they clearly provided the incentive for the creation of Palestinian suicide bombers who wanted reprisal. However, Israel remains convinced that only tough action will punish the terrorists and prevent them from taking further action against the Israelis. Yet more recent conflicts in the area appear to demonstrate that the harsher the punishment, the less security is achieved. There have been more attacks against Israel, including suicide bombers in highly populated areas, as the violence and repression of the Palestinians has escalated. This comment is not made to criticize one side or the other, but rather to show that confidence in the righteousness of one's own cause, combined with a refusal to offer concessions, can reduce the prospects of peace for all. Optimistic overconfidence means that uncalibrated assessments of probabilities are more extreme and positive than the knowledge of a given judge can justify. In other words, people are more confident than they have reason to be given the information they possess in situations where they only know one side of the story. Studies in jury decision making show that a jury that has individuals advocating both sides of the issue is more likely to be accurate, as well as less confident of its decision, than juries where all the evaluators gravitate to only one side. This means, ironically, that split verdicts are typically more accurate while the jurors remain less confident than is the case with unanimous verdicts. In another example of the prevalence and impact of overconfidence on decision making, a professor of decision making administers multiple-choice exams to students where they not only have to pro-

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vide the correct answer, but are also required to make assessments as to how confident they are that their answer is right. Reasonable confidence can be rewarded, as when a student says that she is not at all certain of an incorrect answer. However, overconfidence proves lethal. When a student is wrong, but indicates that he is 100 percent confident of his answer, he receives a negative infinity as his grade. At the beginning of the semester, students tend to be very overconfident of their judgments, but as they find that they are penalized for their overconfidence, their level of confidence drops and their performance improves. In this way, students learn that overconfidence can hinder performance, and thus they learn to exhibit not overconfidence but appropriately calibrated confidence. Indeed, narrow confidence intervals, which occur when both sides hold high degrees of confidence about their ultimate victory, lead to breakdowns in negotiations. The reason for overconfidence rests in individuals' tendency to undervalue those aspects of the situation that they know nothing about. This phenomenon is clearly demonstrated in experiments in betting behavior. When individuals are skilled at a game, they tend to prefer those games, such as card games of skill, even when the odds are against them. When betting on football or other sports games, people who know something about the game tend to veer away from the safe choices. However, people who are not skilled at a particular game are less likely to bet in this way; such people tend to prefer games of chance like roulette to those of skill (Heath and Tversky 1990). Similarly, presidents tend to be active in areas where they are confident about their skills. This may be part of the reason why some presidents prefer domestic politics, while others are more likely to assert themselves in international affairs. The tendency to undervalue aspects of a situation that an individual knows nothing about leads him to overestimate his chances for success in negotiation. In addition, such a negotiator will also overestimate his ability to impose his preferred solution on the opponent, while resisting the adversary's attempts to impose his preferred solution. This dynamic results in the fallacy of the initiative, whereby each negotiator attributes less initiative, will, and imagination to the opponent than to himself. Such negotiators tend to be less willing to make concessions because they do not believe they have to in order to win. Overconfident individuals may also accept risks because they deny that there is any risk involved at all in a particu-

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lar crisis. For example, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice claimed on Nightline that there were no elements of crisis in the spy plane incident with China discussed earlier. In cases like this, leaders might accept high levels of risk precisely because optimistic overconfidence leads them to deny the risks in the first place or to believe they can beat the odds if the crisis escalates. The tendency to underestimate the strength of the opponent's position often makes it less likely that a negotiator will make concessions. Such negotiator intransigence, especially if present on both sides, reduces the likelihood that any negotiated settlement can be reached at all. Negotiators make their forecasts and estimates about which side will win based on a combination of individuating factors within the particular case and the statistics from similar cases in the past. Individuating factors about the inside of a particular case can be especially vivid, concrete, and emotionally engaging, while the statistics of past events rarely are. This means that often forecasts become biased in favor of the individual information that a negotiator has rather than on past statistics. But people underuse the base rate in their predictions to their own peril (see the discussion of the representativeness heuristic in chap. 3). While negotiators should base their estimates on past outcomes from a normative standpoint, they more often fall prey to a whole host of judgmental heuristics (Borgida and Nisbett 1977; Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky 1982). Forecasts come to be based on plans that rest on best-case scenario anchoring; each negotiator believes that she can prevail with relatively few concessions. In addition, estimates are easily influenced by negotiators' assessments of the intentions of various parties. While they might be right in their assessments about their own intentions, it is easy to be misguided about the intentions of others, who may wish to hide true preferences in order to achieve a better outcome. Optimistic overconfidence is not all bad, however; it carries some advantages. First, overconfidence can increase a negotiator's persistence and commitment when things begin to look bad. If the negotiator truly believes that she can ultimately win, she is more likely to keep trying to reach a settlement. Second, overconfidence can increase the negotiator's ability to tolerate suffering. Again, if a negotiator is convinced that victory remains a step away, shortterm setbacks are not viewed as lethal to the overall process. In this way, optimistic overconfidence fosters a feeling that one's own side will ultimately prevail and thereby increases com-

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mitment and persistence to the negotiation process in the face of setbacks. Virtually deadlocked conflicts can thus sometimes be resolved because of this kind of participant tenacity. For example, it would seem that the procedure to elect a new pope when the old one dies is essentially impossible. The cardinals who meet to elect him have often never met before, arrive from different regions, hold diverse agendas, and speak different languages. However, they bind themselves by not allowing anyone to leave the room until they agree on a candidate and elect a new pope, and thus they succeed in finding one when by all objective standards they should not be able to do SO.1 Self-binding strategies assure that a resolution will be found, because some kind of resolution is the only viable alternative. Similarly, negotiating states might bind themselves with their own domestic population in order to signal to the adversary their level of commitment to finding a resolution to a given conflict, or to go to war, or to do whatever else they have pledged to do. Uncertainty

Another obstacle to conflict resolution is uncertainty. Preference for certainty is often enhanced when high degrees of vagueness or ambiguity exist in a given situation. This dynamic can lead decision makers to underestimate the value or likelihood of some significant secondary gain policy outcomes, such as goodwill, that can't be measured as easily or accurately as the number of weapons, for example. Within negotiations, people are typically uncertain about the outcome and also about the facts of the situation. They can be uncertain not only about the goals of the other side, but also about their own objectives and what concessions they might be willing to offer or accept as well. This happens when the process of negotiation itself begins to change individuals' goals or strategies. The effects of uncertainty on decision making are related both to judgmental heuristics as well as to the weighting function of prospect theory. In particular, certain outcomes are psychologically weighted out of proportion to their actual objective probability. The most provocative demonstration of this comes from an experiment conducted by Richard Zeckhauser, who asked subjects how much they would pay to eliminate specific bullets from a gun 1. This example comes from Lee Ross.

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in a hypothetical game of six-shooter Russian roulette. Objectively, people should pay the same amount, since each bullet reduces the probability of death by an identical amount, a little over 16 percent. Yet they are willing to pay much more to remove the first or the last bullet than any ofthose in between (as reported by PIous 1993). The reason for this bias relates to the effect of certainty: making death at least somewhat uncertain by removing the first bullet, or making it impossible by removing the last, carries much more psychological weight than removing any bullets in between. In this way, negotiators tend to concentrate on what they can see and measure, a process Jervis (1993) refers to as the "drunkard's search" (the drunk looks for his keys under the lamp because that is where the light is, and not necessarily because that is where he lost his keys). Other side effects of negotiated outcomes that may prove even more valuable in the long run, such as generating goodwill or trust, do not remain the focus of negotiation because they are harder to verify or measure. And things that are hard to measure are hard to know how to value. In arms control negotiations, even when large reductions were not achieved between the United States and the Soviet Union, the process itself helped to generate some element of trust and goodwill, which could not necessarily be expected beforehand but raised the possibility of new strategies of conflict reduction by the end. The Cuban missile crisis, for example, led to the establishment of a hotline between Washington and Moscow so that leaders might confer directly during a crisis and also to the Limited Test Ban Treaty to protect the environment from nuclear fallout as a result of testing. States often use various kinds of signals to decrease uncertainty, recognizing that uncertainty can lead to unwanted conflict. Nations can issue assurances that may be based on contingent certainty. For instance, the sanctions that the United States imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War were linked to verifiable disarmament of weapons of mass destruction. If Iraq allowed the United Nations to inspect for such weapons, sanctions could be lifted. In this way, the certainty of sanctions being lifted was contingent upon allowing inspections. Without such inspection, sanctions were certain. Similarly, in the 1973 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, agreement was based on the condition that one anti-ballistic missile site on each side could be protected. The rationale behind the treaty was to preserve the vulnerability of the United States and the Soviet Union to each other, which was the basis of mutual assured destruction and the deterrence doctrine. However, each

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country was allowed to have one system that could guard against incoming ballistic missiles. In this instance, uncertainty promoted stability by ensuring that a preemptive strike appeared less attractive to both sides, since neither side could ensure that a first strike could be fully effective with some missile defenses in place. However, the United States and the Soviet Union had different ideas about what was most important to protect with such technology. While the United States believed that the best course of action was to protect missile silos that housed retaliatory weapons, the USSR placed its point defense around Moscow to protect the city and its citizenry. Another part of the dilemma of uncertainty arises because the aspects of a given situation that are uncertain tend to be underweighted by decision makers. As a result, each side believes that it will be able to obtain the outcome it wants. In such cases of pseudodominance, each side is confident about the course of action it has undertaken but may not consider other factors that preclude the desired outcome. Loss Aversion

Loss aversion, also arising out of prospect theory, posits that there is an asymmetric evaluation ofloss and gain, such that people tend to overvalue what they have relative to what they don't have (Kahneman and Tversky 1979, 1984). Most people tend to place different weights on the same degree of positive or negative outcome, such that negative ones carry much more psychological weight. Concession aversion, whereby different evaluations are made depending on whether a concession is offered or received, is common. Negotiators do not treat what the other side offers to give up as being as important as what they have offered to give up. In this way, each side values what it has more than what the other side offers to give up in a negotiation. In other words, an equal exchange does not feel equal to either side; each side would only feel comfortable with an unequal exchange that benefited itself. Such an exchange is difficult to achieve, for obvious reasons: each side can easily end up feeling that the other side got the better part of the deal simply because they value what they had more than what the other side had, or offered to give up. Making concessions feels worse than gaining benefits. Thus, for these structural reasons alone, both sides end up risk averse to concessions. This leads to a bias toward the status quo, since the range of acceptable agree-

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ments becomes restricted. Negotiators should realize that agreements are most likely when concession aversion can be overcome. This happens most effectively when the agreement manages to reduce the other side's losses, and least if it supports their strongest areas, and thus ends up threatening one's own side. As prospect theory suggests, different values are attached to equal amounts of gains and losses. The status quo point can easily be seen as an acceptable alternative to making concessions. Sometimes concessions are less valued simply because they are offered by the opponent. The logic behind this assumption is that if the adversary appears willing to give something up, it must not be worth much, because the adversary would never really give up anything important without being forced to do so. In order to overcome the tendency to devalue what the other side gives up (Lee Ross calls this process "reactive devaluation"), negotiators might offer a menu of concessions and ask the adversary to choose among them (Stillinger and Ross 1991). In this way, the opponent is forced to pick the concession they value the most and will then have greater difficulty maintaining consistency with an argument that claims that the concession was without value. Conversely, one side can offer a set of demands and let the other choose which concession they will make. The goal, from the perspective of conflict resolution, is for each side to find ways of reducing the costs of the other side's concessions to them. Most important, each side needs to avoid imposing undue costs on the other, since this alone might break a deal. For instance, when the United States wanted Ukraine to give up its nuclear arsenal at the end of the Cold War, it offered to provide financial assistance, including money, to dismantle the weapons and more. Ukraine was thus able to absorb the high political costs associated with dismantling the nuclear weapons by using them as a bargaining chip to obtain crucial U.S. economic aid. Relative reference points often influence negotiators' sense of procedural fairness or unfairness in a given outcome as well. For example, bargaining games such as Divide the Dollar show that, especially for groups that confront discrimination, the fairness of the outcome itself becomes a major factor in approving an agreement, regardless of the actual amount of money gained or lost (Eavey and Miller 1984). While there are some negotiators who are concerned only with absolute gains for their own side, others do worry about relative gains in terms of how much they benefit relative to others. Such differences occur in international relations,

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where it is often argued that states pursue absolute gains in some realms such as trade and finance, while pursuing relative gains in security arenas. Thus the specific area of negotiation will matter in determining which bargaining style a participant wants to embrace, as well as the likelihood that it will offer concessions or reach agreements. Terrorism

Since September 11, few doubt the power and destruction that can be wrought by dedicated terrorists. Terrorism has been a major interstate and domestic problem for many years, but only now has reached the level of a war, declared or otherwise. Before September 11, most Americans thought of terrorism as something awful that happened "somewhere else," though that was not entirely true. Ever since Timothy McVeigh blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, some officials have been aware of the potential threat posed by dedicated terrorists, whether domestic or alien. In the case of Oklahoma City in 1995, most people immediately jumped to the conclusion that this atrocity had been perpetrated by some militant group in the Middle East. However, when officials determined that the attack had been the brainchild of a domestic loner, perceptions changed. While the horror of the act was not diminished, people found it easier to dismiss McVeigh as an atypical right-wing nut case and thus not see his actions as a harbinger of similar things to come. The first attack on the World Trade Center was different. This attack, in 1993, killed eight people, and investigators eventually traced the attack to Islamic fundamentalists tied to Osama bin Laden. Officials caught their big break in that case when the driver of a truck that was supposed to be involved in the attack returned the vehicle to the rental agency, asking for his money back. At that time, the government prosecuted four men for their involvement, including Ramsey Y ousseff. One of the government's witnesses had been a member of the al Qaeda network but had stolen money from bin Laden because he believed that bin Laden paid the Egyptians more than the other Arab members. He then ran. This person provided state's evidence in return for witness protection. During the course of these investigations, the government discovered and thwarted plans for a systematic terrorist attack on New York that was to target the Lincoln and Holland Tunnel, as well as the UN building. During the course of these trials, the government was

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able to arrest a famous blind Islamic cleric named Sheik Omar Abdel Rachman. Rachman had been one of bin Laden's central spiritual and ideological mentors. Again, at that time, most people were unaware ofthese activities and were not too concerned about terrorism on U.S. territory. All this changed on September 11, 2001, when bin Laden's operatives were able to hijack four planes and use them as missiles to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A fourth plane was intended to hit the White House, apparently, but this attempt was thwarted by four heroic passengers, led by Todd Beamer, who tried to overpower the hijackers. This plane crashed in Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. Terror is a weapon of the weak; it is a tactic used by those who feel they have no other voice for change. This makes terrorists particularly dangerous and threatening, because they have nothing to lose and will even resort to suicide to try to achieve their goals. Terrorists get to pick the time and place and form of violence, and the defender is often able only to pick up the pieces, as happened with the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11. And terrorists excel at fighting such asymmetrical wars. While the manifestations of terrorism may have different appearances, the underlying motivations and goals are often quite similar. The interview with Timothy McVeigh before he was executed illustrates many of the classic characteristics of terrorists in general. He refused final appeals of his sentence because he was determined to die sooner rather than later, and he moved to deny any stay of execution by the governor. He expressed no regrets for his actions, which caused the families of many of the victims great consternation and pain. When asked if he felt guilty about the death of all the children in the day-care center who were killed in his attack, he claimed that they represented "collateral damage." McVeigh argued that his intention in blowing up the Federal Building was to demonstrate the violence of the state. Therefore, he decided to bomb the Federal Building on the two-year anniversary of the government action against David Koresh's cult in Waco, Texas, where the government's action cost the lives of almost all of the members of the cult. Ironically, McVeigh himself had been trained in bomb making by the U.S. military. McVeigh claimed that he knew he would be caught and killed by the state. Taking full responsibility for his actions, he spoke with complete conviction of the righteousness of his cause. He espoused and represented an ideology impenetrable to contrary interpretations or information.

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The psychology of terrorism has been studied for over twenty years now. Most terrorism is not carried out by a single person but is instead sponsored by states or large nonstate organizations like al Qaeda either directly or indirectly. However, oftentimes terrorists use themselves as instruments to achieve certain goals without involving their sponsor's apparatus. In a study of the Israeli-Palestinian area, Friedland and Merari (1985) argued that terrorism creates fear that goes way beyond the actual physical threat to most people. Yet the randomness and uncontrollability of the terror exacerbate the fear enormously. Interestingly, they found that terror has mostly failed, in this context at least, to change any of the political beliefs or values that the terrorists opposed. In other words, increased terror did not result in an increased willingness on the part of the targeted population to offer political concessions to the terrorists. The authors found that people's resistance to changing their political values or beliefs is a function not only of the intensity of the terror but also of the perceived importance of the terrorists' demands. Because terror is widely viewed to be an illegitimate form of political action, many people become even more hardened in their positions against the terrorists as a result of their violent action. This finding obviously raises questions about the ultimate usefulness of terror as an effective instrument of political change. Yet the question of motivation for individual terrorists obviously still remains. Most work maintains that terrorists are not mentally ill (Rausch 1979). Indeed, Knutson argued (1984a, 1984b) on the basis of extensive interviews with captive terrorists, that most were ambivalent about the use of violence to achieve their ends. Indeed, she considered many of them to be "psychologically nonviolent" because they spent so much time trying to find ways to create maximum fear with minimal deaths (Knutson 1984a, 1984b). Crenshaw (1986) argues that terrorists are more likely to be "stress-seekers" than inherently ill or violent in nature. Some individuals seek stress in a kind of counterphobic way. Others seek stress as part of a group in order to abandon themselves to the group. Crenshaw suggests that most terrorists join violent organizations in order to be part of a group representing something larger than themselves: "Ideologies, then, are guardians of identity" (1986, 391). Bollinger's (1981) psychoanalytic analysis also suggests that terrorists join groups to help with their identity formation. The group provides members with meaning, purpose, structure, stability, assurance, and security. It also offers members

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a kind of family, filled with protection, support, and human connection. Crenshaw (1986) argues that this sense of family ultimately becomes more important to members than any political goals. Once enmeshed in such a community, it can be hard to leave the group, not only because of the emotional cohesion and solidarity established through lives of high stress and omnipresent danger but also because appropriate social alternatives narrow as each individual commits more acts of terror. In this context, leaders can spend as much time maintaining control over the group as accomplishing their political goals (Verba 1961). Leaders must thus represent pure exemplars of the faith, communicating beliefs and staying true to group norms. Sullwold (1981) argues that terrorist leaders are of two types: either extroverted, cold, selfish, and unstable or else hostile, paranoid, suspicious, defensive, and aggressive. State-Sponsored Terrorism

State-sponsored terrorism, on the other hand, has several characteristics in common with nonstate terrorism regarding selection procedures, retention strategies, and learning. Each of these will be discussed in turn, followed by an overview of factional terror, such as is committed by suicide bombers and hijackers. Recruitment A major study on recruiting individuals to join state-run terrorist organizations was conducted using state-sponsored torturers in Greece (Haritos-Fatouros 1988). This study provides a great deal of information about how such groups select and recruit participants. In this study, recruiters begin by scanning the countryside to look for families that are poor but patriotic and conservative. In particular, recruiters seek out families that espouse strong anticommunist beliefs, since communists have been the main source of government opposition and thus remain the main target of Greek government repression. Government recruiters want the young men to start out with negative feelings toward their future victims. These feelings will be strengthened during training with all sorts of anticommunist propaganda. Selected families tend to have a high respect for authority, a characteristic that the recruiters prize. They choose young men for whom the job will provide a big break, young men who would otherwise live their lives unemployed and in poverty. They supply these young men with badges and uniforms,

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and make them feel that they are part of something bigger and more important than just themselves. When such men are chosen, it bestows great status on their families in their villages as well. In the next step, recruiters must induce loyalty and create a community among these young men who have been selected out of poverty for a position of potential wealth, power, and influence. Perhaps counterintuitively, one of the ways recruiters build such a sense of community and self-esteem is to train the recruits to endure beatings. Just as in the Milgram experiment, these "sample" beatings are never as severe as the ones their victims will eventually endure. But the experience of surviving beatings gives the future torturers the sense that beatings can be endured, that men who are strong and good such as themselves can survive with pride and strength intact. Beatings also serve to induce obedience to superiors and intolerance of disobedience from inferiors and victims. Recruiters watch for those who continually volunteer for the hardest training; they select their elite torturers from among this group. The torturers are given high status, which ensures that the job remains highly prized. Just as a hazing ritual in a fraternity serves to make its members more loyal to the group and value their membership more, beatings achieve the same result for state torturers in Greece. Even with the high pay, young recruits cannot really justify undergoing torture and the prospect that they might eventually commit murder. Yet they also believe that they cannot go home to the countryside in disgrace and failure to their former life of poverty. This combination of high perceived choice and low justification provides the classic dissonance paradigm. The same result occurs in this instance as in the classic Festinger experiment: recruits change their attitudes about torture and come to see it as less horrific and more justified than they might have thought beforehand. In fact, only 1.5 percent of those selected and trained to become torturers drop out of the program before completion. Retention After select recruits are picked for elite training, leaders seek to bind these young men to both their authority figures as well as to the comrades in their particular subgroup. The initiation beatings begin this process. Such binding rituals continue to be incorporated into training. As self-perception theory suggests, attitudes are inferred from behavior, so in addition to the original dissonance attitude change, recruits reinforce their new beliefs by

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watching their own behavior in training. If a young man witnesses himself doing hard and cruel things, he explains it to himself in terms of how brave and strong he must be, how superior to others, how important the cause is, how much he values the group, and how belonging to the group justifies any behavior he must do. Similar rituals take place in the u.S. Navy as well. For instance, in a long-standing tradition, when a sailor crosses the equator for the first time, he is put through an ordeal by his comrades. His body might be rubbed with sandpaper and then doused with seawater, for example. Yet no one complains to the navy brass about this because the need to belong to the group is so strong, and this behavior takes place on the navy's own turf, away from the watchful eyes of the outside media. Binding rituals aimed at recruitment and retention often restrict the satisfaction of primary needs as well. The recruiting tactics of the Moonies in California in the 1970s and 1980s demonstrate this strategy clearly. Moonies would approach people who looked lost or confused in large crowded areas of displacement, like the airport or bus station. They would befriend the targets and then invite them to social occasions, perhaps a dinner or picnic. After a while, the target recruit would be invited for the weekend to an isolated ranch in Boonville, northern California. There the recruits would be deprived of all food except coffee and donuts and engage in near-frantic physical exercise such as volleyball or chanting for many hours at a time. In addition, the recruits were never left alone and were given very little sleep. This combination of high caffeine and sugar intake with constant physical activity and intense socialization worked to make recruits unable to detach from the current situation. The analytical parts of their minds were distracted. This made recruits, who were often displaced from any real family connections at the time anyway, particularly vulnerable and susceptible to the persuasive messages about the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, his organization, and his goals (Hassan 1988). The purpose of these strategies is to restrict both the will and the ability of the recruit to resist the messages of the leader and the power of the group. Once within the group, members often develop their own jargon and rituals that lead to and reinforce their sense of being special, unique, and superior to others. Such rituals can often serve other purposes as well. For example, the ritual of painting the nicknames of fighter pilots on their aircraft serves to remind all the pilots that they are interchangeable and perishable in some fundamental way. Losing "Sodbuster" in a

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dogfight may mean something different from losing a man with a name and identity distinct from his job. This loss of individuality serves to remind these pilots that they are special only as part of an elite group, and not on their own. Learning Once an individual is part of a group, how does that group or organization teach, train, and change the recruit? There are three main ways in which recruits learn and change their behavior as a result of training by the group or organization. First, in any training process, overlearning helps to make actions and behaviors automatic, conducted without thought or question. Actions that are performed over and over again in drill become effortless. All drills, in some way, are aimed at burning the sequence of necessary actions into implicit or procedural memory, which automatically controls physical motor skills and abilities without conscious thought. Learning to drive a car involves this process. At first, there seems to be way too much to do, and it is very hard to learn to combine steering with braking and shifting gears, putting your foot on the accelerator, looking around, and so on. With time and practice, the task becomes completely effortless, so that there is almost no conscious thought or effort unless danger presents itself. Indeed, people who talk on the phone, eat, put on makeup, look at maps, listen to the radio, have fights, and so on in cars simply prove the point. The driving becomes overlearned to the point where it takes so little conscious effort that there seems to be plenty of time and energy left over for other tasks. Only when there is some perceived danger in the car are drivers jerked into consciousness about their actual driving behavior itself. Under such circumstances, danger arises from not paying sufficient conscious attention to the task of driving itself. Recruits in boot camp are taught to drop down and do pushups whenever commanded to do so not only for punishment and the development of upper body strength, but to reinforce and inculcate automatic, effortless, thoughtless obedience to authority. In some instances, as in battle, such blind obedience under the right leadership can save a life; under bad leadership, it can cost a life. Second, role modeling offers a way for recruits to learn the ways of the group. The people who are in charge of the new recruits are specially chosen to project the idealized image of the recruit's new identity. In the U.S. military, for example, boot camp

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leaders are usually stern but have a heart of gold underneath; they train raw recruits harshly in the hopes that such action will help them survive in battle. These character types exist in the cultural consciousness and are often portrayed in movies. For example, such characters have been effectively acted by former real-life boot camp leader Lee Ermey as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in the first half of Stanley Kubrick's brilliant but deeply flawed Full Metal Jacket. Louis Gossett Jr. also played an effective sergeant trying to tame the recalcitrant recruit characterized by Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman. For many career military officers, their boot camp sergeant serves as a lifetime role model; many have a picture of their leader stashed somewhere in the house, if not prominently displayed. Such constant and prominent displays demonstrate the endurance and power of early socialization in the context of a total environment, whether they be military boot camps or isolated colleges like Bennington. Third, both positive and negative reinforcement serve to consolidate loyalty to the group. Negative reinforcement can take the form of threats, intimidation, and punishment of recruits who fall out of line. Positive reinforcement includes those material and social gains, especially a sense of belonging, that make group membership valuable to participants. Factional Terrorism

Factional terror typically involves nonstate actors trying to put pressure on certain states in order to gain certain benefits, including statehood or independence. The organizational structure of many of these groups is quite similar. Whether the group represents the Irish Republican Army or a Protestant paramilitary group in Northern Ireland, Palestinians in the Middle East, or al Qaeda's worldwide terrorist network, the operational cells tend to be small, about four or five individuals. Only one individual may maintain contacts outside the group. This strategy protects the whole organization from being discovered if anyone member is caught by an enemy. Factional terrorist groups typically try to achieve very specific goals. Hijacking was the activity of choice in the early 1970s. In those instances, as long as hostages kept calm and cooperated, they were often let go unharmed at the end of a negotiated settlement. The rules of hijacking for passengers clearly changed on Sep-

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tember 11. Hijacking is not simply restricted to planes or ships, however. Overland hijacking of truck convoys allows terrorists or bandits to steal equipment or food intended for other parties. This happened frequently in Somalia during the United States's disastrous involvement there in the early 1990s. It was quite common for Chechen rebels to raid Russian bases in nearby regions to restore depleted ammunition stocks, and it has happened frequently over the course of the war in parts of Afghanistan. Suicide bombers constitute a case unto themselves. Until recently, suicide bombers were usually single, poor young men who would tape a crude bomb to their body and go into a crowded place in an enemy area and set themselves off, hoping to cause as much damage as possible. This is the typical case among Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel, where a young, frustrated, unemployed man might feel that he could do more good with his death than his life. Revenge for past injustices or deaths caused by Israeli military action inspired a number of such suicide bombers. Such suicide bombers are often treated as heroes by their native populations. Suicide bombers working for Hamas are guaranteed that their families will be given nice apartments and subsidies after their death. Sadly, in this way, many of these young men can do more for their family financially, in death, than they could ever accomplish in a life constrained by poverty. The al Qaeda suicide bombers appear to be quite different. Many were older, married, and educated and had spent years in the United States planning their attack. The question for psychologists then becomes how the organization managed to continue to command loyalty from such a distance for so long. Typical strategies for mind control, including isolated surroundings, do not seem to operate under these circumstances. The videotape found in Afghanistan of bin Laden celebrating the attacks raises the possibility that operatives followed directives because not all of them knew that it was a suicide mission. But what of those who did? Some evidence suggests that followers did not truly recognize the division between life and death as real; death was made alive to them, with specific stories about special rewards that awaited them, including sex with seventy-two virgins. One of the lead hijackers in the September 11 attacks, Mohammad Atta, left a suicide note with specific instructions about how his body was to be prepared for burial. Surely no educated person who realistically understood the risks could imagine that after smashing an airliner

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into a skyscraper, he would end up with an intact body afterward. A certain amount of denial of death is necessary for such thinking to occur (Becker 1973). Hostage taking has become increasingly popular as well. Hostages are typically hijacked for one of two reasons. First, as is common in Latin America, hostages are taken for ransom money to fund certain groups for fighting. Second, hostages are sometimes taken because they are believed to hold important information or because they can provide large-scale publicity for a given cause. The disappearance of a Harvard medical school specialist in anthrax following a conference after September 11 caused some officials to wonder if he had been taken hostage for information he could provide on anthrax and germ warfare. The experience of being a hostage is obviously stressful. Deprivation of freedom, physical mobility, and power is quite taxing. Physical deprivations can be harsh as well. Victims can have changes in their immune system that can cause illness, and the person's ability to think and act as before are compromised (Crenshaw 1986). Coping mechanisms include denial, task orientation, aggression, and humor. Perhaps the best-known reaction among hostages is the Stockholm syndrome, whereby the hostages bond with their captors in a form of identification with the aggressor (Kuleshnyk 1984). Most terrorist groups' real objective is not necessarily the positive attainment of their ultimate goal but rather getting enough negative power to stop particular actions. For instance, certain groups might want to sabotage the implementation of a cease-fire or peace agreement because they do not approve of it and do not believe that it serves their needs. More important for many terrorists is the desire to stay part of the group. Once isolated from the outside world, all sense of human connection comes through the group, and the individual will do a great deal to maintain those bonds (Lelyveld 2001). Knutson (1984a, 1984b) argued that if the United States wants to diminish or eliminate the prospect for terror in the future, it must begin to deal with the causes, not just the symptoms. She believed, based on extensive interviews, that terrorism was based on a foundation of rage and hopelessness resulting from the inability to enter the policy-making process in legitimate ways. She argued that the historical experience of the United States regarding civil rights should have taught us two things. First, violence against those who terrorize us does not provide a long-term stable

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basis for peace. Second, showing a willingness to really hear the concerns of those who have been oppressed, along with a sincere effort to address some of the social ills that can motivate aggressive action, can provide a permanent answer to violence. Rather than adopting the garrison model of the Israelis, Knutson advocated a more creative response on the part of the U.S. government, one that would protect the right to seek lawful change through established peaceful channels and enforce the law against those who resort to violent action. She argued that this can happen if the United States refuses to supply weapons of any kind to belligerents in conflict. Second, the United States must make every attempt to move violence into political channels of discussion. The United States should protest any time there is a use of violence for purposes of political change either by terrorists or their opponents. Finally, the United States should enter the war for the hearts and minds of men, in particular, to resist violence and pursue peaceful avenues of change. Her arguments rest on the assumption that a particular terrorist group will want to join in legitimate avenues of change; when this is not the case, structuring effective change becomes more challenging. Obviously, after September 11, a great deal of new research into the causes and motivations for terrorism, as well as possible avenues of intervention and prevention, will take place. These studies are likely to tell us a great deal more about what terrorists believe, do, and hope for in their horrific actions. Then we can begin to try to figure out ways to prevent their emergence or restrain their activity. Conclusions

Political psychology can illuminate important processes in international relations, including decision making, crises, conflict resolution, and terrorism. Psychology can provide insight into some of the ways that decision making can go awry, thus offering potential ways to try to ameliorate these problems. Decision-making strategies to provide structure and assure a thorough evaluation of goals, risks, and potential benefits, even in times of crisis, could help a great deal in reducing the likelihood that defective choices could lead to inadvertent conflict. Crises that take place under conditions of high stress and time pressure force leaders to depend on previous standard operating procedures and strategies based on preplanned war games. Simu-

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lations using alternative actions during a crisis, using the specific event at hand, can suggest new solutions to avoid escalation. Conflict resolution represents a crucial aspect of the work ofnegotiators and diplomats. They need to be aware that overconfidence may make it harder to reach an agreement. Encouraging negotiators to imagine what they might do if they were on the opposite side might help balance overconfidence in a way that facilitates finding a resolution to entrenched conflicts. Terrorism presents both old and new fonns of political action on the part of nonstate or state-sponsored organizations. Learning more about the motivations and rewards for this behavior should help in finding alternative peaceful ways for people to express their frustrations and achieve change without violence. While states need not give in to terrorism, the experience of the PKK terrorist group in Turkey is instructive. After many years of violence directed toward the Turkish state in attempts to achieve greater political autonomy for the Kurds in the southeast, a combination of police work that resulted in the arrest of their leader in Kenya plus finding appropriate channels for the organization to participate in the legitimate Turkish political system, seems to have rechanneled the violence into more peaceful avenues (Adamson 2001). An important aspect of this shift was that the leader was put on trial and jailed, but not executed, so that he could not become a martyr or hero for his cause but rather remain an ineffectual detainee of the state.

CHAPTER 6

Emotion: Why Do We Love to Hate?

Emotion provides powerful experiences in our lives. We feel happiness when we are in love or have positive experiences like getting a great job or having a healthy baby. We can feel enormous anguish in the face of trials such as abuse, addiction, illness, betrayal, financial troubles, death, or unemployment. Our emotions serve to guide us through life, offering powerful reinforcements, both positive and negative, for our beliefs and actions. Few people examining their own lives would reject the power and prominence of emotion in daily life. Yet a great deal of scholarship, including predominant models in political science, do just that. They assume emotion away, arguing that at best it should be ignored, and at worst it can be disastrous, leading people into irrational and counterproductive choices. Yet modern neuropsychology indicates that rational decision making, where an individual considers costs and benefits, is in fact dependent on prior emotional processing. Indeed, individuals who cannot reference emotional memory because of brain lesions are unable to make rational decisions at all. Even by itself, this finding suggests that emotion, and not cognition, may eventually prove dominant in decision-making models as neurological exploration begins to uncover the biochemical basis of decision making. The treatment of emotion in the psychological literature has shifted over time. At the turn of the century, Freud (1923) argued that humans were driven by strong instincts, including the sex drive and the drive toward aggression. This position, which placed emotions front and center, held sway for over half a century. The behavioral revolution sparked by the work of B. F. Skinner (1938, 1953, 1972) in the 1950s and 1960s rejected the centrality of emotions and focused instead on observable behavior rather than internal feelings. This perspective succeeded in marginalizing many of Freud's ideas in academic psychology. The humanist revolution of the late 1960s, tied to the counterculture movement that opposed the war in Vietnam and exemplified by Carl Rogers 153

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(1961), concentrated on the study of feelings once again, although the emotions of interest were much more positive than the ones that concerned Freud. The cognitive revolution that swept through academic psychology in the 1980s and early 1990s changed the focus of psychology once again to the systematic study of cognitive processes, including thinking, learning, and memory. This work found its apex in the seminal work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman on judgment and decision making (Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky 1982). As technology has become more sophisticated, recent work in neuropsychology has produced a series of groundbreaking findings into the nature of the human brain and its functioning. More and more, this work demonstrates the integration of cognition and affect in human decision making and behavior. Such biologically based work will no doubt represent the primary wave of future research into the nature of emotion, its relationship to thoughts and actions, and its impact on political judgments and decisions. This chapter will review these developments. After a brief discussion of some of Freud's ideas and his critics, subsequent theories of emotion will be discussed. Then some more modern theories of emotion will be discussed, drawing on models from evolutionary psychology and neuroscience. Implications for international relations will be included throughout. Freud

Readers may already be familiar with many of Freud's ideas (see chaps. 2 and 7 for his influence on methodology and psychobiography). His ideas have proved seminal in the development oftwentieth-century thought concerning emotion. While Freud's ideas no longer hold sway in modern academic psychology, anyone who listens to talk radio, watches a talk show such as Oprah, or reads supermarket magazines recognizes the power that his ideas still hold in modern popular and self-help culture. Even the most intransigent cognitive psychologists will admit that Freud's insight into the existence of the unconscious is one of the single most important discoveries in the history of psychology. While they might dispute Freud's version of the content of the unconscious, few would contest how much of human awareness and brain activity happens beyond the level of conscious awareness. A neurologist by training, Freud lived in Vienna at the turn of the century when the machine age was at its peak. He was the orig-

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inator of the notion that human behavior is motivated by powerful inner forces, such as drives for sex and aggression, that act as fuel for the human "machine." At first Freud concentrated only on the libido, or sex drive, as the prime motivation for action. However, in a later attempt to try to get a handle on the carnage of World War I, he posited a second drive, Thanatos (the death urge), to try to explain why men threw themselves out of trenches into machine gun fire and certain slaughter on the battlefields. He attempted to explain the nature and power of the human mind, and the origin and course of human development, in terms of these powerful instinctual urges. Freud also wanted to explain abnormal personalities. One of his most famous cases involved a woman called Dora who presented with hysterical blindness. She could not see, although there was nothing physically wrong with her eyes. Freud diagnosed Dora's blindness as hysterical in nature (what would be called psychosomatic now). He posited that Dora made herself blind in response to seeing something that she could not tolerate witnessing, namely, the sight of her parents having sex. Rather than admit to the terrible sight, Dora literally made herself not see. Once Dora achieved this insight, she regained her sight. Freud was influenced in his work by Mesmer, the originator of hypnosis and the basis for the word mesmerized. Mesmer worked in a Paris hospital using hypnosis to great effect. Freud tried to use a related concept, free association, to probe his patients' minds. Many current-day psychotherapists continue to follow Freud's original model of talk therapy, letting patients speak openly and honestly about themselves in order to uncover thoughts or feelings that Freud believed to be hidden in the unconscious. Freud did not advocate this kind of treatment for mental conditions like schizophrenia. Talk therapy was intended from the outset for neurotics, not psychotics. Freudian psychology assumed that the core of human personality is intrapsychic and not a product of the external world. From this perspective, the impact that other people and objects have on the mind is what is important, not objective reality itself. Freud presumed that all behavior was motivated. Individuals are born with instinctual drives that are in tension with the social system that has been established to control and repress these urges. Freud divided this internal psyche into three parts: the ego, the id, and the superego. The ego aims at self-preservation. It is governed by the reality principle and helps guide an individual's

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behavior by negotiating between the id and the superego. The id is ruled by the pleasure principle. Its aim is pure hedonism: it wants what it wants, and it wants it now. The superego carries the voice of conscience, deriving from parental constraints that are later internalized. It operates in conflict with the id and is governed by the ego ideal, the projected sense of the idealized self. He posited five stages of psychosexual development that each person goes through in growing up: the oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital phases (chap. 7). Freud's main contribution to psychology was his discovery of the operation of the unconscious. His theory is one of psychic determinism, where all behavior is motivated by unconscious processes that are the result of past experiences and instinctual drives. While cognitive psychologists see the effect of the unconscious mainly in terms of heuristics, biases, and memory processes, they still acknowledge the legitimacy of the concept. Freud himself distinguished between manifest content, referring to what the person actually does, and latent content, which refers to those neurotic symptoms that are rooted in psychological, as opposed to biological, reality. Thus dreams and slips of the tongue were supposed to reflect unconscious psychic tensions. These manifestations of the unconscious must be interpreted and explored to prevent them from exerting unwanted and unexpected influence on other things throughout life. It should not be surprising, he claimed, that joking often contained a latent content of aggression and sexuality, since these feelings were the most likely to be repressed. Repression operates as a defense mechanism to protect the ego from experiencing or expressing aggressive and sexual impulses that are not socially acceptable. Repression exists to prevent shame and guilt from manifesting; rather than feeling bad about unacceptable urges, people never allow themselves to become aware of them in the first place. Anxiety is triggered when repressed conflicts are brought into the conscious mind, either through crisis, therapy, or some other mechanism. Criticisms of Freudian Theory

There have been many critiques leveled against Freudian theory over the years. First, the theory itself is conceptually vague, making scientific validation difficult. Operationalizing a concept like repression for experimental purposes can be quite challenging. For the most part, scholars have proved unable to demonstrate the

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operation of repression in any measured way, although many supporters of the idea simply claim that current methodology has not yet allowed for the correct assessment of its operation. Second, there have been ethical objections to the type of therapy advocated by this model. Psychiatrists or psychologists who probe, explore, and provoke their clients' unconscious, often challenging well-established defense mechanisms, may cause more distress than they might alleviate. Beyond that, as many readers may know from personal experience, insight does not always equal an immediate alleviation of symptoms. Sometimes defense systems exist for good reason, and people cannot function well without them. Is it ethical to rip apart someone's defense structures without knowing whether the person can handle it, or without knowing what might be put in its place? Third (and perhaps the most common criticism), Freudian psychology is criticized by many modern psychologists as simply bad science. The theory predicts future outcomes and behaviors poorly, at least on a wide scale. Most often, it is applied retrospectively, as when practitioners probe into a patient's childhood, when memories and impressions might be weak, misleading, or false. Because of memory characteristics like mood-congruent memory, many patients can easily remember bad things from their childhood merely because they are depressed; they forget the good times, which might be more salient if the patient were feeling better in the present. Thus, from a scientific perspective, depression might be as much the cause of the "unhappy" childhood as the result. The theory itself tends to be based on historical reconstruction of facts from the past, and yet memories of the past tend to be poor. Indeed, within the model, objective truth does not matter as much as the subjective representation of reality. Moreover, recent cases of so-called recovered memory or false memory syndrome demonstrate that at least in some cases, leading questions, particularly under hypnosis, can prompt patients to "remember" things that never occurred; in this way, patients can be probed and cued to recover certain false memories (Loftus and Ketcham 1994). Further, the theory, like Catholicism or other strong belief systems, cannot really be falsified. In religion, if your prayers are not answered, you are told that you did not pray hard enough, or that God knows better and has something else in store for you. In psychoanalysis, if you do not manifest the expected signs, you are simply repressing them. Doing research becomes daunting when a lack of findings can easily be reinterpreted within the existing doc-

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trines of the system. Such circumstances render falsification a quixotic goal at best. Fourth, the theory directs attention away from current stimuli that might be causing pain and distress to the person in order to focus on the past. But it may be that in reality the current situation is what is causing problems and symptoms, not events from the past. Clearly, this might be the case when people become depressed after learning that they have serious illnesses. Their childhood does not cause the depression; the current situation is responsible for the depression. Moreover, focusing on the past does not always help people cope with problems in the present or future. Fifth, the theory tends to minimize traumatic experiences by interpreting them as fantasies rather than as real occurrences. Freud at first thought that his female patients with hysterical paresthesias had truly been sexually molested by their fathers or other male relatives or acquaintances. Later, he claimed that in fact they had only fantasized about being sexually approached by these men; these fantasies resulted from the Electra complex, in which young women wish to eliminate their mothers and have sex with their fathers (cf. the Oedipus complex). Given the high base rates for child sexual assault, it is almost surely the case that at least some of his clients had been actually molested as opposed to merely fantasizing about it. Politically, however, this change in perspective took the pressure off the wealthy fathers and husbands of his female clients and moved the blame to the victim. Although this perspective remained consistent with his broader argument that reality was less important than subjective perspective in understanding human behavior, it nonetheless represented a retreat from truth for Freud. While this shift ultimately helped Freud to develop his working notion of the unconscious, his resistance to the reality of child sexual assault left this a vastly unexplored area for many decades. Jeffrey Masson, who was the archivist for the Freud papers before he was removed in a scandal of his own, claimed that he found documentation for his argument that Freud knew the truth but changed his diagnosis of these hysterical women under intense pressure from influential fathers (1985). Masson ran into trouble when he was interviewed by Janet Malcolm, writing for the New Yorker, who claimed that he had turned the Freud archives into a place of women and fun (Malcolm 1984). After a libel case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, in which Malcolm could not produce crucial segments of her original notes, neither side won an unconditional verdict. Mal-

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colm later found the notes in a summer cabin when her grandchild pulled the notebook out of an old bookcase. Sixth, Freudian theory has been criticized for being androcentric and overly, if not exclusively, focused on male psychology. Some criticism of Freud in this regard has even speculated that he was homosexual, and this factor is what influenced his bias toward men. In either case, the financial and social reality of the time would have encouraged him to focus on the problems of men, who were more likely to be able to fund his research and seek his aid. Freudian Modifications in Concepts

Subsequent to Freud's enormous contributions, mostly devoted followers began to expand in other directions. Post-Freudian scholars such as Karen Horney (1967) and Melanie Klein (1948) applied Freudian ideas to female experience and childhood. Psychology began to focus more on normal as opposed to pathological or neurotic people. Researchers attempted to operationalize some of Freud's main concepts, including repression and the unconscious, and there was less emphasis on libidinal energy as providing the sole, or even primary, source of human personality. Among other developments, more emphasis was given to the importance of the ego, as opposed to the id, in the work of Alfred Adler (Ansbacher and Rowena 1956). Social variables and adult experience were given new attention and prominence in the work of Erik Erikson (1959). Erikson developed his own alternative to Freud's five stages of psychosexual development, which he labeled the eight stages of psychosocial development. Erikson posited that at each stage, an individual confronts a central challenge; depending on her response at each stage, a person can either pursue a path of positive growth and development or else stagnate and become fixated at a certain stage of development. Progress at each stage remains dependent on the successful resolution of the previous stage. Carl Jung rose to the greatest prominence among the postFreudian thinkers. He expanded the notion of the unconscious to include a collective unconscious, which he believed incorporated fundamental psychological truths and realities shared by the entire human race. This phenomenon gives rise to those occasions or moments when all humankind knows the same thing without being told, a concept he labeled synchronicity. Jung posited universal archetypes that all people possessed as well. These referred to

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primitive symbolic artifacts presenting particular characterizations. For example, the male archetype was called the animus, the female archetype the anima, and the archetype for the self was called the mandala. For lung, the personality represented a constellation of compensating forces in dynamic balance within the human psyche (1965). Modern Approaches to Emotion

In modern psychology, emotions are seen in a very different light than under Freudian theory. In more modern theories of emotion, emotion is not the same as affect, a word often used synonymously. Affect contains three component parts: evaluation, mood, and emotion. Evaluation constitutes a mild preference, as for chocolate over vanilla ice cream. Mood refers to a mental state without specific targets and typically has some duration, lasting quite a while. Thus, when we talk about someone being in a bad mood, it does not denote anger at a particular person or situation, but rather a general feeling toward the world that can last hours to years. Emotion refers to a complex and brief emotional state that rests on a physiological basis. In other words, emotions carry physical signs or symptoms, from butterflies in the stomach, to sweaty palms, to red faces, and so on. For example, Paul Ekman argues in his book Telling Lies that he can recognize when people are lying with considerable accuracy based on a physical reading of emotional states (1985). He argues that all people share an overlap in facial language that can be learned, read, and understood as any other language might be. Early research indicated that since emotion was observed in very young children, it must be innate. Tompkins (1962), for example, observed immediate, unlearned affective reactions to certain stimuli. However, emotions are much less differentiated in infants than in older children. As any parent knows, an infant has one basic mechanism to express a wide variety of distresses: crying. Research found that certain responses are universal and can be seen in people throughout various cultures all over the world. People manifest overlapping facial languages everywhere, consisting of seven main facial expressions tied to seven main cross-cultural neurally based emotions: happiness, anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, and contempt. Although all these emotions exist with similar facial structures everywhere, different cultures have different standards for decid-

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ing which emotions are destabilizing and should be repressed and which emotions are beneficial and can be expressed. Cultures establish these social rules and norms around emotion in order to establish standards for the appropriate display of certain emotions. Ekman invokes the notion of neurocultural position to reflect the joint contributions of brain and culture in creating individual emotional expression. For instance, in Japanese culture, almost every important formal social interchange begins with an apology. So when the commander of the USS Greenville (the submarine that accidentally sank a Japanese fishing boat off the coast of Pearl Harbor) did not immediately apologize to the families of his victims because he was concerned about the domestic legal implications of such an apology, the Japanese were very offended. In response, the u.S. Navy had to send over very senior officials to Japan to apologize with a formal bow to the victims and family members of accident victims. This apology considerably reduced Japanese-U.S. tensions in its wake. At the same time, many Americans began to wonder if the apologizing did not go too far, pointing out that the Japanese never apologized for the attack on Pearl Harbor. Other, more liberal, Americans noted in response that the United States never apologized for dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II either. Needless to say, these debates demonstrate that standards of social appropriateness surrounding the time, manner, and place of certain emotional expressions, like sorrow or anger, depend on particular cultural traditions at particular points in time. An especially common and thus noteworthy manifestation of this difference can be witnessed in the difference between Eastern cultures, which tend to be shame based and thus focused on what other people will think, and Western cultures, which tend to be guilt based and attentive to how the individual will feel about himself. Plutchik (1980, 1984) argues that emotions are not discrete. He developed an emotion wheel of primary emotions, which are closely related to the seven basic emotions listed earlier but also include emotions that result from blends of primary emotions into secondary ones as well (fig. 3). Plutchik claims that other more complex emotions are variations and combinations of the basic emotions on his wheel. Thus, love combines joy plus acceptance, while hatred results from a blending of disgust and anger. Emotion rests on a physiological foundation. Stimulation from the external world results in physiological changes within the human body. For instance, a fearful situation provokes a produc-

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Love

)---------t~CD

Remorse Fig. 3. The emotion wheel (Adapted from Robert Plutchik, "A language for the emotions," Psychology Today [Feb. 1980]. Reprinted with permission from Psychology Today Magazine, copyright © 1980, Sussex Publishers, Inc.)

tion of adrenalin, which induces the classic fight-or-flight response. The autonomic nervous system (ANS) prepares the body for action, while the sympathetic nerves react to mildly unpleasant or scary situations. And the parasympathetic nerves engage in response to mildly pleasant situations. The emergency response system (ERS), controlled by the hypothalamus and the limbic system, reacts to more extreme situations. The limbic system, especially the amygdala, serves as the gateway for emotion and the filter for memory. The limbic system serves as the center for emotion; the cortex processes information for more abstract reasoning and analysis purposes. For example, many animals like dogs and cats possess limbic systems but no prefrontal cortex. This means they can feel and express emotions without needing language or problem-solving abilities to do so. The hypothalamus, located in the cortex, acts as a kind of switching station, sending signals from the sense organs like the eyes and ears to other parts of the body, but only after information has been processed by the emotionbased limbic system. In other words, incoming information gets processed first for emotional content before being passed on to the higher decision-making areas of the brain (e.g., the prefrontal cortex). How does this emotional processing take place? A young

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child learns associations between certain environmental and bodily cues and subsequent rewards or punishments; this connection then serves the adult later in life to "feel" that certain situations or people are good or bad because they seem reminiscent of the earlier learned association. Obviously, children who grow up in dysfunctional homes may not learn the most appropriate connections. But these associations, proper or otherwise, form cues for later assessments of what feels good or bad in the environment. This finding alone begins to cast doubt on rationality-based theories that presume that emotion is either not involved in decision making or exists only in opposition to the best decision making. Instead, the human brain functions so that the first and most important information extracted from the external world is emotional in content. Damasio and colleagues (Bechara et al. 1997) demonstrated this process with a series of ingenious experiments that were conducted with subjects who had preexisting lesions on their limbic systems, which prevented their emotions from functioning properly. In all obvious regards, these people appear normal at first glance. They do well on intelligence and memory tests but demonstrate little emotion. Despite seemingly normal skill levels, they continue to make bad decisions repeatedly in real life. In their experiment, the researchers presented subjects with $2,000 and four decks of playing cards. Most subjects received two "bad" decks of cards, which gave subjects rewards of $100, although they also took large sums away from subjects as well. The two remaining "good" decks paid lower rewards, about $50 on average, but took less money away as well. In the long run, subjects could earn money with the good decks and would lose money with the bad ones. Subjects with damaged limbic systems never learned to distinguish between the good and bad decks, and continued to lose money by preferring the decks with high payoffs but high losses as well. Normal subjects quickly learned to pick more often from the good decks. Even more interesting, such subjects learn to do so long before they can say why they are making the choices they do. Although none of the subjects reported calculating the payoff in the midst of the game, normal subjects reported picking the good decks after a few trials because it "felt right." Skin conductance tests demonstrated that the subjects with lesions did not experience much stress or nervousness while playing, while the normal subjects received physiological feedback long before they were able to articulate the reasons for their proper choices. Bechara et al. (1997) argue that the subjects with damaged limbic systems were simply unable to access the appropriate emo-

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tional memories and information that would have allowed them, like normal subjects, to quickly learn that the high-payoff bad decks offered an ultimately inferior outcome. This deficit did not enable injured subjects to bypass the drive for immediate gratification as represented in the early high payoffs in order to gain the better long-term outcome. Indeed, in real life, many of these patients suffered from problems of impulse control, including multiple unwanted pregnancies, addiction, and gambling problems whose appearance coincided with the timing of the various brain injuries. Such individuals with limbic system problems are known to be badly socialized in general. The researchers speculated that nonconscious emotional factors influence decision making through the operation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Kosslyn commented that these results were very exciting: "Emotion apparently is not something that necessarily clouds reasoning, but rather seems to provide an essential foundation for at least some kind of reasoning" (Vogel 1997, 1269). Mellers and colleagues (1997) present a decision affect theory that is consistent with the findings in Damasio's laboratory. They argue that emotional reactions are not simply the result of the utility of the outcome alone. Rather, probabilities and unexpected outcomes also exert an impact on emotional reaction. Specifically, unexpected outcomes present greater impact than expected ones. Outcomes seem less pleasant by comparison if an unobtained outcome is better. Similarly, good outcomes seem better if they are surprising. Decision affect theory combines the notions of utilities, expectations, and counterfactuals into a theory of emotional reaction. Mellers et al. (1997) argue that risk propensity can result from an attempt to maximize expected emotional reactions. Theories of Emotion

Theories of emotion generally do not do a good job of explaining the relationship between the physical and psychological aspects of feeling,l The physiology of emotion refers to those processes that are designed to mobilize the body for action in order to deal with the source of emotion. Four important theories of emotion deserve discussion. The James-Lange (theory of body reaction claims that external stimuli lead to physiological autonomic reactions in the 1. Parts of this section draw on Zimbardo and Gerrig (1996) in structure and content.

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body that produce feedback that we then recognize as emotion (James 1890). This theory is considered a peripheralist theory because it is not the brain but visceral reactions that are most important in generating emotion. The Cannon and Bard (1927, 1929) theory of central neural processes evolved in response to the James-Lange theory. This theory claims that external stimuli have simultaneous physical and emotional effects. Cannon and Bard criticized James and Lange's theory for four reasons. First, visceral activity is often irrelevant to emotional experience. Painful experiments that severed the spinal cords of cats demonstrated that these animals could experience and express emotion-despair, anger-despite having highly restricted sensory feedback from the body; some neurochemical communication still existed. Second, visceral response often manifests in similar ways across various emotional states. For instance, the physiological correlates of sexual arousal can hardly be discriminated from those of fear: rapid heartbeat, shallow respiration, sweating, and so on. Indeed, if placed on a monitor with no context, an observer would be hard-pressed to differentiate which emotion the subject was experiencing. Third, emotions are not necessarily differentiated by physical states. Last, autonomic nervous system responses are too slow to form the basis of emotions that erupt in a split second. Cannon and Bard argued that the brain needs to intercede between external stimuli and the output of a response for emotion to exist. They thus proposed that emotionarousing stimuli produce two simultaneous effects: one causing bodily arousal through the sympathetic nervous system and a second leading to the cognitive experience of emotion through the cortex. Lazarus and Schacter's theory of appraisal followed in the wake of this earlier work. They claimed that emotion was the result of the joint effect of processes of cognitive appraisal and physiological arousal. The person and the situation interact to create emotion. In a clever experiment, they tested this theory by asking two groups of male undergraduate subjects to walk across a dangerous and unsteady-looking bridge. This task created similarly high levels of fear-based physiological arousal in both groups. However, one group was urged on to cross the bridge by a beautiful woman. On the other side of the bridge, most of this group reported that their level of arousal was the result of feeling lust or happiness, while most of the other groups said that fear was responsible for their arousal (Schacter and Singer 1962). Lazarus

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and Schacter thus demonstrated that the exact same level of arousal can be interpreted quite differently based on the individual's cognitive appraisal of the context. In short, Lazarus argued that "emotional experience cannot be understood solely in terms of what happens in the person or in the brain, but grows out of ongoing transactions with the environment that are evaluated" (1984, 124). But, as with earlier theories, several challenges to the LazarusSchacter model emerged. First, awareness of physiological arousal is not a necessary condition for the experience of all emotion. A person does not have to have butterflies in his stomach in order to know he is in love. Second, experiencing strong arousal without an obvious cause does not lead to a neutral undifferentiated state. Experiments that gave subjects injections of adrenalin without explanation did not produce feelings of calm and neutrality, but rather agitation and anxiety (Marshall and Zimbardo 1979). Strong arousal alone does not emotion make. Last, Robert Zajonc (1980) argued that people can have strong preferences without any prior or simultaneous cognitive inferences. Using subliminal cues, Zajonc showed that people like things simply due to exposure effects. He flashed some objects very quickly across a screen, much faster than a subject could consciously see or recognize. Yet, in subsequent judgments, the subjects claimed to prefer those objects that had been subliminally displayed over other objects that had not. This effect helps explain why people who live near common grounds in a living complex, like the stairs, elevator, mail room or garage, are more popular than others in the building. Mere exposure induces liking (this can also backfire, however, like when you can't get a song out of your head that you heard in the background of a store). Given Zajonc's important work and Lazarus and Schacter's earlier experiment, the safest conclusion is that cognitive appraisal is an important, but not the only or necessary, aspect of emotional experience and expreSSIOn. According to Marcus and Rahn (1990), there have been several waves of models concerning emotion. The first models assumed that emotion provided some kind of evaluative feedback. The Fishbein and Azjen (1975) model, for example, argued that attitudes should be conceptualized in terms of affects, behavioral dispositions, and cognition. Different emotions were produced on the basis of individual differences. The second wave argued for discrete

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emotions, although the number of such emotions differed with the writer (Izard 1971; Roseman 1984; Plutchik 1980). More recent work has begun to concentrate on the circumplex model of emotion (Russell 1980), which suggests that the underlying structure of emotional states can be ordered along the circumference of a circle. The similarity between any two emotions is supposed to be related to how far apart they are on this circle. Subsequent researchers have posited two alternative conceptualizations of this model. First, some suggest that the underlying structures are related to evaluative and arousal dimensions (Larsen and Diener 1992), in a way that is similar to the structure of language. Others posit that the underlying dimensions reflect positive and negative affect (Watson and Tellegen 1985). This form of the model argues that positive emotions are based on a sense of self-mastery, while negative emotions rest on the foundation of assessments of threat in the external environment. Marcus (1987) has conducted the most systematic tests of this second manifestation of the model in the political arena. Recent attempts to provide more substantiated empirical demonstrations of the circumplex model, designed to address some of the previous limitations in its evidence, found only mixed support (Remington et al. 2000). These researchers conclude that the model is at best appropriate only within certain limits. Functions of Emotion

Emotions serve several important functions. Four major ones were delineated by Pieters and van Raaij (1987). First, they claim that emotion helps with the interpretation and organization of information about oneself and one's environment. Second, they argue that emotion serves to mobilize and allocate resources. Third, emotion modulates sensation seeking and avoidance to maintain an optimal level of arousal. In this way, emotions can facilitate motivation and arousal. In terms of motivation, emotion arouses an individual to take action with regard to an imagined or experienced event. Emotion can also direct and sustain behavior in response to various situations. Fear drives a person away from the source of arousal, and this activity can increase safety. Sexual arousal draws a person to the source, and this supports reproduction. Emotion also generates feedback about one's own experiences by amplifying or magnifying significant life events. These signals then serve to indicate that a certain person or event has

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relevance. Finally, emotions offer an awareness of inner conflicts and troubles, so that people can take appropriate action to alleviate them if possible. Emotion also functions to spur and modulate arousal. Psychologists have established the Yerkes-Dodson law, which presents the relationship of arousal and performance in the form of an inverted U (1908). Too much or too little arousal diminishes performance. Performance of a difficult task worsens as arousal rises, but performance of an easy or overlearned task improves as arousal does. Thus, peak performance may be facilitated by optimal levels of arousal, and optimal arousal levels may be determined in part by the level of difficulty of the task involved. For example, students are best off studying new material alone, then taking a test in a room full of others once the material is well learned. It also helps to take the test in the same room where you learned the material to begin with. Fourth, Pieters and van Raaij (1987) note that affect provides a mechanism for social communication. In this way, emotions serve social functions as well. Emotions help regulate social interactions, providing cues to our own and others' reactions. They stimulate prosocial behavior even when an individual's mood may not match the anticipated response. This occurs because most people want to be accepted and liked and will do things to bring about those responses. Furthermore, emotions aid in social communication. When we see someone crying, for instance, it alerts us to the distress of the other and hopefully motivates us to provide some comfort or solace. Emotion also affects cognitive functioning in at least two important ways. First, mood-congruent processing privileges information that is consistent with a person's prevailing mood so that this information is more likely to be attended to, noticed, and processed (Bower 1981; Gilligan and Bower 1984). It is thus easy to see how depression can become a self-reinforcing cycle. An unhappy person will notice information that fits into her overall sad mood. This information, which is often self-critical, can serve to reinforce existing negative self-perceptions. Information that is contrary to the person's mood, and that might trigger hope, becomes more easily disregarded because it is inconsistent with her prevailing mood. Second, mood-dependent retrieval refers to the recall of a previous emotional event that occurs when an individual finds himself

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in the same mood as during the previous event (Blaney 1986). While this finding has been more controversial than state-dependent recall (one is more likely to remember something when attempting to recall it in the same state it was first learned), mooddependent retrieval argues that it is easier to remember happy events and harder to remember sad events when you are happy, and vice versa. Applications to International Relations

What can we learn from emotion that can help us analyze and understand international relations? Jon Mercer (1997,2000,2003) has conducted some extremely compelling research on the impact of specific emotions, such as hate and trust, on various processes in international relations. He argues (1997) that emotion has traditionally been neglected in analyses of international relations for several reasons. First, inserting emotion into explanatory frameworks can prove quite difficult because emotion is so hard to define. Second, emotion suffers from the accusation that it is irrational, and only rational processes are worthy of investigation. Next, emotion runs contrary to dominant emphases on materialist considerations in international relations. Last, the use of emotion in political analyses remains hindered by the dearth of appropriate theories of emotion. He goes on to argue that emotion should be reincorporated into international relations theory and analysis. Drawing on Dower's (1986) analysis of the war in the Pacific and Goldhagen's (1996) analysis of Nazi Germany, Mercer (1997) argues that social identity theory can influence domestic foreign policy by encouraging hate and mistrust of outgroups through processes that encourage racism, prejudice, and stereotyping. Obviously, such processes can prove quite destructive in international relations. In further work, Mercer (2000, 2003) examines the impact of processes of trust in international relations. By investigating the relationship between trust and identity, Mercer (2000) convincingly demonstrates that trust is as much an emotional as a cognitive dynamic, and should be treated as such in international relations theory. Mercer's (2000) argument makes a tremendous contribution to the literature by establishing that emotion helps shape behavior in systematic ways, just as cognition can. In more recent work, Mercer (2003) notes the finding of

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Damasio (1994, 1999) and others that rationality depends on emotion. Mercer draws several critical insights from this finding. He argues that psychology should be seen as an ally of rationality, not an enemy of it, as has traditionally been the case. Further, political psychologists in particular should move away from an analysis of mistakes to a documentation of when and how leaders gets things right because of accurate and rapid emotional assessment. Finally, he encourages the use of emotional analysis to help correct the harms produced from mindless assumptions of rationality. The following section will explore several emotional concepts and their implications for our understanding of world leaders and events. Wishful Thinking

The phenomenon called wishful thinking operates through two mechanisms: an emotional one, in which desire leads a person to hold certain beliefs, and a cognitive one, in which distorted expectations disrupt information processing. Jervis (1976) provided several illustrative examples in international relations, including the following. In 1939, when British Prime Minister Chamberlain faced Hitler at Munich, he was influenced by the lessons of World War I, which suggested that it was important to be flexible when negotiating with aggressors. Subsequent leaders believed that the situation had spun out of control in the earlier conflict and that if leaders had been more deliberate, war might have been avoided. Before World War I, the major powers were all engaging in an arms race. While no one may have wanted to go to war, each state was petrified by the prospect of a preemptive strike against it. In this way, states almost stumbled into war, acting too hastily in response to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo and failing to take the measured steps that might have prevented a larger outbreak of war. If the parties had been more patient and flexible before July 1914, the World War I analogy instructed, then war might have been avoided. Chamberlain desperately wanted peace; he intended to make sure that he avoided the mistakes of his predecessors. Therefore, he believed that Hitler would be appeased if the Allies accepted the German takeover of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, which held a German-speaking province. Chamberlain's wishful thinking about Hitler's real intent blinded him. He

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failed to see that Hitler was a different kind of aggressor, that giving him an inch would spur him on to take a mile. For Britain, the consequences of Chamberlain's appeasement were disastrous. This agreement gave Hitler time to build his military forces while the British retreated into a false sense of security that placed them in greater danger once the war came. In 1961, President Kennedy was persuaded by Eisenhower's plan for the Bay of Pigs invasion aimed at overthrowing Castro's regime in Cuba. This plan called for an invasion of Cuba by Latin American and u.s. soldiers trained by the CIA. The population in Cuba was expected to rise in revolt against Castro once they had the aid of these soldiers. In fact, this aspect of the plan constituted little more than wishful thinking. While Eisenhower's original plan called for air and sea cover in support of the invasion, Kennedy dropped these plans at the last minute in order to preserve secrecy, believing the local population would rise up in support of the armed invasion. The mission failed miserably because the expected popular uprising never materialized. Rather than actually ascertain the opinion of the population toward Castro prior to the invasion (Castro had in fact improved the average Cuban's quality of life compared to the corrupt former leader Batista), the Kennedy administration assumed the people would revolt simply because that is what the administration wanted. They could not imagine that anyone else might have a different, more positive, opinion of Castro. The case of Germany in 1931 is another example of wishful thinking that led to negative outcomes. Staggering under the debt imposed by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I (reparations that President Wilson had fought against at the time), Germany asked President Hoover for debt relief. Hoover explicitly agreed to this request, believing that it was best for the German war recovery effort. However, the German government refused to believe that Hoover's acquiescence was real. Sometimes wishful thinking serves a protective function. The vast underestimation of the utter collapse of the German and Japanese militaries after World War II provides an example of the United States failing to see the truth for fear of getting lulled into a complacency that would end up hurting America, just as Britain's trust had hurt her strength before World War II. Overestimation of the power and sophistication of the Soviet military during the Cold War by most military and intelligence analysts may have

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served a similar function; no one wanted to be held responsible for underestimating force strength in a way that could damage American interests. Denial

Denial, which is a defense mechanism designed to prevent threatening material from entering the unconscious, typically takes two forms in international relations: pretending that an event will not happen or avoiding the value trade-offs required in deciding between mutually exclusive options. In planning the rescue mission of the hostages in Iran, Carter was given information about the probabilities of success. These probabilities indicated that there was a very low chance that the hostages could be rescued without significant loss of life. In order to approve this plan, Carter essentially engaged not only in wishful thinking, expecting it to work because he wanted it to work, but also denial, pretending that an event where Americans could be killed would not result in any deaths. If he really believed that soldiers would be killed, he probably would not have approved the plan. But he believed that the rescue team would emerge unscathed and victorious, hoping for the best while the worst occurred. In 1918, the Russian Bolsheviks pulled out of World War I, making a separate peace in an attempt to rebuild their own economy and political system. This decision had a major impact on the Allied effort to wear the Germans out with a two-front strategy. There could not be a two-front strategy without a second front in the Russian east. Yet the Allies kept believing, even after the separate peace, that a two-front war would go on, and they refused to think of other alternative strategies for fighting Germany. Therefore, instead of finding a way to fight a more effective single-front war, the Allies put pressure on the Japanese to continue the war effort on the eastern front, which was obviously an enormous distance from Japan. In addition, the Allies remained convinced that the Russians would reenter the war on the eastern front once their immediate political crisis was settled. Obviously, neither of these alternatives occurred, and the war had to be won on the western front. In the next world war, there was originally a great deal of denial toward recognizing the Soviet Union as a potential ally. Many in the United States believed that once the United States was duped into trusting the Soviets, Stalin would resume cooperation

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with Hitler and hand over the war stock he had stored in Vladivostok in the east. Americans viewed Hitler and Stalin as similar despots who had a strong basis and good reason for collaboration. What these individuals did not see was the obvious hatred that Stalin felt for Hitler after having been betrayed by him when the Germans attacked the Soviet Union after signing a nonaggression pact. Documents relating to the American experience in Vietnam show vacillation between intense optimism and the recognition that Vietnam was much more important to the Vietnamese than it was to the United States. On the one hand, in the early days of the war, many Americans considered it unimaginable that the largest and strongest military on earth could not win a fight in a tiny country like Vietnam. On the other hand, many American military leaders realized that the conflict held much more salience to the Vietnamese, who thus were likely to be prepared to make much greater sacrifices in service of their goals. But throughout the war, there were countless examples of American denial of the reality that people who care more and are more committed to winning can win wars against objectively stronger powers. Stress

Stress can cause enormous physiological and psychological problems for those who experience it. Some stresses are normal or unavoidable, and under certain conditions, some stress can actually be beneficial, as when performing some kinds of overlearned tasks. However, extreme or prolonged stress can diminish the ability of individuals to make good decisions or to take appropriate action in a time of crisis. Stress refers to the pattern of responses a person exhibits in reaction to stimuli that disrupt the person's sense of equilibrium, make the person feel threatened in some way, or exceed the person's ability to cope with a particular event. Stressors refer to those events or stimuli that place such demands on the person and thus require some kind of response. Acute stress refers to transitory states of arousal that typically have a clear onset and a clear end. Working under a deadline often has this quality, where there is a start time and then a limited time to complete the task. This kind of stress can often improve performance. When acute stress occurs, the body activates an emergency response, often referred to as the fight-or-flight response. In this

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response, the hypothalamus exerts control over the autonomic nervous system and activates the pituitary gland so that it can secrete adequate levels of adrenalin. Once activated, the ANS regulates the activities of various organs so that they can signal to each other chemically to meet a given challenge and fight or run if necessary. This happens through the secretion of hormones like epinephrine and norepinephrine in the adrenal medulla in the brain, thyrotropic hormone to stimulate the thyroid, and adrenocorticotropic hormone from the pituitary to stimulate the adrenal cortex. These secretions stop after the immediate stress is over. In early stages of human development, most stresses were probably adequately dealt with by fight or flight, although Shelley Taylor's recent work (2002) indicated that women may have a different stress response strategy that she calls "tend-and-befriend," representing the impulse to nurture and take care of others under conditions of stress. However, modern life presents stresses that are not so easily resolved. Chronic stress refers to a state of enduring arousal that continues over time. Continuing demands are placed on the person and can become greater over time. At some point, they exceed the ability of the person to cope adequately with the demands being placed on her. Caring for a terminally ill relative provides an example of this degree of stress. A person under chronic stress develops a general adaptation syndrome in order to cope. Selye (1976) described this syndrome as occurring in three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. This process is effective at restoring the body's chemical and hormonal balance only when the stressor is short lived. When the stressor continues unabated, chronic stress begins to compromise the integrity of the person's immune system, making the individual more susceptible to illness. Catastrophic and traumatic events, such as those that happen in a war or terrorist action, are particularly stressful because they are uncontrollable, unpredictable, and filled with ambiguity. In other words, stressors that we don't anticipate and can't control are worse than those that we expect and can try to accommodate in certain ways. Moreover, stresses that involve risks that we think may be harbingers of horrific and unknown things to come are particularly dreaded. For example, the series ofhijackings on September 11 made many people more afraid to fly because they could not determine what that event meant for the future safety of airline travel. Terrorist activities can be particularly difficult in this way because people do not know what to expect next. They have no adequate means to learn how best to protect themselves.

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Emotional responses to disaster tend to occur in five stages. First, there is psychic numbness, including a sense of unreality or incomprehension about what happened. The event is hard to think about or understand. Second, there is an automatic action, which provides an adaptive response to danger but little awareness of action. People who run away from burning buildings are often acting in this mode. Typically, there is very poor recall later for the actions taken during the time of crisis. Third, there is a sense of accomplishment and communal effort toward shared goals, often ones that involve helping others and making sure everyone is safe from immediate danger. Taking action to help injured people or giving money or blood helps further this sense as well. Fourth, there is a sense of letdown when the impact of the tragedy is finally comprehended and people begin to really feel the emotional consequences directly. Last, there is an extended period of recovery, where each individual attempts to adapt to the personal changes wrought by the emergency as best as possible. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) involves delayed reactions to unduly stressful events, especially repeated ones (as happens in combat). Its characteristics commonly include, first, emotional numbing to daily events, since normal activities do not share the same intensity as traumatic ones. Second, feelings of alienation persist. This factor may contribute to the high rate of divorce in certain traumatic circumstances, as when soldiers return from war or a couple loses a child. Third, emotional pain can be severe and can manifest in a variety of ways, including sleep disorders with nightmares, survivor guilt, concentration problems (including vivid flashbacks), and exaggerated startle responses. These responses are often triggered under conditions of stress. Psychologists consider these clinical manifestations of PTSD as conditioned, learned responses that are embedded strongly and quickly, often in the context of a life-threatening experience or event. These responses then tend to be cued when events that remind the person of the former experience recur; a particular sound or smell can often provide enough of a reminder to trigger symptoms. These response patterns can persist for years. There are, however, huge individual differences in how people respond to stress, and not everyone in a life-threatening situation develops PTSD. Some indications suggest that there may be individual differences that mediate reactions and responses to stressful events. For example, certain people may possess higher levels of certain neurotransmitters, such as Neuropeptide Y, that offer

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some protection against stress reactions (Rosen, personal communication). Many leaders who have had combat experience or other traumatic events earlier in their lives may suffer from subclinical forms of PTSD that can impact them in all sorts of ways later. They may be more likely to see threat where it does not exist if something in the present reminds them of the past. They may have restricted powers of concentration that can limit the range and creativity of their decision-making abilities. Difficulty connecting with others can make it challenging for victims to establish meaningful relationships and to solicit and heed the advice and guidance of others, and it may make them more susceptible to drug and alcohol abuse as well. Coping proactively with stress is an important way to diminish its impact on health and decision making. Coping refers to the process of dealing with demands that exceed the person's resources. The two main approaches to coping involve either problem solving or emotion-based strategies. Problem solving attempts to help reshape the stressor or a person's reaction to it through direct action or other activities. These strategies work best for stressors that are controllable. Typically this strategy attempts to change a person's evaluation of the stress and to shift whatever thoughts might contribute to self-defeating processes. Meichenbaum (1985) proposed a three-phase program to provide stress inoculation using this model. First, the individual needs to identify the behavior or thoughts that might be causing problems. Second, the person needs to create new ways of thinking or acting to eliminate self-defeating behaviors. Last, the new behaviors should be seen in a more positive light. The goal of any such problemfocused strategy for dealing with stress is for a person to achieve some element of perceived control, so that she feels like she has the ability to make some kind of difference in the outcome of the event. This strategy uses almost exclusively cognitive techniques for managing ongoing stress. Emotion-based coping tries to change the person's coping abilities by making the person feel better without trying to change the actual stressor. This strategy works best for uncontrollable stressors. Social support makes the biggest difference in this regard. This support can be tangible in nature, like money or transportation, or informational, including advice and guidance. Pure social support in the form of care, comfort, and companionship works best. Receiving whatever resources and love that others can provide works magic. Making a person feel connected to a net-

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work of people who love and care for her can improve recovery from illness and reduce the risk of health problems and even death (Speigel et al. 1989). Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology is currently at the forefront of attempts to explain the origins and functions of emotions. Evolutionary psychology is the study of the evolution of behavior using principles of natural selection. It is heavily influenced by the work of Charles Darwin, which argues that nature privileges those behaviors that contribute to the preservation of the species. Factors that perpetuate the survival and spread of genes are preferentially transmitted to the next generation. Most organisms learn to adapt to their environments in ways that ensure reproduction. For example, since poachers target elephants with the largest tusks for the ivory smuggling trade, more and more African elephants are being born without tusks, because this trait helps them to survive long enough to reproduce. These kind of evolutionary developments create adaptive physical traits in a wide variety of organisms. Within genetic diversity, there are some universal norms or rules for accepted and expected behavior. These norms restrain and control behaviors outside our awareness. They also help structure expectations. Typically these norms are learned by observing others, but they may have some sort of genetic basis as well. These universal norms proscribe unproductive social behavior and prescribe useful and helpful ones. For example, there is a strong taboo on incest in almost all cultures, although exactly what constitutes incest may vary slightly from culture to culture (Thornhill 1992). This prohibition serves to ensure the diversity ofthe gene pool and to prevent the next generation from suffering any genetic weaknesses from inbreeding that might prevent reproduction. One of the most powerful and universal of positive norms involves friendship. Within the friendship norm, maintaining eye contact, respecting privacy, and keeping confidences are key components. This is almost certainly why all parties in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal could unite in vilifying Linda Tripp, who violated this norm in a big and public way. Status behaviors are cross-cultural too, although they are expressed in different ways in different cultures. High-dominance behavior includes unbroken gesturing, so that the person does not bend at the wrists, elbow, or neck; interrupting more; making eye

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contact when speaking but not when listening; and staring. Lowdominance behavior, typically used by submissives or people from lower status groups, like woman or minorities, includes ending sentences on a rising intonation, as though asking a question or seeking approval; looking when listening but not when speaking; smiling; and broken gesturing. Forms of address, including whether or not a person is called by their first name or last, communicate important information about social distance and social status. Advances in intimacy are typically initiated by the higherstatus individual. Violations of these status norms, even when individuals are not consciously aware of their existence, tend to make people uncomfortable. Typically men and women demonstrate no sex differences where they share similar adaptive challenges, as in the areas of taste preferences, sweating in response to heat, building calluses in response to injury, and so on. While men and women have the same adaptive behaviors in many situations, they are distinctly unalike in the areas of mating and reproduction since they espouse contrary goals in this regard. Men and women demonstrate different kinds of courtship styles. When asked about why they had sex the first time, 25 percent of men report they do so in order to have sex, while 48 percent of women say that they have sex the first time because of the affection they feel toward their partner. Men appear to be more accepting of casual sex as well, with 56 percent of men saying that it is acceptable to have sex with someone you like but do not know very well, as opposed to only 32 percent of women endorsing this statement. In addition, men initiate sex more often than women and are less selective about their partners. Cross-cultural studies show that men and women have different mating preferences as well (Buss et al. 1990; Buss 1994). In a study of thirty-seven countries, women preferred men who had high levels of external resources and could thus offer potential physical protection for children. Most women vastly preferred men with high power, wealth, and status. Men, on the other hand, universally preferred women who were young, healthy, and pretty, indicating fertility. This helps explain, in part, why women tend to marry older men, who can offer the safety and protection they want for the children that men also desire with young, healthy wives. Typically, women's sexuality has been strongly controlled by men, and women have been expected not to stray in order to prove the paternity of her children and ensure their protection by

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their fathers. The repression of women initiating sex serves the same purpose; a woman with a high or indiscriminate sex drive is not trusted by a man who wants to ensure paternity. But appearances are not always what they seem. An intriguing study in Britain using blood samples found that more than 10 percent of children do not biologically belong to the legal fathers whose names they bear. The authors of this study argue that women are more likely to cheat when they ovulate, which is when they are most fertile, since they may be trying, unconsciously, to extend the gene pool they have access to in order to increase the strength, diversity, and survival potential of their children. This supposition is supported by the finding that women were much more likely to cheat with a high-socioeconomic-status male (Baker 1991). Studies of jealousy also offer more subtle understandings of sex differences in mating. One study of cross-cultural jealousy patterns showed that men and women exhibited similar levels of jealousy, seemingly disproving the claims of evolutionary psychologists who expected sex differences correspondent with divergent mating goals (White 1981). However, when the reasons for the jealousy were investigated, predictable differences were found. Women became jealous when they felt threatened by their spouses' emotional involvement with or attachment to other women. Men became jealous when their wives became sexually involved with other men and appeared to care not at all about their wives' emotional attachment to other men (Buss et al. 1992; Buunk et al. 1996). The evolutionary reason provided argues that women are more scared of being abandoned and left to raise their children on their own, whereas men are more concerned about establishing the absolute paternity of their children. However, these preferences of men and women might be socialized, not biological, in nature (DeSteno and Salovey 1996). Other critics pointed out that sexual involvement typically implies emotional involvement and vice versa. But since the divergence between women and men was reflected in several cultures, and instinctual biological responses were measured by physiological measurement, evolutionary psychologists can still claim a strong case. Most of these evolutionary psychology theories argue that emotion provides the mechanism by which these evolutionary tendencies are made manifest. A woman may not be conscious that she wants to extend the gene pool, but emotional mechanisms make her more receptive to, or initiating of, new sexual bonds dur-

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ing ovulation. Emotions that are structurally connected to the limbic system, which contains and controls emotion, may serve to provide messages and signals that encourage individuals in certain situations and contexts to think and act in ways that are consistent with maximizing reproductive success. Levels of aggression are another way that sex differences manifest, and they may result from different forms of emotional cuing. Although women are as likely as men to act passive aggressively, men are much more likely to engage in physical and verbal aggression intended to hurt someone else. Men are ten times more likely to murder someone, five times more likely to assault someone, and twenty times more likely to commit a same-sex murder, and they are more willing to give painful shocks than women (Fukuyama 1999). This male predisposition toward aggression no doubt supports worldwide male dominance in most important institutions. These male expressions of dominance manifest through assertive talk, including high rates of interruption, dominant touching of subordinates, higher degrees of staring, and much lower levels of smiling than women. Ninety-six percent of the various heads of nations are male. Ninety-seven percent of world cabinet members are male, as are 98.5 percent of the people in Congress. Although men constitute about half of the population, they represent about 90 percent of jury leaders and most heads of laboratory groups. Hormones are responsible, at least in part, for these higher levels of male aggression. Biological differences between men and women result in different levels of the hormones estrogen and testosterone. While each hormone is present in both sexes, testosterone predominates in men, while estrogen dominates in women. Statistically higher levels of testosterone are found in certain kinds of men as well, including criminals, football players, and fraternity members in college, although of course in these cases it can be hard to know whether self-selection or something else is driving this phenomenon. As a result, these groups tend to be more aggressive in nature. As people age, the balance becomes more equal: men become less domineering and more empathic, while women become more self-confident and assertive. In short, as they age, both men and women become more androgynous, that is, more capable of both nurturing and assertiveness, at a hormonal level. What are the problems with the theory of evolutionary psychology? First, like Freudian psychoanalysis, it is unfalsifiable. While basic biological differences might be easy to demonstrate,

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these markers do not necessarily establish the origins of these differences. Moreover, behavioral manifestations of these biological differences could just as easily be attributed to socialization processes. Differential diagnosis of origins becomes complicated and difficult with these competing models. Second, cognitive psychologists like Tversky and Kahneman have shown that individuals are subject to several cognitive biases (chap. 3). Evolutionary psychologists have had a hard time explaining why some biases would be selected for, and survive, when they are often inefficient or inaccurate mechanisms for choice. Evolutionary psychologists determined to challenge Tversky's interpretations carried out versions of the original experiments that embedded the central problem in the context of everyday tasks. The experiments did not reveal the systematic biases that Tversky had shown. Evolutionary psychologists accused cognitive psychologists of being elitists for suggesting that ordinary people cannot function effectively and that the cognitive system that has evolved is not the best one possible for the majority of tasks humans face (Gigerenzer 1999, 2000; Barkow, Cosmides, and Tooby 1992). The problem with this argument, of course, is the lack of a counterfactual: we don't know what other system might have evolved under different selection pressures, and so we don't know if a more efficient system might be possible. We only know the system we have, not the ones we might have had. If we assume that the current system is the best one possible simply because it evolved that way, how do we falsify the claim if providing evidence of inefficiencies is not deemed to provide adequate evidence of disconfirmation? Evolutionary Psychology and International Relations

Evolutionary psychology can offer two important insights into international relations. First, altruism functions as a kin protection mechanism (Essock-Vitale and McGuire 1985). People who share genetic characteristics make sacrifices to ensure the perpetuation of their genes. The evolutionary process has selected for altruism toward one's own close relatives to enhance the survival of mutually shared genes. These networks purposely exclude others, considering them threats to the survival of one's own group through the diversion of scarce resources. Therefore, from this perspective, the root of ethnic conflict rests in the loyalty engendered by the closeness of familial relationships in close-knit clan struc-

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tures. Ethnic conflict emerges particularly in times of constrained resources, when the success of one group may directly affect another's ability to survive. Vicious hatred develops as each group seeks to exterminate the other in order to maximize the survival of its own gene pool. One of the curious ways that evolutionary psychologists have attempted to explain and defend the importance of altruism has been through an analysis of homosexuality. At first glance, homosexuality does not seem explicable within the constraints of a theory that posits all behavior as being based on maximizing prospects for reproduction. Indeed, homosexuality appears anomalous because it does not directly aid in perpetuating the gene pool. However, research has shown that later male children (in birth order) are more likely to be gay. This anomaly begins to make sense once one considers that homosexuality can work to perpetuate the survival and protection of the overall gene pool in a situation of resource constraints, as when there are many children. Under these conditions, homosexuals without children not only do not extract undue resources from their families of origins for their own children, but they also work to support and help overburdened siblings with child care. In the end, this system may ensure a higher rate of overall survival in an environment of constrained resources. Second, reciprocity provides a key lubricant to social commitment and communication (Cosmides and Tooby 1992). Reciprocity works best in small isolated groups where everyone knows one another and has established networks of trust and knowledge. People are more or less likely to do small favors for one another or cooperate together depending on who makes the request. Tupperware parties, for example, generate a phenomenal amount of revenue because the participants are all friends and know each other. I buy your Tupperware, you buy mine, and pretty soon we have both made some money while improving our kitchenware. Indeed, outside these tight-knit groups, people are much less willing to engage in a whole host of reciprocal gestures that make society run more smoothly and efficiently. People are less willing to relay phone messages, mail a lost letter, help small children, do a small favor, or even cooperate with surveys for those outside their community than for those within. Reciprocity represents an important factor in military morale as well. The introduction of women and gays into the armed forces, like the introduction of blacks under Truman, has led to all

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kind of fears and concerns about the effect of this integration on morale. Since unit cohesion is critical to performance, creating tight-knit groups represents a crucial aspect of training and morale. One way to improve such cohesion requires structuring small experiences that demand reciprocal exchanges for the successful completion of essential tasks. In this manner, morale and performance can be enhanced through the natural mechanism of reciprocity to include previously excluded groups into the unit. Cognition and Affect

Obviously, attitudes do not exist in a vacuum but rather interact with behavior and feelings. Recently, more attention has been paid to the interplay between thoughts and feelings and how that might impact behavior in particular ways. Several studies have begun to examine this interaction in a more systematic way than was possible before the spectacular advances in the neurosciences beginning in the early 1990s. An interesting series of experiments was conducted by Kari Edwards (1990) to examine whether the order of cognitive or affective attitudes would influence how easily those individuals were persuaded later. The content of the attitudes remained the same, but she found that affectively based attitudes changed more when confronted with affectively based persuasion, while cognitively based attitudes changed equally in the face of cognitively or affectively based persuasion. Interestingly, affectively held attitudes were expressed with greater confidence than cognitively held attitudes. This finding appears consistent with Damasio's findings and offers some interesting challenges to rationally based models of choice. Indeed, in an examination of four u.S. elections in Edward's study, although both factors remained important, emotion had a stronger impact on voting than cognitions. Emotions without underlying cognitions were less stable and less predictive than cognitions alone. When voters were ambivalent about their cognitions, their emotions were less stable as well, which led to a weaker connection between emotions and behavior. Way and Masters (1996) argue that the impact of mood on information processing depends on whether the subject is aware of the emotion and on whether the emotion is positive or negative in nature. They found, counterintuitively, that inducing negative mood states leads to more positive attitudes. They used this finding to help explain the "rally 'round the flag" effect whereby negative

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events can lead to positive feelings toward the country and its leaders. This model also challenges more straightforward assumptions about the relationship between thoughts and feelings. Masters has conducted a great deal of research in the area of voter responses to facial expressions in candidates. Such work supports the notion that many evaluative responses depend more on emotional, as opposed to cognitive, appraisals. In one study using tapes of 1984 presidential candidates, Sullivan and Masters (1988) found that viewers' attitudes were more affected by their emotional responses to the happy facial displays of candidates than by party identification, issue agreement, or assessment of leadership abilities. These findings persisted even when viewers were not exposed to the sound on the tapes. In another study, Masters (1991) found that cultural and sex differences affected the interpretation of leaders' facial displays. In particular, cultural differences appear distinct from personality differences. Sex differences emerge as most complex, because they influence perceptions as well as evaluations. Masters (1994) also found that blacks differ in systematic ways from whites in their emotional responses to leaders' facial displays. Using tapes of 1988 presidential candidates, Masters demonstrated that whites reported more attitude changes based on leaders' facial displays of emotions than did blacks. These findings were not associated with systematic differences in personality or sex. They suggest that at least some nonconscious factors influence the assessments of black and white voters in different ways. Lanzetta and Englis (1989) examined subjects' responses to others' facial displays to examine how expectations might affect emotional reactions. Using measures of skin conductance and heart rate, they report that expectations of cooperation promoted empathy between subjects, while expectations of competition promoted antipathy. In earlier work, Abelson et al. (1982) studied two sets of national survey respondents who were asked to attribute personality characteristics to leaders and to report how they felt about those leaders. They found that good and bad feelings, more than good and bad trait descriptions, existed independent of one another. Further, emotional responses did not seem to exhibit the same pressures toward conformity that cognitive attitudes did. Finally, estimates of liking predicted candidate preference more effectively than did personality assessments. Concluding that emo-

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tional and semantic judgments do not overlap, they called for more research into the impact of emotion on decision making. Edwards and Bryan (1997) show in a study of jury decision making that emotional information is much more difficult to ignore or forget than nonemotional information. Paradoxically, instructing jurors to ignore particular information only exacerbates its impact. Efforts to ignore emotional information that instead serve to magnify their effect have no impact on nonemotional information. There is a great debate in the literature about whether emotion and cognition represent separate elements in the brain or combined ones. Parrott and Schulkin (1993) advocate the functionalist approach, which argues that emotion and cognition cannot be separated. Because emotions require processes of interpretation, application, and problem solving, they must operate in conjunction with cognitive processes. LeDoux (1993) supports the separatist perspective, at least in part because the brain is composed of systems with separate functions. Davies (1983) has argued that in applying biological findings to political phenomena, it is appropriate to ask how this takes place. He argues that biology matters to the extent that biological drives are frustrated by the natural, political, or social environment. Under such circumstances, the emotional center of the brain can combine with the decision-making center and produce potential violent action. Therefore, he claims, biology exerts its greatest effect during periods of extreme tension, when habits, routines, and bureaucracies fail to fulfill basic needs. Such a domain exists in the arena of risks and threats. Challenges to survival certainly present situations of tension and frustrated drives. Experimental work by Hockey et al. (2000) found that fatigue increases riskiness much more than other emotional states like depression and anxiety. Most important scenarios served to exacerbate the impact of fatigue on riskiness. Gordon and Arian (2001) surveyed Israelis concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict, as well as some Palestinians. In addition, they also surveyed some Americans about the potential loss of social security or welfare. They found that feelings of threat correlate very strongly with policy choices. In particular, the more threatened people feel, the more likely their policy choices will intensify the conflict. The reverse also holds true: low levels of perceived threat produce less incendiary policy choices. They conclude that high levels of per-

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ceived threat represent emotional responses, rather than logical or rational ones. On the other hand, lower levels of perceived threat represent both emotional and rational responses. Conclusions

Emotion presents the most complex and multidimensional of the categories we have examined. The study of emotion has developed from its earliest Freudian form at the turn ofthe twentieth century into a much more neuroscientific approach today. Most of the recent advances in understanding the nature and function of emotion, and its relationship to cognition and decision making, have taken place in the areas of evolutionary and neurophysiological psychology. Future research in emotion within political psychology is likely to continue to develop at this intersection between cognition and emotion. Recent findings suggest that optimal decision making rests on a foundation of emotional, as opposed to rational, brain structures. Work that explores the nature of this relationship presents a most compelling opportunity for creative contributions to understanding the nature of decision making and evaluation. Such work can also provide insights into the origins of personal emotional experiences such as regret, disappointment, empathy, and anger. Theoretically, work in the neurophysiological and neuropsychological bases of emotion and cognition seeks to build a microfoundation for our understanding of more complex processes. As more complex and realistic models of the human brain and its functioning are constructed, new applications for these findings in the area of politics and international relations will arise. Because much of this work is based on experimental data, assessing causation will become possible. As these models develop, they may provide a more systematic alternative to rational choice models that either deny the existence of emotional content in rational decision making or assume that such involvement can only be counterproductive in nature. Instead, neuroscientific advancements might bridge the rational and psychologically oriented models. Connections in the human brain that establish the interaction between emotional memory and advanced rational reasoning depend on the optimal operation of both systems in order to function efficiently. Most current neuropsychological evidence suggests the primacy of emotion over rationality in some types of decisions,

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especially those governed by past experience or habit. But this does not negate the impact of reasoning in the cortex for evaluating and implementing more complicated judgments, beliefs, and behaviors. Privileging emotion over cognition in reaction time, the brain has evolved in a way that is best suited for quickly assessing and responding to threats and challenges to survival. But complex decision making also evolved to allow people to master their environments and improve their place in the world. Just as the brain needs both emotional and cognitive components, more advanced political models may also need to incorporate both systems into more realistic and accurate portrayals of the human decision-making process.

CHAPTER 7

Psychobiography

In the early history of political psychology, a great deal of work was conducted in the area of psycho biography. Some might argue that psychobiography encompasses a special kind of method more than a particular kind of content. Yet most psycho biographies present a psychological approach to political actors. Psychobiography constitutes a particular subset of biography, or life history, that explicitly uses concepts, principles, or theories from psychology to enhance our understanding of people in the past or present. Most often, these biographies assume a reciprocal relationship between the person and their political, social, and cultural environment. While some psychobiographies have concentrated on the cognitive, developmental, or social history or environment of the subject, the reality is that most psychobiography has relied on depth psychology to inform its analysis. Here, depth psychology refers to any theory that relies on the unconscious motivation of the person under consideration, but most often it has been explicitly Freudian or psychoanalytic in origin. The underlying assumption in all forms of psycho biography, whether explicit or not, is that personal qualities do make a difference in explaining the behavior of a person. Unlike realist theories of international relations, which assume that the structure of the international environment overwhelms the impact of the individual, psychobiographies usually start from the typical political psychology position that individuals and their idiosyncratic traits affect outcomes in some definitive, if not determinate, ways. The question, then, becomes how much and in what specific ways this happens. Therefore, psychobiographies can prove useful in formulating hypotheses about the interactions between social structure and psychic mechanisms in explaining political outcomes. The chapter starts with a brief review of the history of psychobiographies, followed by a discussion of the main assumptions that inform most work in this style. Various contributions and criticisms of this methodology will be explored. Finally, vanous 189

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strategies for undertaking substantive research in this area, as well as ways to improve this form of research, will be examined. History

Psycho biography really began as an attempt to explore the causal link between childhood experience and adult behavior. Freud's early work in particular set the tone and agenda for most future work in psychobiography. Freud believed that childhood experiences, particularly unresolved issues and conflicts, continue to manifest in adult action and psychopathology. This perspective informed the theoretical underpinnings of most of the early psychological investigations of historical personalities. The first real work in psychobiography was Sigmund Freud's book Leonardo da Vinci: A Study in Psychosexuality (1964 [19lO]). At the time Freud was writing, people were interested in biographies of great, important, and successful people. By studying great men, readers believed that they could learn to emulate the positive characteristics and become better themselves. In this work, Freud focused in particular on da Vinci's childhood and its subsequent impact on his sexual development. Freud notes that da Vinci was an illegitimate child and spent his early years close to his mother, but without the influence of his father. Freud discusses a dream that da Vinci reported concerning a particular kind of bird, although Freud was using a mistranslation from the Italian that used the word vulture where it should have been kite. He focuses on how da Vinci's dream of the bird putting its tail in his mouth was reflective of repressed homosexual desire. While marshaling other evidence, such as da Vinci's less anatomically detailed and realistic drawings of female as opposed to male anatomy, in support of his contention, Freud placed primary explanatory power on the interpretation of this dream. Freud's analysis of da Vinci set important guidelines for future work in psychobiography. In his argument, Freud explicitly rejects the tendency to either pathologize or idealize one's subject. In addition, Freud cautions against making an argument about a person or his life based on a single clue, or reaching a strong conclusion based on inadequate data. And yet Freud violated all these rules in the very case in which he argues for them (Elms 1988). Freud's argument concerning the development of da Vinci's ostensible homosexuality was indeed based on a single clue, that of the dream. Worse still, this clue was based on a factual inaccuracy,

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that of the mistranslation of the central element of the dream, which was the nature of the bird itself. Finally, Freud made a large leap from his interpretation of this dream to the strong conclusion that da Vinci had homosexual tendencies. Andeson (1994) suggests that Freud's mistranslation does not invalidate his analysis of da Vinci because Freud probably would have reached the same conclusion concerning the meaning of the dream even if he had known that the bird was a kite and not a vulture. Andeson makes this argument while maintaining that there is no evidence that da Vinci was homosexual. Even if Freud's conclusion is true, and da Vinci possessed homosexual inclinations, such a conclusion cannot be supported in its entirety from the evidence introduced and presented in Freud's analysis. Obviously, Freud was examining the life of da Vinci from the perspective of his larger theory of psychosexual development, which he believed held true for all people. This theory argued that individuals passed through stages of psychosexual development beginning with fixation on oral activity, followed by attempts at anal control, leading to phallic fascination, passing through a latent phase prior to puberty, and culminating in genital focus for those who are not arrested at an earlier stage of development. In all this work, Freud emphasized the importance of childhood experiences on later development and the central importance of sexuality in all human activity. Although this focus has lost credibility due to a lack of evidence and insufficient grounds for determining falsifiability in the experimental psychological community at large, it maintains both a large popular cultural influence as well as clear impact on many forms of psycho biography and psychotherapy. Indeed, despite the limitations of his work on da Vinci, Freud's seminal influence can be traced through the development of psychobiography. In 1927, a review of how to study historical personalities argued that four strategies would be most useful: (1) understand childhood experiences as conditioning factors; (2) search for unconscious motivations for adult actions; (3) look for compensatory consequences in individual activity; and (4) examine rational action (Fearing 1927). Obviously, at least the first three of the four categories strongly reflect Freud's theories concerning the impact of childhood experiences on adult behavior. Erik Erikson, one of the most influential neo-Freudian theorists, did not believe that people stopped their psychological development in childhood, nor did he believe that sexual development should be privileged over other kinds of social development (1980

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[1959]). In an attempt to rectify what he believed were some limitations and flaws in Freud's original constructions, Erikson posited eight stages of human development, which he argued took place over the entire life span rather than culminating in adolescence, as Freud's theory claims. At each stage, a central conflict arises for the individual to resolve; the person can either meet the challenge successfully and move on to the next stage or else become fixated at one of these developmental stages as a result of failing to successfully negotiate its critical challenge. Erikson's stages, which began in infancy and ended in old age, were trust versus mistrust; autonomy versus shame and doubt; initiative versus guilt; industry versus inferiority; identity versus identity diffusion; intimacy versus isolation; generativity versus stagnation; and integrity versus despair. Erikson had broader themes than Freud, who focused on sexual development, but there is some overlap. Freud's phases map onto the first five stages of Erikson in both age and basic concentration: orality is similar to the issues surrounding trust and mistrust; anality resembles the stage of autonomy or shame; phallic concentration reflects the conflict over initiative versus guilt; latency's developmental time span is similar to that of industry versus inferiority; and genitality clearly reflects both aspects of the identity crisis as well as the antagonism between intimacy and isolation. In an attempt to demonstrate the utility and validity of his notions, Erikson undertook some influential life biographies of historically important people to analyze how they negotiated or failed to negotiate some of these central conflicts. Three of these provide insight on diverse stages of development in the political careers of Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther, and Gandhi. In his analysis of Hitler in Childhood and the Life Cycle (1963) Erikson argued that Hitler's pathology stemmed from his early failure to resolve the developmental stage of autonomy versus shame and doubt. Erikson argues that young Adolf was subject to strict and arbitrary discipline at the hands of an older bureaucratic father who was himself frustrated with his lack of personal and professional success. Because of Hitler's inability to establish any meaningful form of autonomy early on, he was plagued with selfdoubt and shame the rest of his life. It was Hitler's attempts to overcome these self-doubts, to achieve autonomy and self-mastery, and to become a powerful and successful man that drove his personal and political ambitions. Yet it was his failure to actually develop adequate autonomy that prevented him from being able to

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progress through the essential sequential steps of personal and social development that would have allowed him to experience empathy and a sense of responsibility toward others. Erikson's discussion of the critical importance of establishing identity versus falling prey to identity diffusion, a stage that typically takes place in late adolescence and early adulthood, concentrated on the life of Martin Luther and his "fit in the choir" (Erikson 1993 [1958]). In his early twenties, during a choir performance in the balcony of his church, young Luther had a "fit" where he appeared to go crazy. He fell down on the floor of the choir, yelling "it's not me" in response to a reading of Mark 9: 17, which describes a father giving his son to Jesus. Martin Luther had become a Catholic priest in opposition to his father, who had instead supported Luther's promising career in the law. Erikson concentrated on the importance of the conflict Luther experienced between his duties to his biological father and to his spiritual father in God. Erikson argues that Luther transferred the hostility, hatred, and defiance of authority that he felt toward his own father onto wider issues of defiance against the Catholic Church and its spiritual father, the Pope. After a period of thought and reflection following this episode, Luther wrote his famous objections to the Catholic Church and posted them on the door of the church in Wittenberg, thus instigating the Protestant Reformation. Erikson argued that the period leading up to and following the fit in the choir was essential for Luther in establishing his own identity and in breaking away from his father, just as he later broke away from the Catholic Church. It was only through a recognition of, and commitment to, his personal beliefs and his personal identity, independent of those of his father, that Luther was able to make his contribution to history. Had he remained faithful to either his biological or spiritual father and thus the teachings of the Catholic Church, he might have died an obscure priest in sixteenth-century Germany. But as the pressure built between the expectations of his father and his church and his own internal reservations and beliefs, Luther had what might later have been called a nervous breakdown or an episode of serious mental illness. In the wake of this experience, in an attempt to integrate his life, his beliefs, and his behavior, Luther was able to successfully resolve his identity crisis and change the face of history in so doing. This set the stage for Luther's subsequent personal growth and spiritual discovery. Erikson's treatment of Gandhi (1969) focuses on a later stage

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of development, generativity versus stagnation. This refers to the ability of an individual to give something back to the next generation or instead stagnate and fail to make important cross-generational connections. Many people make these connections through their children or grandchildren, but the sense of continuity need not be restricted to family. The successful resolution of this stage allows for the kind of equanimity that permits one to die with a sense of peaceful completion and integrity, rather than in isolation and despair. Erikson argued that Gandhi perceived the people of India and the future of India's children as his legacy and sought to rid them of British rule in an attempt to create such generativity and connection with the next generation. Gandhi wanted to leave something behind, a legacy of peace and freedom for those who followed. As someone who had benefited greatly from British colonial rule in his personal educational background and experience, Gandhi used the laws and culture of the oppressors, which he knew so well, to break their control over his country. Gandhi's legacy of freeing India from British rule through nonviolent civil disobedience provided the avenue for him to give back to his people some of the benefits he had received from his class privileges. Gandhi's successful resolution of this stage of development not only secured him a revered place within Indian culture and history, but also allowed him to confront his own morality with more integrity than despair. Erikson's laudable attempts to trace the process of these developmental crises through the lives of influential people made real contributions to psychobiography. He started with a set of theories and ideas about how individuals developed and then sought to apply them through an exploration of how crises at different stages played out and affected the lives of particular people at certain times. Assumptions

Much of this early work in psychobiography, as well as much of the work since, relies on a certain set of assumptions about how to do such studies, including notions of which questions are important to ask, what evidence should be sought, who is worth analyzing, and why. Some ofthese assumptions might be valid; others are not. The biographer needs to be explicit and honest about which assumptions guide the investigation of the subject, because these

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assumptions can easily and readily bias the collection and interpretation of the data and the conclusions that are drawn from it. Four of the commoner assumptions are worth examining in more detail (Glad 1973). First, despite Freud's early injunction against such a bias, which he himself violated, many psychobiographers assume that personality theory is most useful for explaining pathological or idealized behavior (Rogow 1968). This leads to a tendency not only to concentrate attention on figures whose acts seem irrational or unduly courageous but also to focus on those aspects of the individual's behavior that display these characteristics. On the one hand, this tendency makes sense because those individuals we are most interested in are compelling precisely because they are atypical in some way. On the other hand, while it may be natural that unusual or incomprehensible people command more interest and attention than dull and boring ones, there is no reason to assume that the charismatic are any more accurately characterized by their courageous or influential acts than other people are by their more normal acts. Indeed, there is no a priori reason to assume that the charismatic are any more illuminated by a psychobiographical study than a more "normal" person might be. In addition, in an attempt to understand seemingly exaggerated or unusual behavior, scholars must defend against seeking out evidence that privileges extremity to the exclusion of other data. After all, information about what leads to apparently irrational behavior is only diagnostic to the extent that it is absent from the backgrounds of others who lack comparable pathology or courage. Second, one goal of these studies is often to extract lessons from the subject and propose strategies or therapeutic interventions designed to help future people in similar situations to avoid the mistakes that plagued the subject. If scholars can learn from the past to improve the future, new leaders might be able to avoid the pitfalls that befell their predecessors. In many circumstances, this can be a laudable and appropriate goal. If a certain kind of job, for example, appears to carry particular predictable stresses, perhaps new recruitment strategies to hire more appropriate people might be implemented or new supports can be instituted to reduce the impact on the employee. The original impetus behind using information from intelligence tests in the military was to place individuals in the jobs that provided the best match for their skills and abilities, for example. However, oftentimes analogies between the circumstances that affected the subject of a biography and others who might find

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themselves in similar circumstances can be misleading. This happens in at least two ways. First, it may be that certain political occupations predispose individuals toward particular kinds of mental illnesses, such as depression. But it may also be the case that individuals interested in politics are more likely to suffer from narcissistic personality disorders, for example. The higher selfselection of individuals with predisposing pathologies into political office is not something that a single therapeutic intervention is likely to solve. Second, applying the lessons from one individual to another in a different time or circumstance might also prove inappropriate. The way any given individual copes with the particular stresses she encounters is unique, even if those stresses appear similar on the outside. Some individuals love thrill-seeking experiences; others find them frightening and aversive. How one person responds may not be informative about how another individual might deal with a given situation. Psychobiographies can certainly illuminate the particular coping style of a given individual, but that illustration might not offer the kind oflessons to the future that the investigator or reader assumes. Third, most psycho biographies concentrate on the particular or idiosyncratic aspects of the subject. As Greenstein writes (1992, 124): "Political institutions and processes operate through human agency. It would be remarkable if they were not influenced by the properties that distinguish one individual from another." Herein lie both the assumption and the challenge of psycho biographies in general. Contrary to realist claims that the structure of the environment constrains behavior in such a way as to eliminate the impact of personality, the assumption of psychobiography holds that individuals have an impact on outcomes that is distinctive and traceable. The challenge emerges from the attempt to distinguish the ways in which a particular subject is distinct from relevant others. But it may never be possible to know the reality of the counterfactual of what would have happened if that person was not in that situation at a given time. It may also be impossible to know what that person might have done in another situation at a different time. This forces particular attention to what is idiosyncratic and unique in the individual, and, often, what is unusual is also deemed pathological in some way. But the situation may also prove influential as well, and it should not be forgotten in the context of individual action in a psychobiography. Interactions between the individual and his environment can trigger interesting, and occasionally idiosyncratic, reactions worthy of investigation.

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The tradition of investigating what is unique about a person does not hold in all branches of modern psychology; psychodynamic approaches are most likely to share this bias. Many investigations of individuals stress the more cognitive aspects of decision making (Jervis 1976; McDermott 1998). Analyses that apply findings about how most people behave in a given situation to a particular individual are searching for what the individual has in common with others, not what sets her apart. Yet most psychobiographies tend to utilize the more ideographic approach to the study of individual behavior. Finally, these studies often set themselves up as a competitive alternative to other explanations that may be more political or sociological in nature. Part of the reason for the tendency derives from the psychoanalytic approach itself. In many ways, the central arguments of Freudian analysis are unfalsifiable; if someone objects to the conclusions, advocates can argue that the person is merely being "defensive" or failing to understand the way in which personal motives can be displaced onto the political arena (Lasswell 1930). Yet attributing causality need not be restrictive; very few outcomes can be traced to single causes. It is often the case that political and psychological incentives operate together to produce a synergistic outcome. Distinguishing those effects requires cases where the predictions of the models diverge. While it may not be necessary to privilege one domain of explanation over another, care should be taken so as not to exclude alternative explanations for various outcomes or behaviors from analysis. Personality may influence outcome, but personality occurs in a social and political context that can only be ignored at peril to a deeper understanding of the subject's sense of self, the impact of that self on the surrounding world, and the external incentives of the world. Contributions

While several of these underlying assumptions may lead to a biased focus or narrow interpretations, psycho biographies have nonetheless contributed some interesting insights into particular politicians and their behavior. Four broad areas of contribution are worth reviewing (Glad 1973), before specific studies are discussed briefly. First, psycho biographies have helped illuminate the importance of the impact of role on performance and outcome. In par-

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ticular, studies that investigate the relationship between personality, role, and performance have examined how fit between personality style and job performance expectations can influence the likelihood for success or failure. For example, Barber (1972) demonstrated the relationship between personality and performance in several presidents by characterizing their styles along dimensions of active-passive and positive-negative (chap. 8). Glad (1969) characterized leaders' performances in office as adaptive, maladaptive, or innovative. Such taxonomies may help generate new approaches to the study of personality and leadership more broadly, even if the specific individuals who are investigated do not appear similar to current officeholders. Second, psychobiography has helped illustrate the relationship between opinion and personality through the systematic investigation of the particular nature and consequences of a subject's political attitudes and beliefs. Since the nature of the relationship between attitudes and behavior is complex, examining how a leader's political values influence his actions and strategies can help explain recurring themes or agendas that take place over his career. For example, Wilson's strong values supporting selfdetermination strongly influenced the development of his Fourteen Points plan for peace after World War I, and Reagan's consistent worldview regarding communism is evident in his administration's specific policies toward arms control (Skinner et al. 2001; McDermott 2002a). Third, psycho biographies force an examination of the relationship between attitude and socialization by focusing attention on the political and social background and development of the subject. By uncovering such factors as the political context in which the subject grew up, his political coming-of-age experience, and the nature and consequences of his first political success or failure, aspects of political socialization are highlighted in his development. Barber (1972), for example, argues that politicians attempt to recreate the circumstances surrounding their first political success whenever they encounter political challenges in later life. Some political socialization processes, such as a war, may shape an entire generational cohort, while others may be more idiosyncratic in nature. These influences can retain a strong impact on a person's subsequent goals and expectations, as well as helping explain recurring patterns of behavior. Last, psychobiographies can spotlight the psychic founda-

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tions of an individual's political ties. Through an exploration of an individual's past, personal and sexual attachments, psychobiographies can bring emotional elements to the fore. Since emotion is often a neglected element in political analysis, psychobiographies that focus on the affective ties between people and their political or ideological beliefs can help supply a component often missing from traditional political biographies. Emotions trigger strong affiliations, aversions, fears, and desires, and these motivations provide compelling explanations for a great deal of otherwise seemingly "irrational" behavior. Specific Contributions

Woodrow Wilson Perhaps the best known and most influential psychobiography ever written was Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House (1956) by Alexander George and Juliet George. This seminal work offers a careful psychodynamic tracing of President Wilson's life and political career. In particular, the Georges argue that Wilson felt frustrated and angry as a child because he remained at the mercy of his perfectionistic and disciplinary father, a Presbyterian minister. They suggest that Wilson's failure to read until he was eleven was a clear sign of his emotional trouble in general and his stubbornness in particular. The Georges claim that Wilson's chronically low self-esteem and his repressed anger toward his father resulted in a self-defeating pattern of behavior throughout his life. They trace his career from before his time as president of Princeton, including his fight with Dean West over the proposed residential college program, through to his failure to secure Senate confirmation for his own League of Nations proposal. They demonstrate, in meticulous detail, how Wilson compensated for his low self-esteem with a compensatory drive for power, which led him to achieve many political successes. On the other hand, being unable to tolerate any frustration of his will, Wilson refused to compromise, especially with powerful male authority figures, over programs that ultimately led to notable defeats, both at Princeton and as president of the United States. The Georges' interpretation of Wilson generated a vociferous debate among those who sought to place Wilson in a more positive light. Weinstein, Anderson, and Link (1978) argued that the sources of Wilson's difficulties were not psychological, but rather

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physical in nature. They trace the crises in Wilson's career to a series of strokes that they claim began as early as 1896 and continued until the one that caused his death in 1924. The 1896 stroke ostensibly caused weakness if not paralysis in his right hand, and a stroke in 1906 led to almost complete blindness in his left eye. The Georges dispute that these episodes were strokes, or that Wilson's intransigence was due to simply physical ailments. A great deal of subsequent scholarly debate has surrounded the question of the source of Wilson's intransigence in the face of the League of Nations proposal and his failure to compromise with Henry Cabot Lodge over the final form (Tucker 1977; Weinstein 1983; Post 1983; Marmor 1983). Marmor, an ophthalmologist at the Stanford Medical Center, makes an important point: "First, many types of disease or incapacity-not necessarily stroke-may account for an emotional or psychological response. Second, diffuse vascular disease and aging may intensify pre-existing beliefs and personality traits, even when cognitive powers remain intact" (1983, 325). This comment points to an important consideration in all psychobiography, that of multiple independent causation. It is unlikely that anyone single cause can be used to explain as large and complex a phenomenon as the failure of the League of Nations proposal in the Senate, particularly when so many other people were involved, and there are many political as well as interpersonal dynamics to consider. But attributing some causality to Wilson's stroke invalidates the Georges' argument about Wilson's emotional and psychological struggles. Much of what is at stake in debates over the character of particular subjects is their place and stature in history. Biographers often become invested in and identified with their subjects, and they may not want any pejorative interpretations to go unchallenged. In Link's debate against the Georges, for example, the unspoken assumption is that it is somehow not as bad for Wilson to have suffered a physical ailment like a stroke than to have suffered an emotional one, like low self-esteem and self-defeating behavioral patterns. It would be nice to think that the stigma attached to mental health interpretations and explanations reflects the period in which they were written, but even in the present, political interpretations still assume that a leader is somehow less responsible for a physical than a psychological ailment, and that assignment of blame is more appropriate in the latter than in the former category.

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Other Subjects of Psychobiography Other psychobiographies, though less influential and less controversial, have sought to understand particular leaders' political behavior in light of their psychological background. As with the Georges' work on Wilson, many of these psychobiographies attempt to trace the reemergence of childhood conflict within the context of later political activities. Mary Theodor's work on Vaclav Havel (1998), president of the Czech Republic, emphasized the importance of cultural and historical forces in shaping Havel's political trajectory. She attributes much of what she sees as Havel's risky foreign policy to his "driving focus." A recent psychobiography of President Richard Nixon argues that some early traumas in his childhood led to his unconscious need for punishment, which led to his self-defeating behavior in public office. Volkan, Itzkowitz, and Dod (1997) argue that Nixon's personality was characterized by the love of power, determination, intelligence, and rationality, combined with his refusal to accept defeat. A psychobiography of President Lyndon Johnson applied self psychology to an analysis of his political career (Meslin and Tobe 1991). Self psychology, developed most fully by Heinz Kohut (1971), concentrates analysis on an understanding of the subjective sense of self as the center of mental life. This psychobiography argues that Johnson was characterized by a need for acclaim and a great sensitivity to any form of criticism. He was marked by his determination to have complete control of his environment, and this tendency is traced through Johnson's experiences in elementary school, college, the Senate, and the presidency. Mary Pearson and Bobbie William (1995) apply the neoFreudian theories of Alfred Adler to former Texas governor Ann Richards. Adler argued that people are more than the sum of their biological and genetic parts and drives. He believed that the self searched for meaning and purpose in life beyond what biology or culture demands (Ansbacher and Rowena 1956). In one of the few psychobiographies of a woman, these female authors argue that Richards, who was governor from 1990 through 1994, was ruled by a law of consistent motion toward achieving her final goals. In other words, Richards was driven to constantly be on the move, doing things and accomplishing things. She could not sit still; she had a horror of vacuums. Her own psychic drives propelled her to be in constant motion toward proving her mastery and accom-

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plishing her goals. Richards, they write, needed a sense of mastery or superiority in order to feel any sense of self-worth or belonging. As an only child, she grew up to believe that she counted only when she was in charge and taking care of others. These tendencies produced her characteristic drive and success. Charles Carlton (1984) provides a provocative analysis of the life of Charles I, king of England (1625-49). Carlton takes the theoretical perspective of social learning over the life cycle and applies it to the behavior of Charles as king. Charles was a weak child of a homosexual father who took a long time to learn to walk and talk. He was deserted for a year at the age of three, when he was sent to live with an outside family. Charles became withdrawn and melancholy, and was further depressed by the death of his brother Henry when he was eighteen and his sister Mary shortly thereafter. He was particularly withdrawn between 1613 and 1618, prior to ascending the throne. Yet Charles became active and redeemed himself during the trial of the Scots rebellion when he proved that he would rather die than surrender or concede anything. Throughout his trial and execution, he spoke eloquently, losing the stutter that had plagued him in his earlier life. Arguably, Charles's depression and possible suicidality allowed him to handle a situation where another might have feared for his life. Instead, he spoke up for his beliefs and principles, even though it cost him his life. A recent psychobiographic interpretation of Adlai Stevenson offers another interesting analysis of failed leadership. Adlai Stevenson, former governor of Illinois, ran for president on the Democratic ticket in 1952 and 1956 and was in the running for the nomination in 1960. A powerful voice for the liberal conscience, Adlai had the support of many ideologues including Eleanor Roosevelt. Yet, as Cowden (1999) powerfully demonstrates using a neo-Freudian analysis derived from the work of Karen Horney, Stevenson proved unable to take the necessary initiative on his own behalf. Horney believed that basic anxiety was social rather than biological in nature. She argued that people develop one of three modes of dealing with such anxiety; they either move against, move toward, or move away from others in response (1945). Having accidentally shot and killed his cousin as a child, and being offered no opportunity to discuss or expiate his sense of guilt or remorse because of his mother's fears about the ramifications of his actions on his future political career, Adlai needed constant and endless support and reassurance in order to believe that he was doing the right thing. This paralysis played out in his tendency to

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procrastinate, his failure to marshal his supporters to his cause, his ubiquitous sense of self-sacrifice for the good of others, and his seeming failure to derive any personal enjoyment from his successes. Sometimes the same method can lead to radically different conclusions. Jerrold Post (1991) and Ralph White (1991) offer competing interpretations of the personality structure and strategic goals and incentives of Saddam Hussein. Post argues that Hussein is dangerous because his personality structure consists of "messianic ambition for unlimited power, absence of conscience, unconstrained aggression, and a paranoid outlook" (1991, 286). Post characterizes this personality type as a "malignant narcissist." White, on the other hand, advocates an approach of "realistic empathy" toward Hussein, arguing that Saddam's motives include fear and a need for power to perpetuate his self-perceived reputation as an Arab leader. Obviously, these different interpretations would suggest different intervention strategies for how to deal with Saddam Hussein in the future. Criticisms

Four specific limitations of psychobiographies are worth discussing in detail here (Tetlock, Crosby, and Crosby 1981). First, a great deal of evidence is often lacking from the lives of the subjects under investigation. If the person is long gone, it is impossible to even hope to interview living friends or relatives of the subject. More recently, it may prove increasingly difficult to get documentation on the lives of individuals who communicate primarily through telephone and electronic mail interactions that are easily and readily lost to history; letter writing, so useful for examining the lives of many historical personalities, is no longer likely to yield voluminous data. Even when information is available, in the form of autobiographies or interviews, it remains biased by individuals' desires to manage their self-impression and do the utmost to place themselves in the best light possible. Often it is hard to extract reliable information from background fluff. Equally important, even when reliable information is available, it can be next to impossible to determine what that information meant to the person under investigation and how it was interpreted in its context and environment. Second, especially in psychoanalytic approaches, theory may be used to infer evidence that does not exist. The tendency to infer

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childhood experience from adult behavior commits the logical fallacy of assuming what is to be proved. Biographers must be cautious not to use the theory they are applying to generate evidence where facts are lacking. A single case life remains insufficient to test the larger psychological theory, but even if the purpose of the psychobiography is less to test the personality theory itself than to illuminate the life of the subject, care must be taken to ensure that evidence seen in light of the theory actually exists. Erikson admits to using his clinical skills and training to infer certain aspects of Martin Luther's childhood because the facts were sparse (1993 [1958], 50). Such inferential leaps remain unjustified. But Erikson hardly presents the worst offender in this regard. Rapoport's (1976) analysis of Adolf Eichmann argued that he was an ambulatory schizophrenic and that his apparent normalcy was defensive. Rapoport claimed that Eichmann's behavior at trial was "simulated normalcy" based on a facade and resulting from his unconscious use of mimicry of those around him who were normal. In this case, behavior and pathology are inferred in the absence of contrary data in order to support an underlying contention that only someone who was completely crazy could engage in the kind of mass murder that Eichmann oversaw in the Holocaust. Rapoport suggests that Eichmann's pathology can explain both the craziness of his earlier murderous behavior, as well as his seeming normalcy at trial. Yet no evidence existed that Eichmann was not exactly as he appeared to be: normal. Evil, perhaps, but psychologically normal nonetheless. Indeed, Hannah Arendt's famous insight about the banality of evil in the trial suggests just that (1994 [1964]). Third, psychobiographies must ward against a failure to consider alternative hypotheses, either political or psychological, for explaining the person or behavior under examination. Behavior is overdetermined, and most results have multiple causes. Overusing theories that stress the operation of the unconscious, to the underuse or exclusion of theories that incorporate other, especially political causes, undermines the credibility of the entire analysis. Analysis that relies solely on theories of unconscious motivation, particularly those that fall prey to inferring evidence from theory, results in unnecessarily reductionistic arguments. All behavior takes place in a situational context comprised of both the internal and external worlds of the subject. Often conscious rational reasons are sufficient to explain behavior; sometimes external forces explain outcome. To assume that internal personal dynamics are a

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sufficient explanation, excluding other considerations, denies the richness and complexity of human experience. Sometimes political and psychological forces work in the same direction; psychological explanations prove themselves when they work in opposition to compelling external pressures and still hold sway. Fourth, psychobiographers need to take care not to base their causal conclusions on dubious or inconsistent standards of evidence or inference. Analysts need to substantiate their arguments and conclusions on more than opinion and inference. Freud based his interpretation of da Vinci on a mistranslation of a single dream and made extensive inferences on the basis of a little evidence analyzed in light of a strong theory. Such a conclusion is not justified in making a substantial case about recurring patterns of behavior that are argued to result from early childhood experiences. Those experiences, and their effect, need to be traced and documented, preferably over time, in order to justify or warrant causal arguments about their impact on adult behavior; they should not be inferred in retrospect from adult behaviors. Last, from a methodological perspective, it is essential to realize that a biographer cannot demonstrate causality from a single case, either within a case, or from a case to a theory. Freud may have tried to infer da Vinci's homosexuality from a single infantile dream, but the appropriate standard of evidence that even Freud put forth in that treatise would not support such a broad conclusion from such limited data. Further, in testing a kind of theory, whether psychodynamic or otherwise, a scholar cannot validate the larger theory based on a single case, even one as meticulous, elegant, and convincing as the Georges' study of Woodrow Wilson. The Georges are clear that they use their theories to illuminate their case, to help interpret their data, and to draw conclusions from the evidence found in the patterns of Wilson's behavior over time. But even several well-formulated cases would not be enough to establish the external validity of the larger psychodynamic framework. The psychodynamic approach can offer insights into possible motives for behavior and probable dynamics of action in the life of a given person, but the life of that person remains insufficient to validate the larger theoretical argument. There are at least two reasons for this. First, as we know from the tobacco industry's longtime insistence that you cannot prove that smoking causes lung cancer on the basis of covariation alone, correlation does not constitute causation. More compelling causal evidence on the relationship between smoking and lung cancer

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comes from experimental animal studies that have begun to elucidate the mechanisms by which smoke and tar affect, change, and toxify lung tissue at the cellular level. In these experiments, scientists compare tissue exposed to smoke with tissue that has not been exposed to smoke. This kind of controlled comparison provides the essential basis for scientifically supportable causal claims. Second, in the experimental method, variables need to be examined in terms of different values in order to explore their relationships; they cannot be adequately explained with a constant (here, one psychobiography). Yet psychobiographers often have a single case of a person who does not vary on some essential dimension of interest. In fact, this lack of variation in the face of many different kinds of stresses often constitutes the argument about the person in and of itself; the subject's inability to change in response to situational demands because of psychological patterns represents the main problem. Explanations supporting the purported cause of such constancy often take the form of a counterfactual, or "what if" claim. "If da Vinci had not had such a dream, would he still have been a homosexual?" or "Would da Vinci have been a homosexual if he had not had the dream?" present examples of such counterfactual queries. Yet as is obvious from this thought experiment, sufficient evidence does not exist to argue this question on an adequate empirical basis. Much more extensive work would be required to make a causal argument. Indeed, in order to test the theory, as opposed to using a given theory to help illuminate the life of a particular person, biographers need much more than a single case illustration. Coherent Whole Explanations

Tetlock, Crosby, and Crosby distinguish between two types of psychobiography: "causal explanations which attempt to reduce adult behavior to early childhood experiences, and coherent whole explanations which seek to identify underlying themes that unify the diverse facts of individual lives" (1981, 191). They argue that the limitations and criticisms discussed earlier affect the first, but not the second, kind of psychobiography. They advocate more widespread use of the second type. Three elements characterize the coherent, whole-explanation psychobiography. First, scholars search for integrated patterns of behavior in the individual, over time and across situation. In this

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way, scholars invoke personality theories to help them interpret a wide range of evidence, to offer taxonomies or classifications for investigation, or to draw new connections between old relationships. The Georges did an admirable job in tracing Wilson's low self-esteem and self-defeating tendencies over the course of his entire life, affecting his tenure as president at Princeton, through his time as governor of New Jersey, all the way through to his failure pushing through the League of Nations proposal as president. They strove not so much to explain every aspect of Wilson's behavior but rather to use psychoanalytic assumptions to provide a framework for the interpretation and explanation of coherent patterns of behavior over time. Second, coherent whole explanations focus on adult behavior. While childhood experiences are not ignored, the focus remains on the adult behavior of interest. Again, the Georges may trace the genesis of Wilson's low self-esteem to his relationship with his father, but they spend the majority of the book examining Wilson's adult political behavior. Last, coherent, whole explanations seek to relate personality traits to political behavior. The goal here is to offer a pattern of explicit relationships between ostensible personality traits and political outcomes. Thus, Wilson may have been frustrated with his father but was too threatened and scared, especially as a child, to rebel against him. However, as an adult, he bristled against any threat to his autonomy or authority. The Georges demonstrate that this happened over and over again, at Princeton with Dean West over the graduate college, all the way through to his fight with Lodge over the League of Nations. Goals and Strategies

Given what we already know about the assumptions, contributions, and criticisms of psychobiography, what can we say about the current goals and strategies advocated by practitioners? Recent methodological debates in the literature discuss the utility and various strategies of biographers. One analyst makes the interesting and provocative point, clearly informed by a psychodynamic interpretation, that psychobiographies offer biographers a useful avenue for telling the story of their own life through that of another (Falk 1985). Biographers obviously do not choose their subjects at random, but

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rather make those choices based on something about the subject that either attracts, appeals to, repels, or otherwise interests the writer. If this were not so, another subject would be chosen. Falk argues that this choice is informed by some kind of identification on the part of the biographer with the subject, and that analyzing the subject offers the writer a chance to work through the writer's own related issues and conflicts. Therefore, two sets of questions should be asked of psychobiographies. The first set relates to the nature of the biography itself, including questions concerning the source materials, methods, aims, functions, and the use and misuse of these things in service of understanding the subject. The second relates to the emotional forces that drive the writer's conscious and unconscious choice of subject matter. Knowing the writer's perspective informs the reader about possible biases that the writer may have projected onto the subject, either in absence of, or in opposition to, real data, because of the writer's personal responses to similar conflicts or processes. Full disclosure of the writer's psychological perspective would encourage a writer to explicate the reasons for his choice of subject and to share any potentially biased interpretations. Then the reader could better judge the conclusions that the biographer or reader makes concerning the subject. Someone who shared a trauma similar to the one undergone by the subject of analysis would obviously be more likely to respond emotionally to the subject, even in the absence of convincing data; the author may have only reported and projected his own experiences onto those of the subject. Countertransference can easily develop between a biographer and his subject, whereby the biographer uses the subject to help work out his own problems, extracting help and insight from the life of another for purposes of improving his own. This becomes problematic to the extent that the biographer himself needs to see the subject in a certain light. One of the most influential practitioners of psychobiography, William McKinley Runyan (1988, 1997) makes several useful points about the state of the art in the field and its relation to broader theoretical issues in psychology in particular. In discussing the study of lives in personality psychology and how these investigations are related to quantitative and experimental research, he argues that the conception of the field has four objectives: to analyze individual and group differences; to study specific processes; to study particular classes of behavior; and to study individual lives (1997). He argues that there is a continuum for

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understanding the relationships, from the traditional objectives to more modern methods in personality psychology. Runyan advocates a more integrated synthesis between the harder theoretical aspects of the discipline, such as cognitive and neuropsychology, and the softer side of personality psychology that traditionally incorporates the social, cultural, and historical context. Doris Wallace and Howard Gerber (1989) have attempted this sort of integration in their study of creativity from a cognitive perspective. They assume the uniqueness of the whole person in their case study approach and advocate an "evolved systems" approach that can be applied to autobiography, biography, and psychobiography. They conceptualize creativity as purposeful work that integrates the cognitive, emotional, aesthetic, and motivational aspects that Runyan advocates. In their study of twelve creative people at work, Wallace and Gerber (1989) investigated the relationship between the subjects' creativity at work and their life outside work, in addition to exploring their childhood experiences. Michael Howe (1997) joins Runyan in encouraging a more integrated relationship between the harder aspects of biological psychology and the softer elements of more traditional personality psychology, although he advocates more psychology than biology in the study of individual lives. He argues that there are five necessary aspects to the study of lives: examining the individual, finding a continuous record of the person's life, taking a descriptive approach, registering individual experience, and considering the whole person in the study. Wiggins and Pincus (1992) argue that integration should go beyond the union of biological and psychological approaches and include a study of both stability and change in the life of an individual. They advocate a focus on the subject's attributional style and encourage research on how a person manages impression formation and creates trait attributions in order to understand how people seek to cultivate the image they present to others, particularly in public. They argue that such a focus can help contribute to such factors as observer agreement regarding individual lives, assimilation and contrast effects in spontaneous trait inferences, and the processing of congruent and incongruent information about the life of the person. Finding and integrating information about a subject's life can be challenging; knowing what to extract and how to weight the relative importance of conflicting pieces of information can prove daunting. Irving (1988) offers a strategy for the extraction of per-

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sonal data from the historical record. He argues that the goal of the study of lives is to extract the recurring dynamic sequences, those "scripts" or "themes" in a person's life that appear to repeat themselves time and time again (similar to Freud's repetition compulsions). Arguments in this vein suggest that we are all an experience merely waiting for an event, echoing the observation If you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Irving (1988) writes that there are two strategies with which to approach the data: allow the data to reveal itself, in a kind of dust bowl empirical style; or ask the data particular systematic questions that are informed by a specific theoretical position. Either way, strategies for extracting data from the historical record include noticing what is most salient, what comes first, what is most frequent, and what is distinctive. Errors, omissions, negation, and incompleteness can help put inconsistent pieces of data into perspective. Feminist viewpoints have entered the debate in psychobiography by challenging some of the central assumptions of the Freudian theories that informed much of the earlier work. Elisabeth Young-Bruchl (1985) advocates that biographers learn to transcend the preoccupation with innate drives advocated by many psychodynamic formulations and begin to recognize the impact of current relationships and events on a person's life. In addition, she advocates redressing the gender bias in psychobiography, noting that psychobiographical work is almost exclusively about men, conducted mostly by men, and intended primarily for men. Elizabeth Marvick (1992) notes that most practitioners of psychobiography invest the early mother-child relationship with tremendous importance in their analysis of the future development of the subject; feminist interpretations prefer to stress the autonomy of the individual and negate the definitive importance of the mother-infant bond. She suggests that preoccupation with the mother-child bond indicates a desire on the part of many biographers to pathologize the mother and to hold her responsible for the later problems of her offspring. In addition, Marvick (1992) notes a similar cultural bias in the historical development of the method of psychobiography. She argues that the American political and historical establishment proved more receptive to the psycho biographical method, while Western Europeans in particular remained hostile or indifferent to the approach. She claims that this divergence resulted from insti-

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tutional differences in professional psychiatry between the Americans and the British in particular that began in the 1930s. Leaders of the British psychoanalytic tradition began to distance themselves from the social science method and substance that American doctors embraced beginning at that time. The British opposed the deterministic element that so enticed Americans especially during the Depression. As a result, British and later French psychoanalysts viewed psychobiography as demeaning to subjects who they believed deserved veneration and not pathologizing analysis. In spite of these qualifications and calls for improvements, Runyan (1988) sees progress in the arena of psychobiography in terms of its historical growth in a wide range of disciplines, the rise of associated professional organizations, increased outlets for publication of such materials, and in a quantitative analysis of increased books, articles, and dissertation topics in the decade prior to 1990. In order to support continued growth in this area, Runyan argues for continued support of eight component processes, including collecting additional new evidence in the life of the subject, formulating fresh interpretations of existing data, critically examining previous explanations of the subject, and applying new theoretical approaches. However, Jervis (1989c) contends that more recent work has downplayed the interest and importance of personality and personality typing in explicitly political analysis (chap. 1). Ways to Improve

Whether psycho biography as a method continues to flourish depends on the ability of practitioners to avoid the pitfalls that have plagued much of the earlier work. Tetlock, Crosby, and Crosby (1981) make five recommendations for future investigators. First, scholars need to make sure that they garner sufficient evidence to support their claims and conclusions. Evidence should not be inferred from theory or from personal experience with a similar circumstance. A single piece of evidence is not sufficient to make a case, nor is a single case sufficient to validate a theory. Attempting a coherent, whole explanation of a person's life, combined with seeking out recurrent themes or patterns, is a useful strategy for avoiding this problem. Second, biographers need to seriously examine and explore alternative explanations that incorporate political, historical, and cultural contexts and incentives into their analysis. Often political

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and psychological incentives operate in the same direction, and each should be awarded the influence it deserves, but sometimes they operate in opposition, and it may be the case that political or structural incentives outweigh psychological ones at particular times. Third, analysts need to be cautious in their use of psychoanalytic theories to investigate their subjects. While psychoanalytic formulations can provide interesting and important insights into the life of the subject, inferring evidence from theory presents a real danger, particularly if hard evidence from early childhood is lacking. Again, searching for recurrent themes in a coherent, whole explanation can help avoid this pitfall. Fourth, in the absence of psychoanalytic theory, biographers can look to other psychological theories that provide rich predictions about human behavior from a cognitive, learning, or biological perspective. These theories generate new and different questions than older psychoanalytic inquiries, seek fresh evidence, and offer the potential of novel interpretations and conclusions, even using existing evidence. Last, it is critical for scholars investigating the life of a person to be clear about their methodological strategies and to make every attempt to eliminate bias, whether motivated or not, from their analysis. Strategies to reduce the likelihood of using the same evidence to confirm hypotheses generated by that very evidence remain essential. Coming up with systematic strategies for extracting or interpreting data decreases the likelihood of privileging intuition over science. While intuition may be useful, it can fall prey to the systematic cognitive biases that have been outlined by Tversky and Kahneman (1974) and Nisbett and Ross (1980) (see discussion in chap. 3). Conclusions

In studies of leadership, psycho biographies can offer provisional hypotheses about an individual's personality style and practice, often inferred from experiences in early childhood. This strategy worked successfully in the Georges' masterful study of Woodrow Wilson and Colonel Edward House, examining how Wilson's relationship with his father established a life pattern characterized by his inability to accept compromise or criticism from powerful male authority figures. There are five important steps in conducting this type of study.

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First, the scholar should establish provisional hypotheses about the subject's personality. However, these hypotheses should be fluid and open to change based on the evidence uncovered. Second, distinguishing observation from interpretation remains crucial. Theory should never be used to infer evidence, even where documentation is absent. Third, scholars must develop specific criteria for differentiating supporting from contradictory evidence. Such strategies avoid the temptation of reading evidence in a way that only supports one particular theoretical perspective. Fourth, ascertaining the reliability of observations also establishes credibility. Reliability depends in part on the source of the information. Sometimes the most accurate information, such as the minutes of a National Security Council meeting, can be the most difficult to obtain. Memoirs, especially ones written to justify a certain decision or action, can represent suspect sources of information unless it is possible to find corroborating evidence from other documents. Memoirs usually remain biased sources if for no other reason than the author's desire to present a good impression of himself and his actions. Last, the task is not completed until the scholar establishes the validity of the study. For the study to prove useful, it must establish a real link between a leader's personality and his policy preferences or actions. Part of what makes the Georges' study of Wilson so impressive is that they were able to provide this link between Wilson's traits and his behavior across time in various circumstances, from his time as president of Princeton to his reign as president of the United States.

CHAPTER 8

Leadership

Would World War II have happened were it not for Hitler? Would there have been a nuclear exchange if someone other than Kennedy had been president or someone other than Khrushchev had been head of the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis? How might the world be different if Nixon had won in 1960, or if Gore had carried the electoral college in 2000? Interesting and famous counterfactuals such as these place emphasis on the importance of the individual. How might the world be different if one person had been in power instead of another? Would it be the same? Or would it be different? The nature of these questions inevitably rests on the assumption that a given individual has the power to effect change and shift the course of history; counterfactuals question whether and how one individual might have done so in a different way than another. Intuitively, most people talk and act as though individuals obviously make a difference; after all, if we really believed that people did not make a difference, then we undercut the sense of our own agency. By espousing such a belief, we are essentially saying that we believe we don't matter. More broadly, if all people are interchangeable, why do we care so passionately about the outcome of an election? If the person does not matter, who cares who wins? But if the individual does make a difference, then a particular person's election becomes crucial to his supporters. Ironically, many models in political science do not attribute special importance to individual leadership. Realism assumes that all individuals are constrained by the international system in the same way, and thus individual differences are washed out by external forces. Rational choice models often assume that individual leaders make cost-benefit calculations of various options to determine which policy is in their best interest (Fearon 1997; Bueno de Mesquita and Siverson 1997). All leaders are assumed to approach decisions using similar calculation strategies. They all attempt to maximize their goals, even if the nature of those goals, along with the individual's preferences, differs from person to person. And in 215

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most other traditional international relations theory approaches, little attention has been paid to how an individual person or leader might seek to pursue a particular set of ideas or ideologies. What do we mean when we talk about leaders? Who are they? Hermann (1986b) presents four images of a leader. The first image offers the leader as a "great man," someone who takes charge and knows what to do and how to do it. The second type ofleader is the salesman, the person who figures out what people want and then gives it to them. The third category is the puppet, someone whose strings are pulled by special interests outside the public eye. Finally, there is the firefighter, responding to demands in the environment. In order to understand leadership, according to Hermann, it is important to know something about a leader's personality and background, the group he is leading, the nature of his relationship with that group, the context, and the outcome of interactions between the leader and his followers. A leader's background can be influenced by several factors: political beliefs, political style, motivation for seeking office, responses to stress, manner of recruitment, amount of past political experience, and political climate. Contextual factors include extant rules, degree of constituent accountability, the strength and type of opposition, beliefs, resources, organizational structure, and the general sense of the times. Leaders benefit from constituent support when they are new in office. They also have an advantage if their followers don't care about the issues, or if they have developed goodwill from them. Finally, a leader gains strength when he fits the proper image. Jervis (1994a) argues that an individual level of analysis is increasingly important in the post-Cold War world. As the world becomes more complex, the beliefs and values of leaders become increasingly important. In particular, Jervis calls for attention to the areas of risk propensity, assimilation of evidence to preexisting beliefs, and motivated biases, such as wishful thinking. Like Jervis, this chapter argues that individuals are unique and that individual differences do matter in the outcome of world events. To deny this is to reject the efficacy of human action. After examining psychobiography in depth (chap. 7), we now look at other kinds of leadership studies. First the types of leadership studies are outlined. Next is an overview of aggregate psychological studies of types of political actors. The third section discusses two important models of leadership, and the last section examines leadership styles.

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Leadership Studies

Most early leadership studies have concentrated on elite leaders like presidents or other heads of nations. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most biographies of leaders presented hagiographic representations of their subject, set out for readers to try to emulate, admire, and model. More recent biographies now dwell on the foibles, sexual and otherwise, of their subjects (Casper 1999). Sensationalistic publishers assume that readers revel in the failures and struggles of others; their sales numbers tell them so. Readers, on the other hand, may justify their interest by arguing that they can learn and be inspired by others' mistakes, but these salacious volumes are usually meant only to sell copies by triggering voyeuristic impulses, delighting in making people feel better about themselves by demeaning others, and prying into the unhappiness of the rich, famous, and powerful. In academics, as well, there have been cycles in the study of leadership. Currently, individual studies of particular leaders appear to be largely out of fashion. The dominant paradigm, rational choice, does not tend to focus on individual leaders except to the extent that they are seen as similarly calculating men whose main desire is to stay in power. Such leaders may vary in individual risk propensity: a given person is either risk acceptant, risk neutral, or risk averse. But each leader, albeit with individual preferences, goals, and risk propensities, is still assumed to do what he believes will be in his best interest (Bueno de Mesquita 2000). A great deal has been learned about the decision making from this perspective. However, in these models, less attention is given to a leader's individual beliefs or personality and how these factors might impact their leadership and how they try to change the world. There are also differences between disciplines. While most political scientists tend to believe, as most people do, that individuals have personalities, many social psychologists do not believe this is the case. For example, if someone describes herself as "punctual," and then an observer follows her around for a day, it is unlikely that the person's consistency on such a trait would amount to more than a .3 correlation value across situations. A long and heated debate in psychology searching for cross-situational consistency in human behavior failed to produce evidence at a level that most people would expect if such a thing as personality existed (Mischel 1968). In fact, temporal consistency appears to be much more solid than cross-situational consistency in any given

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trait (Mischel 1984). In other words, our earlier student would be much more likely to be punctual for a meeting with her adviser year in and year out than she would be likely to be punctual for her adviser, her roommate, dinner, class, calling home, and her boyfriend in any given day. Mischel and Peake (1982) were able to demonstrate remarkable cross-situational consistency under particular conditions of stress, whereby people revert to their "preferred" mode of behavior, typically either aggressive, prosocial, or withdrawn. Men are more likely to be aggressive, while women are more likely to be withdrawn. This relative lack of consistency except under conditions of stress should not be seen as negative; it merely demonstrates the essential adaptability of mentally healthy people who respond to their changing environments in appropriate ways. People maintain a sense of self-consistency over time through a combination of seeing the same person in the mirror every day, representing physical consistency, and memory, which connects all the experiences and events in our lives together into a coherent whole that is united by our own presence or experience. Nevertheless, many psychologists do continue to assert the existence of personality. This approach suggests that there is a way to assess traits within the context of personality (Wiggins and Pincus 1992). Most of this line of work in psychology supports the notion of the five-factor model of personality characteristics. These dimensions include neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness (Costa and McCrae 1992). Research has demonstrated that these factors are reliable and valid (McCrae and Costa 1987). Recently, these five factors have been used to explore stability and change in personality across the life span, as well as the relationship between personality factors, physical health, and certain life events. Supporters of this system argue that individuals differ along bipolar dimensions of all five characteristics, such that some people are introverted while others are extroverted, for example. A given person's individual constellation along these five dimensions then constitutes his or her "trait personality." Thus, while everyone differs in terms of where they are on these five scales, all people can be evaluated in terms of these five characteristics. This model developed as a result of processes of statistical analyses that reflected clusters of trait terms. Thus, the five-factor model is descriptive in nature, and lacking in any independent, underlying theoretical foundation.

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While some scholars believe in the existence of personality and others do not, much of the traditional work in leadership studies has begun from the assumption that people, and thus leaders, do have personalities, and that their personalities, including beliefs, values, and attitudes, can impact behavior and leadership, and thus affect political outcomes. This section reviews some of that work. Early Studies in Leadership

Lasswell (1930) began the serious study of personality and politics with his argument that people project their inner personal struggles onto the outside political world. Alexander George (1969) made a huge impact on the early study of personality and politics with his work on the operational code. In evaluating Nathan Leites's book A Study in Bolshevism, George pointed to the importance of a leader's operational code in determining political behavior. George described Leites's term as referring to "the precepts or maxims of political tactics and strategy" (193). While Leites employed this term to describe the Bolsheviks, the overall idea clearly has broader applicability. Specifically, according to George, operational codes come to include certain rules of conduct as well as norms of behavior. These rules and norms are then internalized by a person who becomes transformed by this new identity, or character structure. In a broader sense, a political leader's "beliefs about the nature of politics and political conflict, his views regarding the extent to which historical developments can be shaped and his notion of correct strategy and tactics" (197) have a strong influence on the person's choices. George posits that leaders' decisions are constrained by certain factors, including incomplete information, an inadequate ability to predict outcomes, and difficulty figuring out which criteria to use in evaluating options. George developed a series of questions to help define the philosophic content of an operational code. These included such factors as the leader's beliefs about the nature of politics and the degree to which it might be predictable, general level of optimism about outcomes, and sense of control over the environment. George also presented a further set of questions regarding the instrumental beliefs embedded in the operational code. These included issues surrounding tactics, goals, risks, means, and timing. George argued that a knowledge of all of these

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factors within a given leader's operational code provides important information for undertaking an analysis of political behavior, decision making, and leadership style. Walker and Falkowski (1984) undertook an analysis of the operational codes of four sets of presidents and their secretaries of state. They examined birth order and family socialization, needs for power, achievement, and affiliation, operational codes attributed by historians, and evidence of cognitive dissonance or behavioral intransigence during international crisis. They proposed four hypotheses. First, early childhood socialization produces certain sets of motives prior to the development of political beliefs. Second, people adopt political belief systems that are compatible with these motives. Third, operational codes become activated by situations in the environment, which may in turn arouse particular psychological needs. Finally, once aroused, these motivations contribute to cognitive dissonance and behavioral intransigence in the face of international crisis or conflict. Friedlander and Cohen (1975) developed their own personality correlates for belligerence in international relations using a comparative historical case study method. Examining fourteen leaders with records of belligerence, they found two ways that leaders respond to conflict. One group seeks to avoid conflict and violence. Such leaders attempt to negotiate compromises to conflict; they are cooperative in style. A second group sets out to provoke conflict and prefers violent resolutions. Such leaders are noncooperative or belligerent in style. Methodologically, the significance of these findings is difficult to estimate because of the sole focus on the dependent variable of interest; cooperative leaders cannot exert their full weight on the findings. However, Friedlander and Cohen discover some interesting patterns in these cases. Specifically, they find two personalities that tend toward belligerence. One type displays compensatory masculinity, which manifests in the form of dominance through verbal bullying. Such men, according to the authors, demonstrate extraordinary toughness in the face of conflict. Authoritarian personalities represent the second style of belligerent leadership. Such men show preoccupation with lines of authority and exhibit conventional behavior, intolerance for ambiguity, and prejudice. The authors suggest that such leaders will displace their repressed hostility onto out-groups in international relations. Both types of leaders also had unhappy or ill childhoods that the authors believe played a role in the development of belligerent behavior as an

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adult. But obviously such a conclusion should wait for the additional assessment of more cooperative leaders to see if they too suffered from ill health or unhappiness as children at a lower rate than belligerent leaders. Greenstein

Fred Greenstein has made seminal contributions to the study of leadership, personality, and politics. In a definitive article, Greenstein responded to five typical objections to the study of personality (1967; see also 1992). Some argued that the effect of personalities would cancel each other out across leaders. By this, critics meant that if, for example, one leader was liberal while another was conservative, their impact on overall policy would counteract each other, thus leaving no discernible systematic influence on overall policy. Greenstein argued that people accepted this as an assertion. Instead, he believed that scholars should view this observation as an empirical challenge, and set out to conduct studies to investigate whether or not this assumption was true. Second, he suggested that the debate between those who place primary import on personality factors and those who privilege social factors remains spurious. Both factors can influence behavior in potentially decisive ways. Third, in responding to the question of whether individuals can exert an impact on their environment, he argued for a continuum of action dispensability (where individual differences can impact behavior in particular ways). He stated that the extent to which an actor can impact a given situation depends on three criteria: (1) the extent to which the environment can be restructured; (2) the location of the actor in that environment; and (3) the actor's particular strengths and weaknesses. In responding to the fourth criticism that uniform constraints on politicians make individual differences irrelevant, he uses the notion of actor dispensability. Working off a model that assumes that responses to the environment are mediated through personal predispositions, Greenstein notes the existence of eleven additional factors that can facilitate the impact of individual differences on outcomes. First, he claims that there is more room for individual expression on the margin, as opposed to the center, of action. Second, greater variations result from more demanding tasks. Third, spontaneous behavior is more likely to exhibit personal variations. Fourth, ambiguous situations allow for greater individual differences to manifest. Ambiguity can result from new or complex chal-

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lenges. Fifth, personal variations have more freedom to emerge in situations where there are no sanctions for alternative behaviors. Sixth, personal variation manifests to the extent that leaders do not have existing mental sets for action that might constrain creativity. Seventh, individual differences are more likely to emerge around issues that the actor feels strongly about. Eighth, personal variation will be reduced to the extent that a person's inclination is to take the lead from others. Ninth, group dynamics can reduce the impact of personal differences to the extent that the person takes their cues from others. Tenth, the more emotionally involved a leader is, the more likely his personal predispositions are to be expressed. Last, individual differences manifest more to the extent that the leader holds a job that is relatively free of specific expectations. Finally, in response to the fifth criticism that pathological types of personality render personality assessments irrelevant, Greenstein argued that there are three kinds of factors that make ego-defensive leadership more likely to occur. First, certain situations are more likely to match particular aspects of a leader's personality and thus elicit specific types of responses that are based, at least in part, on personality factors. Second, ego-defensive action will occur to the extent that a given leader has such needs. Last, certain kinds of responses grant greater freedom to particular personality characteristics than others. For example, anger may be easier to manifest in certain situations than grief. Barber

One of the most important and influential studies carried out concerning leadership was the work conducted by James David Barber (1972) on U.S. presidents. He uses a more colloquial definition of personality with a specific cluster of descriptive explanations instead of the specific experimental notion. Barber begins by arguing that personality shapes behavior and that a person's leadership dynamic results from the interaction between how much power a person has in a given situation and the climate of expectations. These expectations include factors such as the reassurance a leader receives for his actions, the overall sense of progress or action taking place, and the level of legitimacy available. The individual's ability to balance internal and external pressures and whether there is resonance between these pressures contributes to a leader's success in using power to meet expectations.

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For Barber, a leader's behavior is patterned by a combination of his character, worldview, and style. Barber identified three factors that influence the behavior of politicians. The first factor is a person's character, or their basic orientation to life. Character develops in childhood from interactions with a person's parents, siblings, friends, and other powerful church, school, or community forces. The second aspect, worldview, is a person's primary politically relevant beliefs about human nature; it can influence behavior. It develops in early adolescence and includes notions of social causality, such as which forces lead to which outcomes. Worldview also concerns beliefs about what constitutes the central moral conflicts of our time. These beliefs about human nature and the important challenges of our time help the leader determine causal links between what the world is like now and what it should be like in the future. For example, a conservative leader like President Bush might have a worldview that establishes a causal link between the breakdown of the family unit and subsequent high rates of crime, drug abuse, and teen pregnancy. A more liberal leader like President Clinton might see a causal link between the prejudices surrounding race and the subsequent oppression, inequality, and poverty that result. In each of these worldviews, a clear culprit exists that needs to be fixed in order for the social order to improve. Each view may suggest that both people and social institutions need to change for progress to be made, but the notion of what should change, and how those shifts should take place, obviously differs. Style, the third force influencing a politician's behavior, develops in early adulthood. Style refers to the habitual way in which a leader performs his job, including rhetorical style and flourish. Style includes the personal relationships that a president cultivates with influential politicians and others. For example, while Kennedy assembled smart people around him to help debate the merits and detractions of various issues, Johnson preferred to bully people into accepting his ideas, while Franklin Roosevelt liked to have people work independently on certain issues and then bring him their ideas and suggestions so he could pick and choose from among the best suggestions. Style also includes the way people prepare for their jobs or do their homework. Do they seek information from a wide variety of people, like Kennedy, or depend upon a very limited number of trusted advisers, like Woodrow Wilson did with Colonel Edward House? Do they seek

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or disdain professional intelligence? For example, most presidents since the time of the CIA's instigation have begun their day with an intelligence briefing, although President Clinton did not. In the United States, the president functions not only as the head of government but also as the head of state, where he symbolizes the nation and represents it at ceremonial events. Style also refers to the way a particular leader carries out these social and leadership duties. Some presidents, for example, are very good in one area but may not excel at both. Ronald Reagan was an especially effective ceremonial leader, managing to convey just the right tone and emotion during important occasions, such as the memorial service for those who died aboard the space shuttle Challenger when it exploded. Ultimately, style comes down to a leader's ability to balance performance, relationships, and homework optimally in order to successfully meet the requirements of the job. Barber looks for personality traits in the early life of leaders. Unlike Freud, he does not go into childhood experiences but rather concentrates on the circumstances surrounding the first independent political success achieved by the future leader. He assumes that these events and experiences are crucial in determining the future strategies of the leader. In particular, Barber's hypothesis suggests that a politician attempts to recreate the conditions that brought him his first success all throughout the rest of his political career. Even when the environment changes, and the strategies that brought the leader success early on may no longer be appropriate, the leader will persevere to create the original conditions that brought him success, even if such a strategy brings him failure in a later context. Barber characterizes leaders along two different dimensions: active or passive, depending on energy level; and positive or negative, depending on affect. Active or passive reflects other basic tensions, such as those between dominance and submission, extroversion and introversion, and approach and avoidance. In this model, positive or negative refers to how the person feels about his job: a positive leader will feel pleasure and optimism about his jo b, while a negative leader will feel pessimistic and unhappy about his work. Like active-passive, the positive-negative dyad reflects other dynamics as well: happy and sad, hopeful and skeptical, optimist and pessimist. Barber combines these dimensions so that leaders are seen in terms of these two characteristics. Leaders who are active and positive are characterized by high

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self-esteem as well as high levels of achievement. Such leaders seek mastery over challenges, and they achieve results. Active negative leaders are characterized by aggressive ambition. They tend to be perfectionistic to the point of compulsion, but in reality they hate their jobs. Presidents who are energetic, overcome obstacles, but remain receptive and compliant to the needs and interests of others are placed in the passive positive cell. These leaders seek love more than power. They are focused on others. They like cooperation. They are rarely assertive and tend to have low self-esteem, craving the acceptance and approval of others. They rarely present original ideas but they try hard to make everyone happy. Finally, passive negative presidents possess a character that is rooted in an orientation to duty and service. They remain concerned about civic virtue. Such leaders tend to withdraw under stress. Technically, Barber's model could be applied to any leader, but Barber himself concentrated on categorizing all American presidents along these two axes. For example, Barber argues that Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, and Jefferson were active positive presidents. He considers Theodore Roosevelt to have been a passive positive leader. Wilson and Johnson are seen as active negative leaders, while Eisenhower and Washington were categorized as passive negative ones. Some categorizations seem strained, even within the confines of the model itself. For example, Barber classifies Theodore Roosevelt as a passive positive leader. Yet Theodore Roosevelt pioneered the antitrust legislation that broke apart the powerful railroad and oil monopolies, thus bringing greater democracy to the American economy. This hardly seems like passive behavior. Eisenhower provides another instance of an odd characterization. It seems strange to categorize the military architect of D-Day, the largest, most daring, and ultimately most successful amphibious assault in history, as passive by nature. Finally, Nixon offers another conundrum. Barber labels Nixon as passive negative. And while Nixon did indeed withdraw and fail to come to his own defense in the Watergate scandal, he showed remarkable action in his conduct of the most aggressive bombing campaign in history in Vietnam. Sometimes such classifications can be tricky. Barber categorizes Clinton as a passive positive president, and overall he certainly fits the traits of such leaders pretty well. However, it can be hard to square a notion of passivity with someone who typically

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slept maybe four or five hours a night. It might be easier in such cases to characterize the leader by the overall trait description rather than the specific behaviors that make up a leader's legacy. Bush Jr. presents somewhat of a challenge as well. Certainly he is much more passive than Clinton. He takes frequent vacations; he sleeps even more. But is he as positive as he seems? He claims that bipartisanship is a virtue, and he clearly wants people to get along. He has adopted a can-do attitude, at least in public. Yet his body language remains terminally anxious; he never seems to really be enjoying his job; he often resembles a deer caught in the headlights in press conferences, frequently stumbling over his words. Using Barber's categories, Bush leans toward passive negative. Hermann

Margaret Hermann has been a leader in personality research as well. In one study (1980), she investigated six characteristics of forty-five leaders to explain foreign policy behavior. These included personal characteristics such as beliefs, motives, decision style, and interpersonal style. Within motives, she explored both the need for achievement and the need for power. Decision style comprised such factors as openness to new information, risk propensity, cognitive complexity, and ambiguity tolerance. She found two different orientations to foreign policy in her sample: (1) independent, with leaders who despise change and remain secretive; and (2) participatory, with leaders who advocate change. In another study conducted with Paul Kowert (Kowert and Hermann 1997), Hermann examined which kinds of leaders take risks. Taking a different tack than prospect theory, these authors wanted to determine the extent to which individual differences contribute to risk propensity. They administered three questionnaires and two personality inventories to 126 subjects, who were not themselves leaders. They found that some people strive for risky experiences. Such people are characterized by openness, thrill seeking, and intuitive predispositions. Others take risks because they lack proper impulse control. Such individuals are less conscientious, less sensitive to threat, and less likely to judge others. Finally, there is a group that avoids risk. Such people are more agreeable and altruistic. Using a different method of investigation, Hermann conducted a study with Thomas Preston (1994). In order to understand

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White House organization, they examined presidents' work habits, the way they like to obtain information, the kind of people they like to surround themselves with, and how they make decisions. They presented a model of how presidents coordinate policy and how much control they like to exert using five characteristics, including involvement in the policy-making process, willingness to tolerate conflict, motivation for leading, preferred strategies for managing information, and preferred strategies of conflict resolution. Leadership at a Distance

Many studies of leadership have been conducted under the rubric of leadership at a distance. This work typically involves using content analysis of speeches, interviews, and writings to analyze a political leader from a distance. In other words, this work does not typically include personal interviews or assessments with the leader himself. Several practitioners of this kind of work, including David Winter, Margaret Hermann, and Jerrold Post, have produced a great deal of interesting and important work from this perspective. Winter (1992) points to the importance of using validated measures in such studies of personality at a distance. Objective measures of motives, cognitions, beliefs, temperament, and interpersonal traits provide useful clues to leader assessment. Examination of motives typically involves investigating drives for achievement, affiliation, and power. Studies of cognitive variables have explored specific beliefs, operational codes, and cognitive styles, including levels of cognitive complexity. One series of studies examined the personalities of Bush Sr. and Gorbachev (Winter et al. 1991) using measurements of motives, traits, and cognitions. The authors assessed motives for power, affiliation, and achievement in both leaders. In addition, they measured each leader's beliefs in the controllability of events, degree of self-confidence, conceptual complexity, and task versus social-emotional emphasis. They examined both leaders' operational codes and self-scripts as well. They predicted that both leaders will be peaceful, willing to negotiate and cooperate, and remain open to change. Post (1991) and R. White (1991) have undertaken such assessments of Sad dam Hussein as well. Post argues that Hussein is a malignant narcissist, while White advocates for the importance of "empathizing" with Hussein. Obviously these divergent perspectives have different policy implications for action.

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Psychological Studies of Types of Political Actors

Studies of types of political actors include work on pathological leadership. What are paranoid leaders like? How are they different from other leaders? Which leaders are paranoid? How do we know? Can we demonstrate that this type of leader is more or less likely to engage in particular kinds of international behavior, such as war, than other types of leaders? Any study that seeks to characterize certain leaders as belonging to a class or type ofleader that will behave in predictable ways, or have certain systematic differences from other types of leaders, falls under the category of psychological studies of types of political actors. These studies typically involve five steps. For example, to study the impact of paranoia on political leadership style and effectiveness, it is important first to produce a phenomenology of the particular type of leader to be investigated. What are the characteristics of a paranoid leader? A narcissistic one? Established medical definitions can often be used for purposes of convenience or consistency. But sometimes an analyst will want to develop a more distinctive characterization for certain specific purposes. Second, tracing a particular dynamic or decision can illuminate the process that defines the type. For example, how does a paranoid leader differ in the way he approaches certain kinds of decisions from someone else? Are certain issues more likely to trigger action and concern than others in different kinds of leaders? Or is it that leaders respond to the same trigger situations in predictably different ways based on type? Third, many studies of leadership type look to the origins of the particular behavior in childhood. While it is not necessary that such behavior begin in childhood to exert a predictable impact on adult behavior, tracing the development and evolution of a particular trait remains important for determining under what circumstances the behavior will emerge. Looking at the development of the subject from childhood onward, with special emphasis on political development, can shed light on how the trait of interest is expressed. Important aspects of political development can include such things as experiences with mentors, education, experience, and the career paths that ultimately led to success. Who supported the person on his road to success? What actual experiences might have led a paranoid leader to be less likely to trust others? Are certain people or events more likely to arouse suspiciousness based on prior experience?

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Fourth, distinguishing deeper personality variables from more surface attitudes can be challenging. Traits that show consistency over time, or even across situations, may prove more likely to have explanatory power and yield better predictive insights than attitudes that shift over time or across issues. Is the paranoid person always aggressive? Or do only certain issues or problems spawn hostility? Last, personality does not exist in a vacuum. Examining the interplay of personality and attitudes with actual behavior can illuminate which circumstances constrain the leader and which seem to give him more freedom to exert his idiosyncrasies. Are external forces demanding that a paranoid leader concede? Is he then more likely to seek vengeance in the future than others would? Do paranoid tendencies only emerge in certain issues areas, for example, in foreign policy? In addition, aggregate-level studies provide accounts of the collective effects of the distribution of certain types of political actors across the system. They can examine distribution effects on political outcomes or on the functioning of political institutions. For example, such a study could look at how a higher proportion of women, minorities, or elderly people in office affects Senate decisions. Any study that asks how a particular class of people can affect a given political outcome or institution might take this form. Leaders' Personalities

Psychologists have identified a number of personality disorders that characterize people who are limited in their ability to respond to the world. Healthy people are marked by their resilience and adaptability; those whose responses are rigid and uniform regardless of the stimulus are said to have personality disorders. The kind of personality disorder in a person is determined by the kind of response they habitually make. The three types of rigid response styles that often characterize leaders in the international system appear to be compulsive, narcissistic, and paranoid. Personality disorders tend to be lifetime ailments. Most of the time, individuals with personality disorders do not present for treatment unless ordered to by a court or relative, although this has been slowly changing as more and more people with these characteristics recognize that their lives are not working as well as they should. People with personality disorders are notoriously difficult to treat, and treatment rarely results in any meaningful success.

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Compulsiveness refers to a person who becomes obsessed with details and cannot see the broader picture or the wider set of implications from a given action or decision. This tendency might restrict the range of options that could be considered in a decisionmaking process. Someone who perseverates long past the time when it becomes clear that a policy or program is not working might suffer from this problem; such individuals seem unable to detach from the details long enough to evaluate the overall success or failure of a given program. Narcissists are people who are self-absorbed and incapable of empathizing with the needs or experiences of others. Typically, narcissism is assumed to evolve from overcompensating for deep feelings of inadequacy and inferiority resulting from childhood neglect. This neglect need not be physical in nature. Parents who themselves are self-absorbed or depressed may not be able to meet the psychic needs of their children. Growing up with the belief that they are not worthy of love, such children overcompensate for their psychological deficiencies by building a defensive structure of selfishness blended with hypersensitivity to any kind of rejection that reminds them of their childhood state of impotence, rage, and isolation. Narcissism in leadership usually manifests as uncontrolled aggression and a deadening of conscience. Aggression results when a person attempts to thrash out and punish those who do not offer the kind of unconditional love and acceptance that their parents never provided (an unrealistic expectation in many other contexts). Deadening of conscience results from the inability to empathize; if you cannot feel someone else's pain, it is certainly much easier to cause it. Anything that serves one's own needs is assumed to be good and just. Being around a narcissist feels like being at the intake valve of a vacuum cleaner; they suck endless amounts of energy from those around them, offer little in return, and lash out quickly and viciously in the face of even the slightest perceived rejection. Post (1993) argues that narcissists' belief in the certainty of success instills in them a sense of omnipotence and invulnerability, making them more likely to take risks. In addition, they surround themselves with admirers who are not allowed to acknowledge any weakness or ignorance on the part of the leader. This leads to systematic distortions in decision making. Saddam Hussein presents the best example of a narcissistic leader in international relations. Post characterizes Hussein as a "malignant narcissist" because of his particular combination of

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features, including a grandiose drive for unlimited power, a lack of conscience, uncontrolled aggression, and paranoia. Negotiations with such people are unlikely to be successful because narcissists only want to do what they want to do when and how they want to do it. Paranoia is probably the most common of the personality disorders seen in world leaders. Paranoid individuals do not trust their own supporters and often engage in widespread massacres in an attempt to eliminate enemies, real or imaginary, in order to feel secure. There are several world leaders who have been notorious in invoking this strategy. 10sefStalin carried out regular purges of his officer corps in order to reduce the chances of a coup. This led to the murder of over a third of his senior Soviet officers, including most of those who had had combat experience in World War 1. When World War II came, the Soviet Union was thus that much less prepared, at least in part because it did not have the kind of broad-based, experienced, professional military leadership that it would have had if Stalin had not murdered so many officers. Furthermore, Stalin's forced program of agricultural collectivization in the 1920s and 1930s led to the death and starvation of twenty to forty million people. Other leaders have engaged in similar tactics in support of their political power and control as well. Idi Amin, the former leader of Uganda, murdered 375,000 people out ofa population of 11.5 million between 1971 and 1979. Robins and Post (1997) argue that Amin tended to blame others for his felt sense of inadequacy and compensated for this experience with an aggressive form of grandiosity. This pattern is consistent with the style one would expect from a paranoid personality disorder. In addition, Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia during and after the Vietnam War, annihilated approximately 15 percent of the total population of Cambodia. His xenophobic hatred of all things nonKhmer combined with his pathological idealization of all things Khmer led him to brutally murder over a million of his own people between 1975 and 1979 (Robins and Post 1997). Leadership Models

To provide an overview of attempts to characterize the effects of type of leadership on political outcome, we will look at two leadership models. First, in the late 1970s Lloyd Etheredge (197Sa) conducted a study on actual senior State Department officials. He

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gave them a series of personality tests and inventories, then examined their policy positions to see if there was any connection between the two. Etheredge (1978b) conducted another study that classified leaders on two dimensions: extrovert versus introvert and high dominance (meaning a desire to reshape the world) versus low dominance (representing a preference for the United States to function efficiently within the existing international system). He combined these dimensions and, like Barber, characterized leaders as falling under certain rubrics. Etheredge argued that introverts are drawn toward impersonal principles and mechanisms like the balance of power or international law to resolve international conflicts, whereas extroverts were prone to more cooperative, inclusive policies. Etheredge presented two hypotheses concerning the effect of personality differences on American foreign policy. First, he suggested that higher dominance leaders would be more likely to advocate the threat or use of military force compared to low-dominance leaders. Second, he proposed that extroverts would be more likely to advocate cooperative policies than those who are more introverted. In examining thirty-six presidents, secretaries of state, and other advisers, he found support for both hypotheses, although he found more support for the first than the second one. From Etheredge's perspective, Wilson and Hoover were highdominance, introverted leaders. Such men, called bloc leaders, tend to divide the world between good and bad, right and wrong. They typically espouse moral preoccupations and seek to reshape the world in the image of their personal vision. He argued that leaders of this type are not as effective as other types. Johnson, Kennedy, and both Roosevelts were considered high-dominance extroverts who became successful world integrators. World integrators advocate the use of military force, but seek predominantly to change the international environment. Coolidge and Cold War diplomat and historian George Kennan were low-dominance, introverted maintainers. Such men tend to be preoccupied with maintaining the status quo. Truman and Eisenhower were considered low-dominance, extroverted conciliators. While more open to change than the maintainers, conciliators tend to prefer to make accommodations and encourage negotiation to accomplish it. Etheredge outlined some of the structural causes of war within his model. Structure here does not refer to the systemic-level variables implied by the realist use of the term. Rather, it means the preponderance of high-dominance men holding office in countries

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around the world. According to Etheredge, this plethora of highdominance men leads directly to a greater propensity for war. Etheredge claimed that there were two ways this predisposition for high-dominance men to attain positions of power occurred. First, there is a high degree of self-selection among contenders for political office. Only power-seeking, aggressive men and women choose to enter major political contests. Second, the process of political recruitment is such that party leaders pick especially those people who are clever and ruthless enough to get elected. Political handlers then groom such individuals for elected office. In this way, such individuals ascend in the party hierarchy and eventually achieve high political office. Etheredge believed that the predominance of such high-dominance men in high office leads to a greater propensity for the use of force in international relations, including war, than would occur if lower dominance individuals were predominantly in power. Clinton seems to challenge this categorization. From Etheredge's classification, for example, President Clinton appears to be a high-dominance leader, like most. And while he did undertake his fair share of peacekeeping missions in places like Bosnia and Somalia, he was less likely to go to war than other presidents who might appear lower dominance on the surface (like George Bush Sr., who attacked Panama, among other places). Driver (1977) ran a simulation to examine some of the ways that personality and political behavior interact. In particular, Driver was interested in determining if a political leader was predisposed toward the use of force and if the leader held a generally positive or negative view of human nature. Using the variable of conceptual complexity, he gathered data from sixteen runs of the Inter-Nation Simulation, which combines human subjects with machines in interaction. He found that leaders who were prone to violence and demonstrated low complexity tended toward aggressive action, no matter what the situation. On the other hand, leaders who showed high capacities for conceptual complexity appeared more cautious and engaged in aggression only when provoked. Alan Elms (1986) also investigated the relationship between personal and professional behavior in the lives of several leaders, including John Foster Dulles, Colonel House, Henry Kissinger, and Alexander Haig. He argued for the existence of three types of leadership style in dealing with foreign policy issues. Machiavellian leaders operate through a pattern of manipulating others to do

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their will. Ego-idealist leaders defend their cause no matter what the opposition, typically without compromise. Finally, authoritarian leaders are concerned with hierarchies of social dominance and tend toward "self-glorification, pseudo-masculinity ... conventional moralism ... as well as moralistic condemnation of outgroups ... extrapunitiveness ... distrust and suspicion of others, and exploitive-manipulative opportunism' " (36). Simonton (1981) presents an alternative model of leadership. He identified five aspects of successful leadership. Two of these skill sets are people-oriented. The first talent is interpersonal in nature. Interpersonal skills are key in dealing with the rest of the political establishment, in making and keeping supporters, and in marshaling support for favored programs. Charismatic leadership offers a second set of skills related to the public. Charismatic leadership can also lead to ruin; Hitler, for example, was an intensely charismatic leader. Unlike interpersonal leadership, which focuses on the ability of the leader in one-on-one situations, charismatic leadership refers to the ability to communicate with the public at large. The second two types of leadership skills revolve around task orientation. The third type of leadership involves deliberative skills. Leaders who excel in this dimension use information well to arrive at correct decisions. The fourth type of leadership skill encompasses creative skills. Creative leaders come up with innovative solutions to existing problems by seeing old questions in new ways or by making novel connections between previously unrelated issues. The last type of leadership remains self-focused. This so-called neurotic aspect of leadership makes such leaders tend toward self-absorption. Simon ton (1981) argues that particular constellations of these traits lead to certain types ofleadership. For example, he considers leaders who have high interpersonal and deliberative skills to be inward reactive. Such leaders do not espouse particularly ambitious goals and tend to be overly cautious in making decisions. On the other hand, those leaders who combine charismatic and creative skills are considered outward active. Such leaders correspond to Etheredge's high-dominance leaders. Such leaders have a clear sense of their goals and tend to put in place active programs with great vision. However, they can also appear to be overly controlled and dogmatic in their opinions and beliefs. Simonton considered Franklin Roosevelt to provide an example of outward active leadership.

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Particular leaders can be classified according to any of these different models. In many cases, categorization might be quite similar in both models. In other cases, however, different classification schemes lead to different analyses and thus divergent explanations or predictions. Eisenhower, for example, is considered passive by Barber but extroverted by Etheredge. In a more elaborate model replicating previous work, Simonton (2001) examined six variables in presidential performance in order to predict five core components of leadership. He based his evaluation on 719 experts who assessed the six variables of former U.S. presidents. The predictor variables included number of years in office, number of years in office during war, scandal in an administration, assassination of the president, whether the leader was a war hero when he entered office, and whether he demonstrated intellectual brilliance. These factors successfully predicted those factors that Simonton argued are critical to effective leadership. These variables included leadership skills, accomplishments, political skills, governmental appointments made, and character and integrity. Simonton (1988) further developed his model by arguing that these personality styles are related to broader presidential traits, biographical experience, and both objective and subjective indicators of performance. Simonton referred to several indicators to assess levels of performance, including election results, public opinion polls, relations with Congress, and evaluations by historians. Leadership Styles

Business and management schools have undertaken countless studies of leadership styles and their relationship to productivity and performance. Not all these studies are relevant for leadership styles in international contexts, but some aspects of their findings can illuminate important areas in international relations. In the experiment on leadership styles and levels of aggression conducted by Kurt Lewin (Lewin, Lippett, and White 1939), leadership style had a tremendous impact on levels of performance and other factors, including internal levels of aggression (chap. 4). Certain styles of leadership merit mention. Sniezek (1989) identified five forms of group decision making under different conditions of leadership. Her study involved college students working in groups of five on sales forecasting tasks. Each group used all five leadership techniques to predict how many items of a certain kind

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the campus bookstore would sell in the next month. She then judged accuracy based on the comparison between group judgments and actual sales. In consensus leadership, the leader elicits everyone's ideas and makes sure that everyone's opinion receives attention, then ensures that everyone supports the ultimate choice of the group. The dialectic style has a leader who continually plays the devil's advocate and forces every member to defend his or her opinion. This style fosters dissent and assures that decisions do not occur due to false consensus or strong internal pressures toward uniformity. Dictator style leaders develop their own ideas and then use members to carry out and implement the decisions. Such a leader typically does not take kindly to suggestions for improvement. Delphic leaders represent wise, trusted figures who give advice that is followed by members because of the leader's moral legitimacy based on past successes or achievements. Many Americans in the 1950s saw Eisenhower as this type of leader, although most liberal intellectuals felt that he did not do enough to address the fundamental issues of race or class that boiled over into the social divisiveness that became more evident and explicit in the 1960s. The problem with this leadership style, of course, is that it depends so much on a given individual. If that particular person quits, retires, or dies, the group can easily become rudderless. Finally, collective leadership involves decisions that are made by voting, or through some other mechanism of representation; all members are allowed to pursue their own interests and goals. Managerial studies show that in terms of efficiency and performance, the collective leadership style presents the worst option, while the dictatorial one offers the best choice. In fact, according to Sniezek's (1989) study, the dictator group had a threefold reduction in error compared to any other group. However, in most cases in her study, the dictator moved his or her final decision closer to the group mean, which increased the amount of error present. Hewlett-Packard established a new model of leadership in designing their very successful company. Unlike traditional offices where hierarchy remain apparent, they designed offices where all employees work in identical cubicles. Within Hewlett-Packard, this model spurred enormous productivity and loyalty among employees. Many Silicon Valley high technology firms followed this management style and design. However, when this model was implemented without the same personal hands-on attention and devotion of the top leadership, many other companies found this

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model inconvenient and cumbersome. Many of these firms later returned to greater degrees of privacy and hierarchy in their office design. Studies on size demonstrate that the most effective leadership takes place in groups of about twelve or fewer. Larger groups, unless held together by an outside threat of some kind or a strong ideology, usually are not as efficient or cooperative as smaller groups. Conclusions

Studies ofleadership constitute an important aspect of the study of political psychology in international relations. These studies can take several different forms. Individual studies of particular leaders, in the form of psycho biography or some similar method, have fallen out of fashion in the last few decades (chap. 7). But this does not mean that such work cannot uncover significant and important aspects of the relationship between a leader's earlier experiences and beliefs and his later policy preferences in office. In addition, such work can also shed light on broader questions ofleadership in general, such as what makes a person a political success. Other leadership studies typically involve larger groups of people. Particular models of leadership can help to classify and categorize certain individuals in ways that might explain seemingly irrational choices and behaviors. Studies of leadership styles can provide also information on which strategies prove most effective in motivating cooperation and performance in groups. Because leadership studies are not in fashion now, the prospects for meaningful future research may not seem promising. But as trends tend to cycle, important issues of motivation should come around again in a way that focuses on the individual. Recent discussions about the motivation for terrorism or the skills and strategies used by terrorists to recruit, train, and ultimately motivate suicidal action on the part of others begins this turn. Future research on leadership may indeed come to center on the question of motivation. How do leaders motivate followers, especially in extreme circumstances? What is the relationship between leadership and emotional attachment and involvement? Can effective leadership take place in the absence of a leader, through attitudinal channels alone? Alternatively, future work might focus on classes of individuals that are united less by pathologies than by particular processes,

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strategies, or accomplishments. What makes a leader successful? Do these traits and strategies differ across time and situation, or are there core similarities? What unites failed leadership? How is it that certain failed leaders, like Nixon, can resuscitate themselves in the public eye and others, like Joseph McCarthy, never can? Is such redemption present in the man, the circumstances, or the popular culture and public consciousness? Work on leadership depends on the belief that individual leaders matter and make a difference in the outcome of history. While it might be fun to play counterfactual thought experiments and wonder how the world would have been different if Hitler had not existed, the real answers to such queries can never be known. But the intuition that individuals matter, that they are more than interchangeable billiard balls constrained in similar ways by the environment, demands greater attention to the precise ways in which individuals do impact the world around them in unique and meaningful ways.

CHAPTER 9

Group Processes

Most of the emphasis in psychology focuses on individual behavior, and the majority of this book has concentrated on processes that occur within the individual. But many times individuals do not make their decisions alone but rather in the company of others, where group dynamics can exert an impact on the process and outcome of decision making. Group behavior and dynamics represent more than the mere aggregation of the individuals who compose them. They often take on a life and a substance of their own independent of individual members. Many models of decision making in political science examine an individual's decisions from the perspective of rational choice calculations. These models typically handle individual strategic interaction using formal models that characterize what happens once bargaining and conflict emerge. However, these models can be adjusted to examine interaction between individuals within groups, as well as between individuals across groups. Group dynamics from a more psychological perspective investigates a slightly different phenomenon; the members of groups are not necessarily understood to stand in conflict to one another, striving to extract more resources than their neighbors. Strategic interaction between individuals or groups often focuses on inherently conflictual situations, and this is not necessarily the case with exploring dynamics in a group. Within a group, individuals often want to work together toward some mutually desirable goal, and while the group members may end up at odds with another group, they need not be in conflict with each other, although obviously this can occur when personality differences and power plays arise. Groups can be challenging to study. It can often be hard to ascertain exactly who is in a particular decision-making group, especially when the same actors are involved to varying degrees on different but related issues. In addition, some actors are bound to have more power, some will remain much more committed to certain issues than others, and it can be demanding to map these complexities and integrate them into an understanding of overall group 239

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behavior. Second, from a methodological perspective, it can be difficult to know what constitutes a representative sample of groups for experimental study in a way that can be reasonably generalized; after all, groups vary by size, racial and gender composition, leadership style, and issue area. Finally, the kind of standard survey paper-and-pencil tests that often form the backbone of research on individuals is not usually appropriate for studying groups. Yet group dynamics remain a critical aspect of the decisionmaking process in any organization as large as a government. Several important models offer insights into certain processes and procedures within different types of groups and organizations. The chapter will review three of the most influential, including Graham Allison's Models II and III (organizational process and bureaucratic politics) and Irving Janis's group think model, then conclude with an overview of other significant group phenomena, including group polarization and group attribution biases. Allison's Models II and III

Whether they realize it or not, analysts often think about pro blems of foreign and military policy in terms of largely implicit conceptual models that have a significant impact on the content of thought and decision making. In other words, policymakers approaching a given issue have a certain set of hidden biases and beliefs that can influence the way they interpret a problem and construct solutions to it. This can happen in systematic ways, and policymakers may remain largely unaware of this process. According to Graham Allison, these implicit models typically explain behavior in terms of variants on a few basic conceptual themes. Graham Allison's (1971) influential book on the Cuban missile crisis, Essence of Decision, presented three of these alternative models for studying decisions in general and analyzing this crisis in particular. Model I, the rational actor model, conceptualizes decisions in terms of decision-making acts and goals. Models II and III offer alternative ways for conceptualizing the impact of group dynamics on the process and outcome of decision making. Model II, the organization process model, sees decisions as the result of organizational outputs and standard operating procedures, while Model III, bureaucratic politics, examines decisions as outcomes of bargaining games. Models II and III are not antithetical to one another, but each often runs in opposition to the implications of

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Model I, which seeks to explain decisions as the outcome of individual choice rather than group procedures. While the recent release of previously unavailable archival material has proven much of Allison's substantive evidence concerning the Cuban missile crisis to be either wrong or incomplete in at least some areas (Chang and Kornbluh 1992), the models themselves remain viable perspectives from which to examine certain group processes involved in either the making or implementation of decisions. Model II: Organizational Process

The organizational process model argues that decision making does not result from deliberate choices on the part of a single decision maker but rather emerges as an output of large organizations functioning according to standard operating procedures (SOPs). These routines exist for the purpose of coordinating people and tasks for large projects. SOPs are designed so that particular events can be handled by routine patterns of decision or behavior. These SOPs are learned by an organization's personnel and serve to facilitate interactions between members. They often restrict learning and change within an organization by making such shifts costly and difficult. Because decisions ostensibly result from organizational outputs in this model, the basic unit of analysis remains policy that emerges as a result of this process. From this perspective, an analyst should look for occurrences of these SOPs. Once found, the observer should determine the ways in which existing routines and strategies constitute the basis of the options considered, especially in a period of crisis when time is short. Further, the outputs that emerge from these organizational routines serve to structure various situational constraints on future choice. For example, a standard operating procedure that requires that aircraft be scrambled when a crisis occurs will not allow for an immediate change of ordinance on those planes should future information dictate such a course of action to be necessary. The main actors in this model are loosely allied organizations relevant to a given issue, often working under appointed or elected political leaders. Problems are allocated among groups so that they can be worked on at the same time. As a result, problems become divided, power is fragmented, and overall goals may become lost. For example, when the American plane was forced to land in China, the State Department focused on efforts to get the

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crew back, while the Defense Department worked on attempts to retrieve the plane. Under these kinds of circumstances, integration of efforts across groups can prove difficult, especially at higher, politicized levels. The parochial agenda of these groups implies that they compete for an organization's limited resources. Such parochial interests govern perceptions of which issues are important, what constitutes a threat to the organization, and how to handle these concerns. Selective use of information bolsters preexisting beliefs and discounts contradictory evidence (chap. 4). Each person considers his or her own issue to be the most important. In addition, selection, recruitment, promotion, and retention of similar people perpetuate existing SOPs, and the cycle becomes self-perpetuating. Existing incentive structures gear personnel administrators toward individuals with similar backgrounds, beliefs, and training. In Allison's Model II, organizational output determines action. Overall goals become constrained by SOPs that allow only certain kinds of actions to take place. These SOPs define what constitutes acceptable behavior and performance within the confines of the organization. Sequential attention to goals, which inevitably results from breaking problems apart into pieces for different groups to handle, endangers overall policy coherence. Preestablished programs and repertoires determine response patterns in a crisis, even if those programs are poorly matched to a current situation. In this model, leaders rely on standard scenarios in order to avoid uncertainty. If doing nothing is unacceptable, and no one knows what should be done, current events are pigeonholed into preexisting scenarios in order to give actors some sense of control over the situation and some guidance concerning future actions. These actions focus on problem-directed searches. Once a scenario is uncovered that can offer a basic fit and a possible response or solution, decision makers search no further. Broader examination of overall goals and strategies, related issues, and future consequences gets pushed aside in favor of finding an immediate response to a given problem. Once that problem is solved, actors move on to the next problem rather than following through by dealing with the causes of the old one. Under these circumstances, it is clear why some problems continue to reemerge without ever being adequately resolved. SOPs can facilitate the search for information, but they also make for inflexible organizations. Centralized command and con-

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trol remain essential for SOPs to work effectively and efficiently once activated. Because SOPs are based on what is administratively feasible rather than on what is objectively required by a given situation, optimal solutions prove the exception rather than the rule. When an organization and its members work under such conditions and demands, organizational learning and change appear rarely. Typically, major shifts occur only in the wake of budgetary feast or famine, factors that can require large-scale restructuring of the organization. Alternatively, change can occur in the wake of a major failure or, more rarely, a success. Major organizational failures, such as the failure of the State Department to predict the fall of China to communism in 1949, can precipitate enormous changes with potentially dire consequences. When the State Department fired nearly everyone on the China desk in the wake of Mao's revolution, few experienced analysts were available to examine the likelihood of Chinese involvement in the Korean War that began the following year. Similar attempts at restructuring began within the CIA after the discovery of double agent Aldrich Ames who was charged with spying in the 1990s. The additional failure of the Russia desk to predict the swift and severe downfall of the Soviet Union both economically and militarily in the late 1980s and early 1990s produced a great deal of self-examination and external criticism and investigation. Subsequent changes can be expected within the FBI as a result of the prosecution of Ron Hassen, who also worked as a double agent for the Russians. The massive failure of the CIA and FBI to prevent the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon served as the genesis for the creation of a whole new bureaucratic agency, the Office of Homeland Security, to encourage greater coordination between relevant agencies in an effort to prevent domestic terrorism. Leaders can also use SOPs to signal intentions to each other. In 1973, during the war between Egypt and Israel, Kissinger wanted to warn the USSR to stay out of the conflict. So he raised the level of the U.S. nuclear force alert by one notch. This meant that a certain number of visible steps were carried out by the U.S. military, including a higher number of bombers in the air, which were observable to Soviet surveillance. The Soviets received the message that the United States was very serious about warning them to stay out of this conflict, and they did. However, SOPs can also prove militarily or socially counter-

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productive. Toward the end of W orId War II, German troops on the front needed reinforcements. However, Hitler had issued a directive that required that the transport of Jews to concentration camps take precedence over troop transport. Since these transports prevented efficient troop movements (at that point in the war, Hitler had only limited numbers of railroad cars and tracks in working order), this SOP contributed to the final defeat of the German army and also cost the lives of many more Jews who were brought into extermination camps in the final days of the war. Allison argues that scholars seeking to analyze a decision from the perspective of organizational politics should begin by attempting to uncover those organizational routines and repertoires that guide and constrain action within existing SOPs. In general, from the perspective of this model, organizations remain ill suited to provide optimal and appropriate response to threatening crises. Limited flexibility allows for little creativity and less efficiency. Because SOPs are primarily designed with administrative feasibility in mind, they favor blunt instruments to induce change in others, often rely on incomplete or distorted information, and remain resistant to contrary ideas, interpretations, and evidence. In his book, Allison attempted to demonstrate the influence that SOPs can wield within the context of the Cuban missile crisis. Allison argued that President Kennedy called for a naval quarantine to keep the Soviet ships carrying missiles away from Cuba. Unbeknownst to him, the SOP for naval quarantines was much farther out from Cuba than Kennedy had intended. Kennedy wanted to give the Soviets more time to think about what to do, and thus he did not want the navy ships so distant. When he found out, he ordered the quarantine moved closer to Cuba to allow the Soviet leadership more time to think about how to resolve the crisis and thus not provoke a hostile interchange prematurely. Allison also applies this model specifically to the notion of deterrence. His book is concerned with the possibility of a nuclear attack by accident as a result of SOPs. Because organizational routines fix the range of choices available to a decision maker, a leader may not perceive alternative actions as readily in a time of crisis. Organizational routines that set the training and deployment of troops and weapons might also constrain a leader in a time of crisis. Organizational constraints on the control and use of weapons to prevent inadvertent, accidental, or premature use remain critical to balance concerns about how SOPs might override a leader's

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decisions and choices through a lack of awareness. u.s. strategic command, which attempts to control the extreme force of nuclear weapons by regulating their use under conditions of attack or reaction, are designed to prevent such accidental or inadvertent usage. Model III: Bureaucratic Politics

Bureaucratic politics refers to bargaining among organizations or groups using regularized channels of communication. The bureaucratic model sees outcomes as the result of overlapping bargaining among various parts of an organization or government. Rational responses remain outside the analysis and calculation of actors. Policy becomes a political outcome rather than the result of organizational outputs that encompass decisions in Model II. In the bureaucratic politics model, policy arising out of political outcomes represents the basic unit of analysis. These political processes include compromises and coalitions between and among groups. Policy results from a process of competition among organizations, combined with confusion within and between them, not from a considered evaluation of and solution to a given problem. The organizing concepts of this model differ from those of organizational process in several important ways. The first influential consideration in this analysis is the relative positions of the significant players, because these jobs help determine the employees' perspectives on given problems. The axiom "where you stand depends on where you sit" makes this point succinctly. Model III attempts to capture both behavior and motivation into a single calculus. As in the organizational process model, parochial priorities, perceptions, and issues exist, although the origins of such approaches rest on different foundations. In Model II, the basis for narrowed scope derives from competition for scarce resources within the organization. In Model III, parochialism emerges from the skewed perception of a given problem resulting from actors' different positions in the bureaucracy. Bargaining games are played around actor's interests, stakes, and power. Obviously those with more will or power can exert more influence over an outcome. Again, as with organizational process, overall problems are often broken down into a series of smaller problems for consideration by different groups within a given bureaucracy or between bureaucracies. Bargaining and negotiating tend to take place through established action channels (routinized

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ways for players to interact and communicate). In this model, policy results from the stream of outcomes that emerge from the various bargaining games going on around a given problem. In this model, politics itself produces these outcomes. Outcomes are determined by such things as the pace, rules, structure, and rewards of various and often simultaneous bargaining games. Individuals who can set the agenda or determine the rules of the game can wield undue influence from this perspective. In many ways, the bargaining environment itself shapes the outcomes in ways that reflect the interests of powerful players in making decisions and creating policy. A bureaucratic analysis requires an examination of decisions and actions that result from bargaining among individuals and groups within the government. Scholars might investigate the outcomes and look for bargains and logrolling that are made in the process of achieving a politically acceptable compromise to a given problem or crisis. In general, this model focuses on the actions and intentions of key players in the policy process. Knowing who sits where can inform an observer about how those individuals will respond to a given challenge and what they will and will not see as appropriate resolutions. Further, this model depends on the existence of hierarchy within bureaucracies. Leaders expect options from subordinates. All actors demand commitment from their peers. And followers hope for confidence from superiors in order to function effectively. Without such hierarchy, action channels become confused. All players must know who is allowed to play the game and what stakes are involved before being able to function effectively within its boundaries. Comparisons

Models II and III need not exist in contradiction to one another. Organizational process considers the problems in decision making that arise from the impact of standard operating procedures on organizations. In other words, attention focuses on the prescripted way in which demands within the organization constrain creative responses to crisis. Bureaucratic politics occurs between organizations, like the State Department and the Department of Defense. Analysis could even examine a policy as it winds its way through an organization using Model II and then, using Model III, explore

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how those outputs are used in bargaining games to produce policy outcomes through interagency negotiations. Allison described different models for analyzing decisions to emphasize the way in which different conceptual orientations force attention on different aspects of a problem. Different models ask different questions, seek different kinds of evidence, and produce different answers. For example, in the Cuban missile crisis, the organizational process model focuses on the standard operating procedures of the navy in implementing the quarantine. Bureaucratic politics places greater emphasis on the role of Robert Kennedy as attorney general and as the president's brother in developing a back channel for negotiation with the Soviet foreign minister, Gromyko. In the end, alternative perspectives shed light on different aspects of a situation or crisis that might be overlooked using only a single conceptual analysis, just as prospect theory and rational choice models illuminate different aspects of certain problems. It may be the case that some models are better designed for analyzing certain types of issues. For example, organizational process might provide insight into weapons procurement issues, while bureaucratic politics might offer better illumination into such things as trade policy. These alternative models can thus help provide a fuller and richer understanding of the dynamics of a given event or crisis. Critiques

Allison's models have received a great deal of discussion and some empirical testing over the years since his book first came out. Some of the limitations of Allison's presentations result from the time in which he wrote it. For example, game theory and rational choice models had not developed to the degree of current sophistication when he formulated Model I, the rational actor perspective. He also based his argument on evidence that was available at the time concerning the Cuban missile crisis; most of this evidence has been precluded, and in many cases contradicted, by recent declassifications of relevant materials (Chang and Kornbluh 1992). Several prominent critiques have challenged the validity of Allison's approaches. Bendor and Hammond (1992) argue that Allison's model fails on the grounds of content as well as internal logic. They level five criticisms of Allison's model. First, they charge that Allison's models do not reflect the state of the litera-

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ture, even at the time it was written. Second, they argue that Allison created a straw man in his Model I rational actor model. Model I, which presented a weaker argument than Models II and III, was not tested adequately within the bounds of his study. Third, Bendor and Hammond (1992) claim that Models II and III are not sufficiently differentiated to allow for separation. Fourth, the authors suggest that propositions and assumptions are not rigorously defined for Models II and III. Finally, they contend that Allison's tests of his models tell the reader little about the model itself. In other words, the cases do not provide sufficient evidence for support of the theoretical framework. Rhodes (1994) conducted an empirical test of Allison's Model III in the arena of naval weapons procurement, a domain where bureaucratic politics should reign free. He investigated the composition of naval forces and discovered that contrary to Allison's argument, shifts in force structure resulted not from power and interests, but rather emerged from the contest of ideas and images. Steiner (1977) argued in a review essay that Allison's models had failed on several grounds. She asserted that the models were rife with inconsistencies and contradictions. In particular, she argued that a central tension exists between the scope and the objectivity of Allison's arguments, contending that Allison violates his own general conceptions of appropriate research strategies and classification systems. Allison begins by attempting to narrow the scope of his study for reasons of accuracy. While on the one hand he argues that theories should be examined through the processes of modern social science, he expands the scope of his own study by including the goals and purposes of the actors. But once he does this, according to Steiner, Allison steps outside the bounds of his own purported research strategies. In other words, Allison's commitment to the social science method, including standards of objectivity, breaks down once he incorporates the subjective plans and purposes of central actors into his analysis. Steiner concludes on a pessimistic note by stating that Allison's case demonstrates that hard science may not be consistent with the appropriate scope of foreign policy research. Not everyone makes so dire an assessment of Allison's formulations. David Baldwin (1992) argued that casting doubt on Allison's models should not detract from Allison's two major contributions, namely, bringing greater rigor to the analysis of foreign policy and moving analysis beyond a simple rational actor model

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by validating the development of various intragovernmental models of analysis. Groupthink

Irving Janis presented an alternative model of group decision making in his book Groupthink (1982). He coined this word to explain the processes he believed often rule group decision making in potentially hazardous ways. Janis was a psychologist who applied his notion of groupthink to the effects of group decision making in various international crises, including the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis, Watergate, and Vietnam. In some cases, such as the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam, Janis examined what he considered to be decision failures resulting at least in part from the mechanism of group think. In other cases, like the Cuban missile crisis, he explored cases where leaders implemented strategies that were helpful in overcoming the impact of group think on effective decision making. In each case, Janis attempted to separate the skill of the decision from the success of the outcome. Good decision making can still lead to bad outcomes because of negative external circumstances, just as plain luck can turn a bad decision into a good outcome. Janis argued that groups develop strong in-group pressures toward conformity and cohesiveness. Any member who threatens this cohesiveness might be sanctioned with social reprimands or isolation. Because every member wants to belong and feel liked and appreciated by the group, each person makes every effort to go along with the group consensus in order to protect his or her valued position as a member. In-group pressures can be especially strong among members who have been part of the same group or who have known each other for a long time. People who know each other well are also likely to know what others think about certain issues and problems and can infer the opinions ofleaders without explicit direction. This mind reading (which may be substantively inaccurate) presents a crucial constraint on creative brainstorming; no one is going to offer a suggestion that they believe a more powerful member will not like or accept. Janis demonstrated that group decisions are often defective because groups tend to want to remain cohesive on the inside while staying insulated from the outside. These in-group pressures cause a drop in the mental efficiency of group members and a reduction

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in their ability to test reality accurately. Furthermore, Janis argues, group members' ability to make moral judgments or consider moral implications of potential decisions becomes prejudiced because each person thinks of himself as being just and moral and thus assumes that any policy he would advocate will be just and moral by extension. Janis argued that there are eight symptoms that characterize the phenomenon of groupthink. First, members suffer from an illusion of invulnerability. They believe that they are able to overcome any setbacks that might arise. This illusion leads to overoptimism about the potential success of choices they confront, and it induces excessive degrees of risk taking in response to crisis. Second, group members tend to discount warnings about unpopular options or possible negative outcomes. Members may want to act rationally as a collective, but often individual actions undercut this goal. In-group pressures imply that members discount or ignore warnings that come from people outside the group. For example, during the Vietnam War, U.S. decision makers underestimated the power of the North Vietnamese resistance, at least in part because they ignored reports indicating such strength that came from outside the government. Third, unquestioned belief in the group's superiority makes the members unwilling to challenge each other's inherent morality. As a result, the overall virtue of the project is rarely questioned because such challenges are understood to constitute disloyalty to the other members of the group. Fourth, groupthink encourages stereotyped views of the adversary. The opponent might be seen as too evil to make negotiations worthwhile, since it is assumed that the adversary will renege on any agreements that might be reached. Alternatively, the adversary might be represented as too weak or stupid to pose a serious threat to the group's interests. These perspectives appear particularly common when conflicts involve racial differences as well. Fifth, pressure toward conformity is exerted against group dissenters who might have a solution to propose that differs from the majority opinion. Typically, such sanctions take the form of subtle social rejections, including avoiding eye contact, refusing to smile, or interrupting or ignoring the target more frequently. Sixth, group members retain a shared sense of unanimity. Since individuals never air their doubts for fear of social sanction, every member believes that she is the only one to have any doubts or concerns. So even if none of the members supports the majority

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plan fully, they all go along with it because each person believes that every other person fully supports the position. Each member takes this step to ensure group cohesion and to eliminate the possibility of social sanctions. Seventh, self-censorship restricts dissidents from expressing opinions that deviate from the apparent group consensus in public. Thus, self-censorship means that the group need never exercise its power of social sanctions in order to keep everyone in line. Last, certain members of the group emerge as self-appointed mind guards, who take it upon themselves to censor information that comes from outside the group to prevent it from getting into the group. This information can include documentation from intelligence agencies or public opinion polls, for example. Mind guards restrict anything that might potentially challenge the complacency and security of group members. Preventive Measures

Janis proposes five related strategies for overcoming the effects of groupthink. Decision makers can institute procedures to avoid the pathologies of group decision making by implementing some of these measures. The Kennedy administration, for example, learned from its disastrous decision making process in the Bay of Pigs debacle and instituted different procedures, which rendered the quality of the Cuban missile crisis much better. First, Janis argues that group leaders should encourage dissent and criticism within the group. Appointing one member as the formal devil's advocate can accomplish this goal without forcing that member to feel sanctioned by the group. This appointee should constantly challenge all group members and ideas in order to ensure that dissent is expressed, to probe the value of all ideas, and to give permission for dissenters to air their views. The problem with a formal devil's advocate, of course, is that over time that person's influence alternates or shifts under in-group pressures. Thus, the person in this role should be rotated on a regular basis to prevent such group co-optation. Second, group leaders should refrain from stating their own personal preferences at the outset. This puts undue pressures on other group members to conform to the leader's opinion. Instead, members are encouraged to offer alternative ideas and solutions. During the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy would often leave the Ex-Comm room in order to let the group debate on its own, without the pressure of his opinions or leadership. However, since his

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brother, Robert Kennedy, the attorney general, stayed behind with the group and was well understood to represent a proxy for his brother, this strategy could have been better implemented. This can be particularly challenging, however, when most members of the group naturally share a near-unanimous political perspective, mindset, or worldview, or know the leader well enough from earlier exchanges to have a sense of his preferences. For example, many in the Bush J1'. administration have worked together for a long time. Indeed, many previously served together under President Bush S1'. Such individuals are particularly likely to share the same assumptions and views about critical problems. This can be a concern if no one is willing to challenge the dominant mind-set. Someone with a slightly different perspective within the administration who has a powerful independent constituency, like Secretary of State Colin Powell, might be well placed to serve in a natural devil's advocate role. Third, a leader can set up minigroups to consider and compare solutions to the same problem. Each mini-group would have its own leader and present the group's suggestions and conclusions when everyone gathers together again as a single group. Fourth, group members should discuss group deliberations with trusted associates outside the group and report these conversations back to other group members. During the Cuban missile crisis, for example, Ex-Comm members were required to meet with people outside the group. This serves to force members to consider opinions that are not generated from within the group itself. This process widens the nature of the discussion, presenting alternative solutions that the group was not able to generate on its own. Fifth, groups should invite outside experts to attend group meetings, testify, offer facts, and give their opinions and perspectives on a specific problem. Inviting outsiders to attend group meetings works best when the experts are from the academic or scientific communities and not from within the government itself, where their opinion might seem shadowed by more personal bureaucratic agendas. Outsiders can often provide effective advice on how to sell a particular solution to the wider public as well. Evaluation

Like Allison, when Janis wrote his book he did not have access to all the transcripts that have since been released pertaining to many of the crises he examined, including the Cuban missile crisis and

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the Bay of Pigs (Chang and Kornbluh 1992). Some of the transcripts contradict the evidence he uses in support of his theory, but what of the validity of the theory itself? More than thirty years have passed since the first publication of Groupthink in 1972. During that time, Janis's idea has spawned over a hundred research citations a year (Esser 1998). Some work has found support for the claims of groupthink. Herek et al. (1987) examined presidential decision making in nineteen crises since World War II. They investigated each decision for evidence of the seven central symptoms of groupthink. They found that a greater incidence of groupthink symptoms led to more adverse outcomes for u.S. interests and were more likely to lead to international conflict. Yet not all of this work has provided empirical support for Janis's central arguments and claims. Callaway et al. (1985) found that the individual factor of dominance affected outcomes more than the group's influence on members. In particular, groups with high-dominance members made better decisions in less time and exhibited lower states of anxiety. McCauley (1989) found that structural factors, such as the character of the leadership, predicted the emergence of group think symptoms better than the group cohesion or situational factors favored by Janis. Finally, Tetlock et al. (1992) used multiple methods to assess group dynamics. In their historical case studies, they found some support for Janis's notion of groupthink. However, the LISREL model demonstrated less support. Like McCauley, they found that group cohesion did not predict the groupthink phenomenon. Rather, they showed that structural and procedural faults were better predictors. A recent symposium in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes offered a twenty-five-year retrospective appraising groupthink. The editors (Turner and Pratkanis 1998a) review the direct tests, the evaluations, and the reformulation of the model. They conclude that a review of the empirical results surrounding group think demonstrates that case and experimental laboratory work do not supply full documentation for the existence of groupthink as Janis presented it. Most experiments have not been able to demonstrate the low-quality defective decisions that are supposed to result from decisions characterized by the groupthink phenomenon, and as yet no research has been able to provide empirical support for the causal links between Janis's proposed antecedents and the eight defective decision-making symptoms.

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Nonetheless, this evidence has not resulted in a consensus concerning the overall theoretical utility of groupthink. Some scholars advocate rejecting the model altogether, arguing that its potential usefulness is outweighed by the lack of empirical support for its central tenets (Fuller and Aldag 1998). Others take a middle ground, hoping to salvage some elements of the theory by reconceptualizing its domain of applicability. For example, Whyte (1998) argues that a sense of collective efficacy that exceeds the actual capacity of members helps explain some of the structural and organizational faults in decision making. He claims that this factor induces a preference for risk that leads to desires for consensus, which are further facilitated by processes of group polarization (discussed later). Whyte believes that this process provides a better explanation for groupthink-like phenomena than the group cohesion theory put forth by Janis. Kramer (1998) argues that real political, as opposed to psychological, exigencies serve as a motivator in creating groupthink. He argues that the way in which group members construe their options remains critical because they are intensely sensitive to the real political consequences of their choices. In particular, political leaders remain acutely aware of circumstances that might lead to unacceptable losses or harm their personal reputations. McCauley (1998) suggests that conformity pressures should replace group cohesion as the causal factor in groupthink, and Turner and Pratkanis (1998b) attempt to explain group think in terms of efforts to maintain social identity. They explain group think as an effort to maintain positive feelings about the in-group. Raven (1998) suggests that a "runaway norm" involving escalation and polarization encouraged members of the Kennedy and Nixon administrations to adopt more and more extreme positions and actions against the "enemy" in order to outdo one another. Peterson et al. (1998) demonstrate that decision quality does relate to actual outcomes, although the correlation is not perfect. Some successful groups show signs of group think, including risk taking and cohesion, while other unsuccessful groups demonstrate signs of vigilance, such as internal debate. Finally, some scholars hope to retain the original notion of groupthink. Esser (1998) argues that groupthink has provided considerable heuristic value to the work on group dynamics. He further points out that it has generated a number of intriguing theo-

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retical ideas and offshoots that have yet to be empirically tested. 'T Hart (1998) argues that interventions based on the original models of group think can prevent bad outcomes. Moorhead et al. (1998) apply the notion of groupthink to team-based organizations and self-managing organizational environments. Turner and Pratkanis (1998a) attribute the success of the groupthink idea to the power of its intuitive appeal. They point to the importance of undertaking replication work and controlled cumulative designs before pronouncing a theory to be validated. Finally, they note the danger posed by the unconditional acceptance of a powerfully persuasive and intuitively appealing theory without adequate empirical testing and support. Other Group Phenomena

There are at least three additional biases involving group decision making that merit additional mention. These forces exist in addition to the basic in-group and out-group biases (chap. 4). It should be noted at the outset that groups typically outperform individuals. Group judgments tend to be more accurate than individual ones, although this can vary with particular characteristics of the situation, such as the difficulty of the task, the competence of group members, and communication patterns (Hastie 1986). Groups with permissive leaders excel over groups with inactive leaders in terms of performance. This appears to result from the open discussion encouraged by permissive leaders (Maier and Solem 1952). But groups can almost never outperform the very best individuals, so while groups do better than the average individuals in them, they rarely improve over the performance of the best single individuals (Hastie 1986). Thus, when students have an opportunity to take tests in teams of two, the majority ofteam testtakers outperform most individuals. However, the very best performers are always a few single individuals working alone (Zimbardo et al. 2003). Students who work on group projects may resonate with this experience as well. Aside from the free-rider problem of members who do not carry their fair share of the work burden, group grades for group performances, while they benefit more people overall, do indeed punish the best single achievers. Hill (1982) found the individuals who brainstorm alone, then come together to compare ideas were more effective than those who simply discussed issues in a group together.

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Group Attributional and Self-Serving Biases

The group attribution error presents the group corollary to the individual fundamental attribution error (that people simultaneously underweight the impact of the situation while overattributing the impact of another's disposition in explaining behavior). In groups, the tendency to overestimate the impact of dispositions on group behavior is known as the group attribution bias (Allison and Messick 1985). Self-serving biases exist at the group level as well, where they are called "group-serving biases." In individuals, this bias manifests in the way people attribute their successes to their skills and abilities while attributing their failures to situational factors, such as timing or bad luck. This is consistent with the more general proposition that self-enhancing inferences under conditions of success are more common than self-denigrating ones for failure (Miller and Ross 1975). In groups, this bias presents when group members make similar dispositional attribution for their successes (Hewstone 1989). This is seen most commonly in the context of sports events (Taylor and Doria 1981; Mullen and Riordan 1988). However, groups are less likely to make situational attributions than individuals for their failure. Group self-serving bias occurs when members believe not only in the superiority of their own group, but also in the homogenizing characterizations of the out-groups. In other words, members not only see those characteristics that they believe distinguish their group for its superiority, but they also assume that everyone in the out-group shares the same stereotypically negative characteristics. The fact that these attributed out-group characteristics may not be desirable is only part of the problem. The other concern is that members typically see less diversity and individuality in the outgroup than in their own in-group. This group attributional bias, often called "out-group homogeneity bias," also mimics the predispositions of individuals. In this bias, people believe that members of their own group are more varied and unique as individuals than members of the out-group (Mullen and Hu 1989). This bias occurs no matter how many members of the out-group are known by the in-group member; that is, the bias exists despite possible evidence to the contrary (Park and Rothbart 1982). Thus, if a given person is assumed to be part of the out-group, then that person is assumed to embody all the stereotypes associated with the out-group label. For example,

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in many high schools, there is a nerd group of bookish sorts and a jock crowd of athletes. Once a person is labeled a jock by the nerd group, that person is then assumed not only to be an athlete, but also to be dumb and popular. A smart jock seems inconceivable to a nerd. Similarly, once a jock member decides that a person is a nerd, then that person is not only assumed to be smart, but must also have horrible social skills. A popular nerd is as inconceivable to a jock as a smart jock is to the nerd. This homogenization of out-group members leads in-group members to fall prey to stereotypes concerning out-group members. This bias serves to perpetuate the use of stereotypes, as ingroup members come to perceive all out-group members as sharing the same negative characteristics. This can prove particularly problematic in international relations when the leaders of one nation perceive the people and leaders of another nation as all sharing equally objectionable qualities. This may make negotiation seem less desirable, and hostility more attractive, if the only way to get along with the other side appears to be to force a change in their leadership. Group Polarization

Group polarization used to be known as the risky shift phenomenon because it purported to demonstrate that groups make riskier decisions than individuals. Further research indicated that a shift in the direction of greater risk is always the case, although groups are prone to make more extreme choices than individual members. An MIT graduate student conducted the original risky shift work. Stoner (1961) found that people made riskier decisions in groups than when they were polled alone about their choices. These studies asked individuals about their choices and decisions about a given issue prior to their involvement in group debate. The relevant test questions typically involve twelve hypothetical questions that contain an element of risk, and the person has to choose which course of action to take. One example is the case of a fortyfive-year-old executive who must choose between undergoing risky heart surgery or living with a debilitating heart condition (Kogan and Wallach 1964). After stating their preferences, individuals come together in a group and discuss what the odds of success would have to be before they advocated the risky choice. The conclusion reached by the group was almost always more risky than the mean choice of the individual members prior to group interac-

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tion. Furthermore, after exiting the group, although many individuals reverted back toward their earlier preferences, they usually did not return quite as far back as their original choice. But these questions examined only a limited set of choices. When a wider array of choices was introduced, the group did not always become riskier, but it remained more extreme in its choices than individual members. Thus, the risky shift came to be known as the choice shift, or group polarization, phenomenon (Moscovici and Zavalloni 1969; Myers 1982; Myers and Lamm 1976). Why do individual opinions shift in group contexts? Several theories argued that group members garnered a sense of comfort from the group, which allowed them to take riskier actions. But this theory was compromised in the face of experiments that demonstrated that group cohesiveness alone is not sufficient for the shift to occur. Rather, change seemed dependent on group discussion (Pruitt and Teger 1969). Other theories that assume that subjects valued risk for its own sake were set aside in the wake of experimental findings that the group can become either more cautious or more risky; this should not occur if risk itself is the reason attitudes change (McCauley et al. 1973). More recent arguments for individual change as a result of group interaction have drawn on the persuasive arguments theory (Isenberg 1986). The idea here is that people shift their positions after being exposed to new information presented by others. One study showed that subjects who were exposed to new ideas and given time to think about them changed their views more than those who were not given time to think about the new ideas or were not exposed to new opinions (Burnstein and Vinokur 1975). A second theory that has been proposed to explain group polarization comes from social comparison theory. In this model, people shift their opinions as a result of comparing their own positions with those of others. When they see that their opinions are not as risky as others, they become more likely to shift their positions (J. Brown 1986; Isenberg 1986). Research on group polarization has demonstrated that groups typically polarize in a couple of different ways. First, they polarize around group composition (Myers 1975). When this happens, groups divide along gender or racial lines, for example. Second, groups can polarize around issues (Myers and Kaplan 1976). This typically happens in jury decision making when jurors split over the meaning or interpretation of evidence. For example, juries can

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divide over the accuracy of scientific evidence, or over what the evidence shows about the case under consideration. Conclusions

Groups constitute a significant and common forum for decision making. While most work in psychology has focused on the impact of the individual, work on group behavior has been able to inform observers about the common biases and pitfalls that can reduce the effectiveness and efficiency of group decision making. In most of these studies, work has centered on the impact of the group on the individual, while less attention has been paid to the impact of the individual on the group. This second set of questions and investigations provides fertile grounds for future research, since they are central to issues of minority influence. Graham Allison's work on organizational process and bureaucratic politics illuminates how large organizations fall prey to established routines and power politics in reaching their policy choices and conclusions. Janis's work on groupthink shows the myriad ways that internal social psychological pressures can damage creative decision making by constraining members who become reluctant to challenge the established wisdom and comfort of the group consensus. Group polarization contributes to an understanding of how the group can change the individual. Freud's work on group psychology earlier in the twentieth century concentrated on the impact of the church and the army on individual behavior (Freud 1960, 1964). Subsequent investigation of phenomena like mass hysteria sought to explain how individuals in groups could behave in ways that individuals acting alone would never let themselves. Neo-Freudian work by Erich Fromm analyzed how some individuals long to give up their freedom in return for the security of the group and a leader who represents some kind of father figure (1965). The recognition that individual behavior could be altered by group membership was followed by empirical demonstrations of how processes like deindividuation make it easier for group members to become violent (Zimbardo 1969). Anonymity appears crucial to the process of deindividuation, which allows individuals to lose their sense of personal responsibility and engage in group acts of violence, whether they be war or political demonstrations that turn violent. Research on group dynamics has taken a different path in

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Europe, where the work has concentrated more on how the individual transforms the group, while American work has typically emphasized how the group changes individuals. This is certainly consistent with an overall American predilection for focusing on the individual and democratic processes. In Europe, the attention has highlighted the impact of the minority on the majority, while in America the work has centered on how the majority impacts the minority. In particular, Moscovici (1980), a French psychologist, has conducted a great deal of research into the conditions under which minority positions can influence majority opinion. He argues that majority positions are usually formulated without critical thinking. Members submit to the majority position almost automatically. Persistent minority dissension can force majority members to take a more thoughtful and creative response to the questions at issue. In addition, groups with a persistent minority tend to remember the relevant information better than unanimous groups or those with a disorganized minority (Nemeth 1986). Future research in group behavior might profitably move more toward the European model and begin to examine in greater depth the way that minority members come to exert their views against majority opinions. In addition, research that begins to integrate the emotional, cognitive, and expressly political motivations for group involvement and social action might provide interesting insights into the foundations of group interest and identity.

CHAPTER 10

Conclusions

Tragic events like those of September 11 give renewed urgency to the importance of understanding various sources of conflict and undertaking strategies to enforce peace and security. Understanding alone will not ameliorate all violence. But understanding in concert with effective action can begin to provide individuals with guidance and some sense of purpose in combating the threats that face us in our everyday social and political environments. Obviously, choices about how to respond to terrorist action or other threats to our personal security rest on fundamentally different political and psychological ideologies. Some people facing a threat will advocate caution, while others will seek out more active forms of vengeance. As Tetlock (1994) noted, research in political psychology is often politicized to the detriment of both science and policy. Scientific advocates who espouse particular ideological positions require special discipline to ward against political biases that might impact either the kind of questions they ask, their investigation, or their suggested resolutions for problems in international relations, including terrorism and war. This is not to imply that all or even most work in political psychology reaches the highest scientific standards. Some work has unfortunately skewed research or conclusions in service of particular, usually left-leaning, political values, either consciously or unconsciously. Further limitations can be observed in some kinds of psychobiography or leadership work that use theory to infer evidence in support of a particular argument. But advances have been made, particularly in the areas of social cognition and neuroscientific assessments of affect. Such contributions will continue to illuminate and inspire effective applications of research to important problems in public policy and international affairs. Political psychology has built a substantive body of literature in the last twenty to thirty years. This book was designed to cover those aspects of the field that present findings relevant to the area of international relations, rather than political psychology research that relates mainly to domestic concerns. 261

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Multiple methods have been employed by political psychologists in their attempts to test theories and concepts concerning a variety of topics. These methods and theories have been developed in order to gain a better understanding of the areas of cognition, behavior, emotion, and their interaction. In addition, they have been invoked to help explain leadership processes and group dynamics. Obviously, applications to other areas such as the media, which are beyond the scope of this work, have been done as well. This book has attempted to provide a brief introduction to some of these processes and topics. Chapter 2 presented a variety of methodological approaches to the study of political psychology including experimentation, survey research, observer ratings, case studies, content analysis, and self-report questionnaires. The experimental method offers the most promise for effective advancement and cumulation of knowledge in this field. Budding young scholars can only benefit by taking the time to learn this effective strategy. Chapter 3 sought to provide a brief overview of the major theories, first the paradigm of rational choice, then a more comprehensive treatment of the history of psychological research and some of the major theories from within social and cognitive psychology that have been applied to political phenomena. These theories included, in particular, work on judgmental heuristics and prospect theory. Chapter 4 provided a history of classic research on cognition and attitude change, as well as more recent applications of work in information processing and attribution theory to topics in political psychology. Particular emphasis was placed on research related to the problems of prejudice and discrimination. Chapter 5 on behavior attempted to provide an examination of work on crisis decision making, conflict negotiation, bargaining, and resolution. Special consideration was given to the nature of terrorism and state-sponsored torture. Chapter 6 provided a background on several theories of emotion, as well as hypotheses about their purported function. In particular, recent work in the neurosciences that demonstrate that the human brain often privileges emotional over rational processing provides new and provocative insights into the nature of information processing and decision making, and the relationship between thought and emotion. Psychobiography's background was presented in chapter 7, giving special attention to a kind ofleadership study that draws on psychological theories and insights in order to undertake a bio-

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graphical examination of certain leaders. Next, chapter 8 examined alternative analyses of leadership and leadership styles. Group processes were discussed in chapter 9, including organizational process, bureaucratic politics, group think, and other grouprelated phenomena. This chapter will first discuss possible directions for future research, then present some observations about the relationship between psychological perspectives and other theoretical alternatives. Finally, we will look at the broader utility of this kind of work. Directions for Future Research

The future presents many opportunities as well as challenges for those who are committed to work in this interdisciplinary field. Past developments in the field have primarily concentrated on applying theories from social and cognitive psychology to political processes. While this has begun to change with the more genuinely interdisciplinary focus of research in such areas as political tolerance and prejudice, researchers from within the political science tradition need to develop more theoretical hypotheses to be used in empirical tests in interdisciplinary contexts. Are contributions in political psychology doomed to always follow a one-way path, from psychological theory to political application? Sadly, this pattern predominates in the history of political psychology. Political science theories often borrow from other disciplines; structural realism, after all, draws heavily on microeconomic theory. Political scientists as a rule have been less able to generate theories that other disciplines find useful. In political psychology, however, this should not have to remain the case indefinitely. While the majority of borrowing may continue to go to political science from psychology, political science should at least theoretically be able to help develop theories and models about the way in which political exigencies and incentives impact and constrain decision making, how political identities and ideologies affect individual beliefs, values, and actions, or how political activism emerges within individual psychology. These topics, along with many others, deserve attention if the path between psychology and political science is to be broadened. Institutional constraints make it difficult for researchers in one field or the other to advance their careers with work that is not mainstream within their own discipline. Even within a single disci-

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pline, subfield crossover can be challenging when researchers fear that their work will not be read by others in their area if they publish in more interdisciplinary journals. Work at the interface of emotion and cognition has often suffered from these professional concerns. Several experienced researchers have made valuable suggestions concerning directions for future research. In her review of the contributions of cognitive psychology to political psychology, Kathleen McGraw (2000) notes that the literature and scholarship on political cognition have advanced greatly in a relatively short period of time due to the widespread contribution of the social cognition literature. In particular, she notes that such work has contributed greatly to our understanding of how information affects individuals in ways that impact their political judgments and opinions. As research in political cognition develops beyond its infancy, McGraw points to several avenues for productive future research. These possibilities include, first, work on when and why political sophistication matters. Second, the impact of social and political context needs to be incorporated more into our understanding of political judgment. Certainly this would also hold true of attempts to further incorporate political context, as well as psychological processes, into considerations of elite decision making. Third, more work needs to be done on the relationship between heuristics and underlying cognitive structures. Some of this work may be further advanced and illuminated by insights from evolutionary psychology and neuroscience on the biological basis of cognitive processing. Fourth, McGraw advocates greater attention to the link between motivation and cognition. Certainly this link should be extended beyond motivation to aspects of the interface between emotion broadly considered and cognitive processing. Fifth, given the recent emphasis being placed on processes of political identity and the importance attributed to this phenomenon by constructivists in particular, more attention should be paid to the cognitive processes that provide the foundations for social and political identity. In addition, a more concerted effort to understand the emotional underpinnings of identity might prove particularly productive, especially in the area of research into the sources of ethnic violence. Sixth, further specification of the processes involved in the formation of stereotypes concerning social and political groups would be helpful in advancing our understanding of political action. Seventh, greater attention to the social context

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of political choice may provide interesting insights into political judgment. Eighth, given again the central importance attributed to culture by constructivists and others, greater attention to cultural differences in political cognition might prove productive. Certainly such attention should be given to exploring the impact of ethnic and sex differences on political cognition as well. And last, McGraw notes the possibility of increasing communication between political psychology and rational choice models of decision making. She remains concerned, however, that attempts to integrate the two approaches, while potentially beneficial, might relegate political psychology to the back seat of the partnership, allowing rational models to occupy the driver's seat in isolation, determining direction, speed, and destination of inquiry. Some of this work has been done in comparing prospect theory and expected utility theory, ideally without the psychological explanation being placed too far back (Bueno de Mesquita, McDermott, and Cope 2001; McDermott and Kugler 2001). While prediction remains the primary goal of most rational choice models, political psychologists stand committed to understanding as well as explaining the internal dynamics and processes of human decision making independent of predictive power. Tetlock (l998b) also notes some important applications to political dynamics and processes. In particular, he argues that psychology presents challenges to assumptions of rationality that are inherent not only in rational choice models but neorealist ones as well. In this category, he mentions many of the psychological biases and processes mentioned here that provide empirical evidence concerning the limits on rationality inherent in human psychology. These processes include the fundamental attribution error, overconfidence, belief perseverance, avoidance of value trade-offs, and framing effects. Further, he emphasizes the motivationallimits on rational decision making, including the negative effects of stress, medical problems, and personality characteristics. Tetlock also points to the challenge that psychology presents to the dominant paradigm of deterrence in security studies. Specifically, he considers the various alternative strategies covered here in terms of bargaining, negotiation, and conflict resolution that provide different influence strategies within the context of international conflict. These include strategies such as tit-for-tat and graduated reduction in tension (GRIT) models. In a subsequent piece with Goldgeier (2001), Tetlock argues that work in cognitive psychology and behavioral decision theory

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has enriched our understanding of divisions between offensive and defensive realism. In particular, prospect theory's contribution about how the nature of the situation impacts risk propensity helps explain how and when certain arguments hold greater appeal at particular times than others. Accountability demands that either magnify deviations from rationality or increase self-criticism identify how the impact of certain cognitive biases might be ameliorated. Such insights can help explain certain variations in regime type, among other factors. Work on perceptions of fairness in exchange can provide insights into problems concerning the allocation and distribution of scarce resources (Fehr and Schmidt 1999). Research into the psychological bases of interest and identity can also offer a microfoundation for many of the notions and assumptions upon which domestic, institutional, or constructivist theories depend. Finally, investigations into the power of human emotions can begin to illuminate some of the reasons for conflict that lie outside traditional theories of violence. There are multiple areas for productive future research in the area of political psychology. While political psychology combines elements of both political science and psychology, the field is brought together by its fundamental belief that people matter and by its deep understanding and belief in the individual level of analysis. The challenge is to provide an overarching framework that covers a broad variety of topics, including attitudes, emotion, groups, and leadership. Unique individuals make a fundamental difference in the outcome of political events; unlike realists, political psychologists do not believe that individual leaders are interchangeable. Instead, a political psychological approach stems from a belief that individuals are shaped and constrained by their personal, social, and political worlds, and that these beliefs, attitudes, values, and actions impact the outcome of political events. Clearly, many different research avenues have been used to examine the questions of central interest to political psychologists. However, it seems that experimentation, in particular, offers a promising methodological path by which more political scientists and political psychologists can begin to tease out causal factors in topics that have previously produced inconsistent results, contradictory results, or useless results using other methods. In particular, experiments embedded within national surveys, as demonstrated by the work of Sniderman, Tetlock, and colleagues (Sniderman et al. 1989), promise a welcome combination of experimental control and representative sampling. Such experimental

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innovations might help build bridges between qualitative and quantitative work in political science as well by offering models and providing procedures that can help determine causation within the context of well-established problems and concerns in the field. Several substantive topics appear to be especially significant in the future development of interdisciplinary work in political psychology. First, work that seeks to further explore the impact of emotion on cognition, and their interactions, will only be further enhanced by burgeoning research in the area of neuroscience. Understanding the operation of the brain at a more and more sophisticated level will bring insight into the operation of human judgment and decision making. Much of the early work in this area, exemplified by the research in Damasio's laboratory on patients with brain damage, has already provided critical and intriguing findings about the ways that cognition and emotion interact to create a subjective sense of awareness. We are only now at the beginning of more sophisticated work into the nature of the human brain, but findings that suggest that emotion (processed in the amygdala) remains privileged in speed and influence over more abstract, analytic, rational decision-making mechanisms (processed in the prefrontal cortex) promise to revolutionize our understanding of the nature of consciousness, decision making, and emotion. Work that further explicates the dominant role of emotion in decision making, in particular, offers the possibility of building a theoretical understanding of human behavior based not on rational thought, action, and calculation, but instead on emotional efficiency, effectiveness, speed, and accuracy. Such a model, which would establish a more descriptively accurate representation of human brain functioning, might also provide innovative, ingenious, and challenging approaches to well-established problems in human decision-making research. Broader theories of emotion might also help further specify the extent to which certain emotions manifest in international conflicts in ways that either ameliorate or exacerbate the potential for violence. How is it that hatred or fear affect conflict? Do hostile communications escalate aggression more than hostile actions, or do both factors need to be present to incite violence? How does personal hostility between leaders affect the outbreak of war? How might trust or liking impact negotiations? Can anger work to both positive or negative effect depending on the person and the context? Questions like these might begin to be addressed through a more systematic explo-

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ration of the impact of both conscious and unconscious emotional processing in human decision making both outside and within the context of international relations. Work in emotion and other areas that seeks to provide the psychological microfoundation for many of the ideas and concepts taken for granted, or assumed as given, by other models in political science, holds great promise for integrating diverse bodies of theory into more synthesized models of decision making. In particular, experimental work designed to identify the basis for ideological beliefs, social and political identities, and intellectual, social, and material interests can begin to provide an underpinning for work in diverse theoretical camps in political science, including adherents of institutionalist, liberal, and constructivist theories. Such theoretical and empirical developments could help establish a potential foundation for work in other areas of political science as well. For instance, advances in psychological research could provide useful information for rationalist models. Two examples serve to illustrate this point. First, attempts to expand the mathematical foundation of prospect theory to include group behavior could theoretically expand the domain of relevant operation and explanation. Mathematical models of prospect theory that could account for group behavior and interaction, or for integration of reference points across actors, would allow for direct comparisons between prospect theory predictions and game-theoretic ones, at least in the domain of strategic interaction, just as expected utility models and prospect theory models currently compete in the domain of individual choice and decision making (Bueno de Mesquita, McDermott, and Cope 200 1; McDermott and Kugler 2001). Broader theoretical comparison and testing provide a more comprehensive basis upon which to examine the relative advantages, disadvantages, and comparative value of both approaches within the context of particular problems. Such potential theoretical advancement in prospect theory can also compare prospect theory and game-theoretic models using large-n statistical assessments of group behavior and international interaction to assess the explanatory and predictive accuracy of both models. Second, work that can provide a psychological basis for the origin of preferences offers a real opportunity for productive collaboration between rational choice theorists and political psychologists. Obviously, a model that can create a systematic understanding of the nature and origins of preferences, or one that can generate some predictive power about their content, holds a great

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deal of promise for supporting the further expansion of rational models in ways that bring them closer to descriptive, as well as normative, accuracy. In particular, the ability to predict preferences, however imperfectly, could enable temporally dynamic applications of rational choice and game-theoretic models to be applied beyond issues and problems that assume fixed and given preferences. Moreover, experimental research that seeks to unpack the origins of preferences could provide rational and normative models with a more comprehensive and accurate model of human choice, in particular whether any normative or empirical boundary conditions exist on psychological processes that are typically assumed to manifest universally. Whether sources of such boundaries might be found in cultural, sex, ethnic, or other differences presents a challenge to the allegedly universal nature of most psychological models and theories. Another promising area of research is the origins and nature of framing effects, which potentially can be applied in myriad arenas. Such work might expand the utility of prospect theory models in a variety of political contexts, offering new avenues for research in media effects, advertising, and campaigns and elections. Research that integrates the impact of framing effects with expectations such as those embodied in the reference point of prospect theory can offer a more unified psychological alternative to rationally based models. Two separate yet interconnected research agendas exist within this suggestion. First, work designed to explain or predict framing effects would offer a great deal of empirical support and substantiation not only to prospect theory models but to other models in psychology and behavioral economics as well. Because the empirical psychological data demonstrates that many of the assumptions behind rational choice models remain descriptively inaccurate, a more systematic theory of framing effects would provide greater strength, rigor, and parsimony to alternative psychological models of choice. Second, work designed to explore the nature of the reference point and its relationship to levels of aspiration or expectation might help to explain how and when certain problems (e.g., territorial rights) become intransigent because everyone sees themselves in a domain of losses, while other pro blems (e.g., trade) might be solved in a more straightforward manner. But when does the reference point refer to the status quo and when to a level of aspiration? How can an analyst discover how different perceptions might affect such processes as bargaining, negotiation, or momen-

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tum in war? Attempting to uncover mechanisms to predict how individuals frame particular events, problems, and actions would constitute a major contribution to the theoretical evolution of prospect theory. Such an advance would also expand the basis upon which to compare prospect theory profitably with other political models of decision and action. Furthermore, predicting frames, which has proved daunting in the past (Fischhoff 1983), presents all sorts of opportunities for deeper insight into the nature of decision making in both political and other contexts. Third, research that explores the more dynamic processes and mechanisms involved in the interaction of individuals and groups deserves attention. Such work might include attempts to further explore the interaction between leaders and followers or to investigate how followers influence leaders (and vice versa). Further work on the conditions under which concerted minorities can influence majorities or how deviant individuals might withstand group pressure to advocate for their own conscience might fall under this rubric as well. Such work is obviously more difficult than paperand-pencil tasks or surveys. On the other hand, studies that can examine the nature of history and momentum in the escalation of violence, the process of sending, receiving, and interpreting signals properly, or the expression of emotions such as hated, anger, or revenge through political action channels will advance the prospects for more realistic and insightful models of human decision-making behavior and political processes. Psychological versus Alternative Models

In an article contrasting rational and psychological models of political choice, Quattrone and Tversky (1988) argued that the basic assumptions underlying expected utility theory are systematically violated by individuals in real-life contexts. Experimental results for systematic violations of the assumptions of invariance, dominance, and transitivity remain quite robust (Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky 1982; Kahneman and Tversky 1979, 1984). In particular, they argue that decision makers violate the central assumptions of invariance and coherence upon which most classical decision models depend. They suggest that prospect theory, in particular, provides a superior model for explaining and predicting risky political choices. They argue that prospect theory predictions (such as risk aversion in the domain of gain and risk acceptance in domains of loss) help make sense of the bias toward the incumbent

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in good times and the preference for the challenger in bad. In addition, they note that loss aversion presents obstacles for effective bargaining and negotiation because it leads decision makers to value their own concessions more highly than those of their opponent. They conclude by suggesting that "there is little hope for a theory of choice that is both normatively acceptable and descriptive accurate" (Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky 1982, 735). Certainly not all political psychologists remain so pessimistic about the possibility of some kind of detente, or even integration, between cognitive and rational models of choice. However, as McGraw (2000) notes, there may exist some incompatibility in the nature of the goals of each model that present substantive obstacles to integration. Rational choice theorists often consider prediction to be the signal dependent variable in assessing the utility of various theories and models. Psychologists in general, and political psychologists among them, tend to focus more on explaining and understanding the nature of human cognitive processing. Such diverse goals often stimulate political and psychological researchers to investigate similar phenomena in quite divergent ways. In this way, integrating the processes of investigation may prove as challenging as attempting to synthesize or combine substantive models. However, there exists no a priori reason why rational choice models and psychological models can't interact profitably. For one thing, each model pressures the other into more coherent and comprehensive theoretical development. For another, further work in psychology may be able to provide rational models with more accurate and sophisticated formulations for the origins of preferences. Psychological insights into the nature of preference reversals and other anomalies have already begun to revolutionize the discipline of behavioral economics. Furthermore, many formal modelers, especially in the area of behavioral economics, already use psychological experimentation to provide field tests of their models. Results are then used to further sharpen and hone formal models in mutually reinforcing ways. Rational choice models are not the only alternative to psychological models of political phenomena. Although psychological models are criticized for being too reductionist to adequately explain large-scale political processes, they can provide unique insight into the intricate workings of the human brain. As the discussion in this book has demonstrated, psychology can illuminate some critical processes within political science and establish the

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micro foundational basis for many arguments derived from alternative paradigms that rest on larger causal mechanisms, such as ideas, interests, or identity. We can only hope that eventually some of these ideas will flow from political science to psychology as well. Broader Utility

Many critics of psychological or individual approaches argue that psychological variables and models are so complicated that the insights cannot be used. Yet the issue is certainly not so simple. First, many phenomena of interest in international affairs represent rare events that are nonetheless important to understand and analyze. Attempts to understand a particular leader can prove insuperable when viewed from any perspective other than psychology. Some rational choice theorists might dismiss this work as not social science, but mere history. However, experimental psychological work that performs large-scale analyses of diverse populations in order to generate hypotheses of human motivations and biases cannot be discarded so easily. Perhaps more limited events, especially in-depth analyses of problematic leaders, are more profitably explored from the perspective of psychological models that contain a wealth of information and background about individual decision making, action, and emotion. Such psychological models can offer a richness in understanding and explanation that might easily be lost in analyses that focus on a higher level of analysis. The method needs to fit the topic; clearly, large-scale phenomena may be more profitably explored from a quantitative perspective. But some topics, like getting inside the mind of a terrorist, might be more productive from a psychological as opposed to a rational perspective. This raises another important distinction. Many rational and formal models excel in their predictive power. But sometimes the process is more important than the result. For example, work on reason-based choice by Shafir and Tversky (1993) points to the critical importance that people place on the reasons and justifications they provide for their choices; this appears to be especially true when they need to report those reasons to others, such as to political constituents. Circumstances that require detailed explanation and understanding, with less emphasis on prediction, may benefit disproportionately from psychologically informed analyses. Second, the value of different models can be assessed using various criteria, such as predictive value or the unique perspective

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that alternative theories can shed on established problems or new concerns. Theories that pose new ways to examine problems, ask different questions, seek diverse evidence, and reach unexpected conclusions present unique opportunities for analysis. From this perspective, psychological models often shed light on aspects of a person, event, or issue that remain unilluminated from other viewpoints, and these novel insights can suggest fresh avenues for exploration and intervention. Third, psychological models can serve as a micro foundation for other theories of political action and behavior. Experimental work can offer a methodological window through which to see and uncover underlying processes at work. Certainly these microprocesses are affected by the macropolitical context in which they operate. Oftentimes, political and psychological models merge in their specific predictions because they reinforce each other in action. Or they can diverge, as when political institutions and bureaucracies constrain individual behavior or when individual predilections direct domestic or international behavior. However, it is also clear that larger, macroprocesses are influenced and constrained by their microprocesses as well. This occurs, for example, when processes of negotiation become shaped by the biases of individual negotiators, when analogical reasoning directs leaders to the wrong policy prescriptions, or when decisions to go to war become influenced by hate and personal animosities. The relationship between micro- and macroprocesses remains reciprocal and mutually influential, as does the relationship between individual and group processes. Just as micropsychological processes inform and shape individual preferences, values, and behavior, macropolitical processes constrain and direct individual choice and action. Complete analysis requires investigation of both processes in interaction over time. Finally, personal taste, skills, and abilities enter into the choice of theoretical orientation as well. We gravitate not only toward those forms of analysis that match our skills and talents, but also those theories and models that intuitively make sense to us. This does not mean that our efforts within a given perspective should not require rigorous adherence to the most advanced standards within their subfield. However, at the end of the day, those questions, insights, and problems that compel our attention must harness not only our thoughts but our passions as well. For cognition or action without emotion restricts the full range of human efficiency, effectiveness, happiness, and fulfillment.

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Index

Abelson, R. D., 184 accountability, 43, 266 adaptation syndrome, 174 adjustment, 67-68 Adler, Alfred, 159,201 affect, 160, 183 affirmative action, 101, 108 Afghanistan, 33, 109, 149 aggression, 180. See also belligerence agreement, 39 Allies, World War I, 172. See also World War I Allison, Graham, 47, 240-42, 244, 247-48,259 al Qaeda, 141, 149 altruism, 181-82 Ames, Aldrich, 243 Amin, Idi, 57, 231 anchoring, 67-68 Anderson, J., 199 Andeson, W., 191 anthrax outbreak, 67, 150 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, 138 antidemocratic personality, 89 apology, 62, 125-26, 128, 161 appraisal theory, 165-66 Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 37, 134,143,149,185 Arendt, Hannah, 89, 204 Arian, A., 185 anns (weapons), 56, 138-39, 151, 170 Aronson, Eliot, 107, 108 arousal, 167-68 Asch, Solomon, 26, 88, 90 associations, 63-66, 162-63 Atta, Mohammad, 149 Attica, New York, 82 attitudes: assumptions about, 96; change in, 77,115-17; survey of, 41-42

attribution theory, 50,109-10 Aum Shinrikyo, 66 authoritarian personality, 30-31, 89, 220 autokinetic effect, 86 autonomic nervous system (ANS), 162,174 availability of information, 63, 122 Axelrod, R., 29 Azjen, 1., 166 Baldwin, David, 248 Barber, James David, 198,222-26, 235 Bard, P., 165 base rate, 59-62, 136 Batson, C., 79 Bautista, Fulgencio, 171 Bay of Pigs invasion, 171, 251 Bazerman, Max, 132-33 Beamer, Todd, 142 Bechara, A., 163 behavior,26,77,223 behavioral economics, 24 behavioral norms, 80, 81-86,177 behaviorism, 48, 153 beliefs, 77-78, 112 belligerence, 220-21. See also war Bem, Daryl, 96 Bendor, J., 247-48 Bennington College, 86, 148 Bernston, G., 42 bias, 261, 265; accusations of, 30; agreement, 39; certainty, 138; cognitive, 35; of conjunction, 60-61; cultural, 210-11; elimination of, 212; group, 103, 106,255-57; information, 32-34, 37-38,42, 203; judgmental, 58-60, 63-64, 67; laboratory, 27; negotiation, 136; political, 10-11, 261; psychologi299

300

Index

bias (continued) cal, 265; reality testing of, 98; response, 31; of small numbers, 61; status quo, 139-40; in weighting function, 73. See also prejudice Bible, 81 binding rituals, 146 bin Laden, Osama, 141-42, 149 biological-psychological integration, 209 Bobo, L., 100 Bollinger, L., 143 Bolsheviks, 172 Bosnia, 233 Boston Celtics, 61 Bower, G., 168 brain, 267. See also cognition; neurology; neuropsychology Britain, 171, 179,211 Bryan, T., 185 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 33, 120 Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, 47,50, 53-55 bureaucratic politics (Model III), 240,245-46,248,259 Bush, George H. W., 32, 110,227, 233,252 Bush, George W., 125-29,226,252 Cacioppo, J., 42 California, 83, 146 Callaway, M., 253 Cam bodia, 231 Camerer, Colin, 24-25 Cannon, W., 165 capability, 55 Carl smith, Merrill, 93, 96 Carlton, Charles, 202 Carter, Jimmy, 33,120,121,172 case studies, 22, 36-38, 43, 53 Castro, Fidel, 171 catastrophe, stress of, 174--75 categorization, 102 Catholic Church, 193 causation, 38,41,200,205-6 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 85,121,125,171,224,243 central neural process theory, 165

certainty, 137-39. See also probability Challenger space shuttle disaster, 68, 224 Chamberlain, Neville, 170-71 Chapman, J., 65-66 Chapman, L., 65-66 character, and leadership, 223 Charles I, king of England, 202 Childhood and the Life Cycle (Erikson),l92 childhood experiences, 158, 190-91 China, 2,33,121,136; surveillance crisis in, 122-23, 124-29,241,243 choice: models of, 270; policy, 185. See also rational choice Churchill, Winston, 115 Clinton, Bill, 32, 110, 177,224, 225-26,233 CNN (Cable News Network), 126 cognition, 27, 133; bias in, 35; coping using, 176; dissonance in, 94--96; processes of, 68-69; psychology of, 49, 57; research in, 154,181,183,186-87,264-65 cognitive dissonance, 94-96 Cohen, R., 220 Cold War, 46; attributional styles in, 110, 140; defection in, 129; end of, 216; Soviet military in, 171; stereotypes during, 104; U-2 surveillance in, 85 collective unconscious, 159 combat, 175-76. See also war compassion, 79-80 competition, 108 compulsiveness, 229-30 conceptual complexity, 233 concessions, 134--35, 139 confidence. See optimistic overconfidence conflicts, 129; destructive, 131; resolution of, 152 conformity, 84, 86-89 Congress, U.S., 180 Congressional Government (Wilson), 4 conjunction fallacy, 60-61 Conover, P., 112

Index

consensus, 109-10 conservatives, on race, 100 consistency, 109-10 constraints, 27 constructivism, 7-8, 13,47 content analysis, 22, 31-34,227 contextualization, 7, 40, 43 Coolidge, Calvin, 232 cooperation, 29, 108 coping, 176. See also stress Cornell University basketball team, 61 Cosmides, Leda, 69 counterfactuals, 42-43, 181,206,215 countertransference, 208 Cowden, J., 202 creativity, 209 credibility of science, 10-11 Creed, J., 114 Crenshaw, M., 143-45 crisis, 124, 151 Crosby, F., 206, 211 Crosby, M., 206, 211 cross-cultural study, 90 Cuba, Bay of Pigs invasion and, 171, 251 Cuban missile crisis, 124,215,241, 244,247,251-52; results of, 138 cultures, 161,210-11 Czechoslovakia, 170,201 Damasio, A., 163, 164, 170, 183,267 Darley, J., 78-79 Darwin, Charles, 177 Davies, J., 185 da Vinci, Leonardo, 190, 205, 206 D-Day (World War II), 225 decision making, 57-58, 151; affect theory, 164; counterfactuals in, 42-43; defective, 120-24; jury, 185; personality in, 32; prospect theory of, 69-75 deescalation, 131 defection, Cold War, 129 Defense Department, U.S., 242 Democrats, 59-60, 86-87 denial, 172-73 depth psychology, 189 determinism, psychic, 156

301

deterrence, 56; model of, 127 Deutsch, M., 129-31 developmental psychology, 49 devil's advocate, 251-52 Devine, Patricia, 105 Diab, L., 106 disaster, emotional responses to, 175 discrimination, 77, 98,101, 102, 105. See also bias; prejudice distinctiveness, 109-10 Divide the Dollar game, 140 Dod, A., 201 donlinance,52,99,232-33,253 Dovidio, J., 99 Dower, J., 169 Draw-a-Person test, 65-66 dream interpretation, 190-91,205 Driver, M., 233 Drukman, D., 115 Dulles, Allen, 125 Eastern Europe, 46-47 Economist (magazine), 59 Edwards, Kari, 183, 185 Egypt, 243 Eichmann, Adolf, 89, 204 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 85, 125, 171,225,232,235-36 Ekman, Paul, 160, 161 election studies, 119, 183 Electra complex, 158 elite, foreign policy of, 113-14 Elliot, Jane, 106 Elms, Alan, 233 emergency response system (ERS), 162 Ehime Maru (fishing trawler), 125 emotions, 17-18, 153-73,186-87; applications to international relations of, 169-73; in evolutionary tendencies, 179-80; Freud on, 153-59; functions of, 167-68; modern approaches to, 160-64; research on, 266; theories of, 164-67,267-68 enemy, 104, 108 Englis, B., 184 environment, behavior and, 26

302

Index

Erikson, Erik, 159, 191-94,204 Ermy, Lee, 148 Essences of Decision (Allison), 240 Esser, Jo, 254 Etheredge, Lloyd, 31, 231-33, 235 ethics research, 28, 42 Europe, 260 evidence, 211. See also information evil, quality of, 89 evolutionary psychology, 181 expected utility, 50, 71-72 experience-weighted attraction (EWA) model, 25 experimentation, 17,21,23-29,44, 266 explanation, 8, 206-7, 211 external validity, 26-27, 31 extroverts, 232 facial expressions, 160, 184 failure, odds of, 67 fairness, 24-25, 140,266 F alk, A., 208 Falklands War, 37 Falkowski, L., 220 Farnham, Bo, 114 fascism (F-scale), 30o See also Hitler, Adolf Fearon, James, 55 Feather, No, 110 Federal Building bombing (Oklahoma City), 141 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),243 federal government. See United States and specific branch of government or department Fehr, Ro, 25 Feldman, So, 30, 39-41,112 feminism, 210 Ferdinand, Archduke, 170 Festinger, Leon, 93-97, 96, 116 fight-or-flight response, 173-74 Fischer, 1., 29,131 Fishbein, Mo, 166 Flanenbaum, Bo, 104 Flanenbaum, C, 104 force, tendency to use, 31 foreign policy, 34-35,113-14,

226-270 See also international relations Fortune 500, 99 framing effects, 38, 40, 69-70, 74, 269-70 France, 211 Freud, Sigmund, 4, 15, 18,48, 153-60; contributions of, 153-55, 210,259; criticism of theory of, 156-59; on da Vinci, 190,205, 206; influences on psychobiography, 189-92, 195; post-Freudian thinkers, 159-60; on technology, 116; on World War 1,155 Friedland, No, 143 Friedlander, So, 220 Fromm, Erich, 259 Full Metal Jacket (film), 148 functionalism, 185 Gaertner, So, 99 game theory, 12,24-25 Gandhi, Mahatma, 193-94 Gardner, Wo, 42 Gaza Strip, 134 gender: bias of, 210; leadership and, 180 generalizability, 9, 12,26,28, 34 genetic diversity, 177, 179 genocide (Holocaust), 98, 204 Genovese, Kitty, 78 George, Alexander, 36, 199-200, 205,206,212-13,219 George, Juliet, 199-200, 205, 206, 212-13 Gerber, Howard, 209 Gere, Richard, 148 Germany, Nazi-era, 115, 170, 171, 172, 193; Jewish refugees from, 30,89-900 See also Hitler, Adolf Gigerenzer, Gerd, 68 Gilligan, So, 168 Gilovitch, T., 61 Glad, Bo, 198 Goldgeier, Jo, 265 Goldhagen, Do, 169 Good Samaritan experiment, 79-80 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 227 Gordon, C, 185

Index

Gore, AI, 215 Gossett, Louis, Jr., 148 Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension Reduction (GRIT), 131,265 Greece, 144 Greenstein, Fred, 4, 6, 196,221-22 Greenville (U.S. submarine), 161 Gromyko, Andrei, 247 group processes, 239-60; biases in, 103, 106,255-57; bureaucratic (Model III), 240, 245-46, 248, 259; groupthink in, 36, 249-55; organizational (Model II), 240, 241-45, 246, 248, 259; polarization in, 257-58; research in, 259-60; size in, 237 group size, 237 Groupthink (Janis), 249, 253 Gulf War, 110, 138 Hamas, suicide bombers of, 149 Hammond, T., 247-48 Handbook of Political Psychology (Knutson, ed.), 4-5 Hart, T., 255 Hartz, L., 47 Hassen, Ron, 243 Havel, Vaclav, 201 Hawke, Robert, 110 Herek, G., 253 Hermann, Margaret, 5, 216, 226-27 Hermann, Richard, 104 heuristics, 58-59 Hewlett-Packard,236 Hewson, John, 110 hierarchy, 107-8,246 hijacking, 148-50 Hi11, G., 255 Hinckley, B., 113 Hiroshima, 161 history, 4-5, 20, 53, 62 Hitler, Adolf: biography of, 192; and Jewish genocide, 98; leadership style of, 89-90, 234, 244; motives of, 57; propaganda used by, 104; in World War II, 63, 170-71, 173,215 Ho, T., 25

303

Hockey, G., 185 Holocaust, 98, 204 Holsti, 0., 15, 113 Homeland Security, U.S. Office of, 243 homogeneity bias, out-group and, 256-57 homosexuality, 65-66, 182, 190-91 Hoover, Herbert, 171,232 Hoover Institution, 50 hormones, 180 Horney, Karen, 159,202 hostages, 2, 121, 148, 150, 172 Hough, J., 99 House, Colonel Edward, 212, 223 Hovland, Carl, 115 Howe, Michael, 209 human development, stages of, 192-93 humanism, 153 humanistic psychology, 48-49 Hurwitz, M., 101 Hussein, Saddam, 110,203,227,230 Huth, Paul, 56 ideology, 113-14, 143 imaginability, 65, 66 incentives, 27 India, 33, 115, 194 indifference, 52 individuals, impact on international relations of, 3, 7, 20, 211, 215. See also political psychology infornlation, 84,110-15,210,211; availability of, 63, 122; bias of, 32-34,37-39,42,203 internal validity, 26, 31 international relations, 2; belligerence in, 220-21; emotions applied to, 169-73; foreign policy in, 113-14; influence of evolutionary psychology on, 181; theories of, 7, 46-48, 53 International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP), 4 Inter-Nation Simulation, 233 interpretation: bias in, 32; of dreams, 190-91,205; of events, 74. See also information

304

Index

introverts, 232 invariance, 52 Iran, 33, 36, 57, 74, 121 Iraq, 138o See also Hussein, Saddam Irving, Ao, 209-10 Islamic fundamentalists, 141 Israel: air force of, 62; garrison model of, 151; United States and, 115; war with Egypt, 243 Israeli-Arab-Palestinian conflict, 37, 134, 143, 149, 185 Itzkowitz, No, 201 James, Wo, 164-65 Janis, Irving, 9, 36, 126,240,249-54, 259 Japan, 74, 82,114-15,125-26,161, 171; decision-making model in, 11 I Jarvis, Bo, 41 jealousy, 179 Jefferson, Thomas, 225 Jerusalem, 89 Jervis, Ro, 7, 37, 63,138; on leadership, 216; on war models, 127; on wishful thinking, 170 JESSE information-processing model, III Jews: emigration of, 30, 89-90; genocide of, 98, 204 Johnson, Lyndon, 201,223,225,232 judglnents, 50, 57-60, 63-64, 67 J ung, Carl, 159-60 jury decision, 185 Kahneman, Daniel, 24, 60, 67-70, 154,181,212 Keating, Paul, 110 Kelley, Harold, 109-1 Kennan, George, 232 Kennedy, John Fo: in Cuban missile crisis, 124, 171,215,244,251-52; style of, 223, 225, 232 Kennedy, Robert, 247, 252 Kennedy administration, groupthink in, 254 Kenya, 152 Khmer Rouge, 231 Khrushchev, Nikita, 85, 215

°

Kinder, Don, 39, 99, 100 Kissinger, Henry, 243 Klein, Melanie, 159 Knutson, Jeanne, 4-5, 150-51 Kohut, Heinz, 201 Korean War, 243 Koresh, David, 142 Kosslyn, Steve, 164 Kowert, Paul, 226 Kramer, Ro, 254 Krosnick, Jo, 38, 39, III Kubrick, Stanley, 148 Kuklinski, Jo, 101, 102, 111-12 Ku Klux Klan, 105 Kurds, 152 Kydd, Andy, 56 laboratory experiments, 21, 23-29 Lange, C C, 164-65 Lanzetta, Jo, 184 Larson, Do, 112 Lasswell, Harold, 4, 9, 219 Latane, Bo, 78-79 Latin America, 74, 150 Lavine, Ho, 113 Lazarus, Ro, 165-66 leadership, 75, 215-38; Barber on, 222-26; character and, 223; Greenstein on, 221-22; Hermann on, 216,226-27;lnenin, 180; models of, 215-16, 231-35; studies of, 217-20; styles of, 90, 235-38; types of political, 228-31 League of Nations, 199,200,207 learning theories, 24-25, 202 LeDoux, Jo, 185 Leites, Nathan, 219 Leonardo da Vinci, 190,205,206 Leonardo da Vinci: A Study in Psychosexuality (Freud), 190 Levi, A., 114 Lewin, Kurt, 89-90, 235 Lewinsky, Monica, 2,177 liberalism, 7, 46-47,86-87 limbic system, 162-64 Limited Test Ban Treaty, 138 Link, Ao, 199-200 LISREL model, 253 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 200, 207

Index Lodge, M., 112 Los Angeles, 99 loss aversion, 139-40 Lowi, Theodore, 4 Luskin, R., 111-12 Luther, Martin, 192-93, 204 Mackie, D., 103 Madison Avenue, 117 Malcolm, Janet, 158 Mandel, R., 12 Mao Tse Tung, 243 Marcus, G., 166-67 Marmor, M., 200 Marvick, Elizabeth, 210 Marxism, 7, 46 masculinity, compensatory, 220 Maslach, Christina, 84 Masson, Jeffrey, 158-59 Masters, J., 112, 183-84 Ma-Tzu,82 Afayaguezincident, 36 McCarthy, Joseph, 238 McCauley, c., 253, 254 McClelland, D., 33 McConahay, J., 99 McGraw, Kathleen, 112,264-65, 271 McGuire, W., 29 McKeown, B., 35 McVeigh, Timothy, 141, 142 media, framing effects in, 40 Meichenbaum, D., 176 Mellers, B., 164 memory, 41-42, 65,157 Merari, A., 143 Mercer, Jon, 169-70 Merriam, Charles, 4 Merton, R., 33 Mesmer, Franz Anton, 155 methodologies, political psychology, 21-44; case study, 22, 36-38,43, 53; content analysis, 22,31-34; experimentation, 17,21,23-29, 44, 266; laboratory experiments and simulations, 21, 23-29; multiple, 6-7, 12,22,23,29,36; observer ratings, 22, 34--35; self-report questionnaires, 21,

305

30-31; survey research, 22-23, 38-44, 100-101 MiG fighter plane, 129 Milgram, S., 26, 90-93, 95, 145 military, 147, 171, 182-83 Miller, A., 112 Mischel, W., 218 Mitchell, G., 29 modeling, 52-55 models: political psychology and rational choice, 16-17; psychological, 13-15. See also rational choice Monroe, Kristen, 5 mood,183 Moon, Sun Myung, 146 Moonies, 146 Morrow, James, 55 Moscovici, S., 260 Moscow, 138, 139 motivation, 42,95, 130-31, 143,237. See also competition; cooperation; individuals multidisciplinary, political psychology as, 6 Munich,63, 74,112,170 Nadler, Janice, 133 Nagasaki, 161 narcissism, 229, 230 National Abortion Rights Action League, 85 National Election Survey (NES), 30 National Security Council, 213 Nazis. See Germany, Nazi-era; Hitler, Adolf negotiation, 131, 132-33, 136 Nelson, T., 100 neurology, 4, 18, 175. See also cognition neuropsychology, 49,102, 116-17, 153-54 Newcomb, T., 86 New Jersey, 207 New York City, 78,141 New Yorker (magazine), 158 Nightline (television show), 136 Nincic, M., 113 Nisbett, R., 41,96-97,212

306

Index

Nixon, Richard, 32-33, 201, 215, 225,238 Nixon administration, groupthink in, 254 nonregressive prediction, 62 normative influence processes, 84 North Vietnam, 121,250. See also Vietnam War NRA (National Rifle Association), 84 numbers, law of small, 61 observer ratings, 22, 34-35 Officer and a Gentleman, An (film), 148 Oklahoma, 105 Oklahoma City bombing, 141 operational code, 219 opponent, 104, 108, 135-36 optimistic overconfidence, 134-36 Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (Turner and Pratkanis, eds.), 253 organizational process (Model II), 240,241-45,246,248,259 Orwell, George, 89 Osgood, Charles, 131 out-group homogeneity bias, 256-57 Pakistan, 33 Palestinian-Israeli conflict, 37, 134, 143, 149, 185 Palo Alto, 83 Panama, 233 paranoia, 229, 231 Paris, 155 Parrott, W. G., 185 Peake, P., 218 Pearl Harbor, 114, 161 Pearson, Mary, 201 Peffley, M., 101 Pentagon, 119,142,243 Perdue, c., 103 performance, individual and group, 255. See also group processes; individuals Perot, Ross, 32 Persian Gulf War. See Gulf War personality, 217-31; authoritarian,

30-31,89,220; categorization of, 225-26; criticisms of studies of, 221-22; of decision makers, 32; disorders of, 229-31; existence of, 217-19; of leaders, 222-24, 227; psychology of, 49; theories of, 195 persuasion, 258 Peterson, R., 254 Petty, R., 41 Philadelphia 76ers, 61 Pieters, R., 167-68 Pincus, A., 209 PKK terrorist group, 152 PIous, S., 67 Plutchik, R., 161 polarization, 257-58 policy, 34-35,47,113-14,121, 226-27. See also international relations POLl information-processing model, III political actors, types of, 228-29 political bias, 10-11,267 political insensitivity, II political psychology, 2, 4-6, 45, 261-63,266. See also rational choice Political Psychology (Hermann, ed.), 5 Political Psychology (journal), 4 Political Psychology (Monroe, ed.), 5 political science, 4 political tolerance, 101 politicization, 17, 18-19 Pol Pot, 57, 231 Pope (Catholic), 137, 193 Post, Jerrold, 203, 227, 230, 231 posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD),175-76 Powell, Colin, 127,252 Powers, Francis Gary, 85, 125 Pratkanis, A., 253-55 prediction, 8, 53, 55, 62 preferences, 14, 51-52, 268-69 prejudice, 77, 98, 101, 102, 105. See also bias Prescott, Carlo, 83 presidents, U.S., 135,222,224,235;

Index

facial expressions of candidates for, 184. See also individual presidents Preston, Thomas, 226 priming effects, 40 Princeton University, 79, 207, 213 Prisoner's Dilemma, 29 probability, 58, 60, 72-73 prospect theory, 17-19,40,50, 69-75,137, 139-40; evaluation in, 70; research on, 266, 268-70 Protestant Reformation, 193 psyche, 155 psychic determinism, 156 psychoanalysis, 212 psycho biography, 37, 189-213; assumptions in, 189, 194-98; biological integration and, 209; contributions of, 197-99; criticisms of, 203-6; explanation in, 206-7, 211; goals of, 207-11; history of, 190-94; improvement of, 211-12; steps in, 212-13; subjects of, 199-203 psychology, 1, 13-15,212,265; depth, 189; evolutionary, 181; history of, 48-50, 57; humanistic, 48-49; modern, 4; political, 2, 4-6, 45,261-63,266; positive, 18, 19; of self, 19-21,30-31,96,108,137, 201. See also political psychology psychosexual development, 159, 191 public documents, 34. See also information Q-sort methodology, 35-36 Quattrone, G., 270 questionnaires, self-reporting, 21, 30-31 Rachman, Omar Abdel, 142 racism, 98-101. See also bias; prejudice Rahn, W., 166-67 Rapoport, E., 204 Rasinski, K., 38 rational choice, 8,47,170; alternatives to, 186; contradictions to, 24; in leadership, 215-16; modeling

o~

307

12-17,52-53,239-41,247-48, 270-73; theories of, 50-53, 57 Raven, B., 254 Reagan, Ronald, 127, 198,224 realism, 7, 26, 46, 215 reality testing of bias, 98 reciprocity, 182-83 recruitment, terrorist, 144--45 reference point, 74, 269 Reiter, D., 56 remedies, legal, 107-8 representativeness, 59-60, 62-63 repression, 156-57 Republicans, 59-60, 86-87 research: directions for, 4, 9, 17; ethics in, 42; interdisciplinary, 260,267 resolve, 55 response effects, 31, 38-40 responsibility, diffusion of, 78-79 Rhodes, E., 248 Rice, Condo1eeza, 127,136 Richards, Ann, 201-2 Riggle, E., 102 risk, 71-72,135-36,185,257-58, 266; propensity to, 226. See also prospect theory Robber's Cave experiment, 105 Robins, R., 231 Rogers, Carl, 49, 153 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 202 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 74, 86, 223,232,234 Roosevelt, Theodore, 225, 232 Rorschach projective test, 66 Rosati, J., 33, 114 Rosenau, J., 113 Ross, L., 35, 102,212 Rumsfe1d, Donald, 127 Runyan, William McKinley, 36, 208-9,211 Russia, 43, 172. See also Soviet Union Sample, Susan, 56 Sarajevo, 170 sarin gas, 66 satisficing, 39, 51 Schacter, S., 165-66

308

Index

schema theory, 111-12 Schmidt, K., 25 Schooler, J., 97 Schulkin, J., 185 science: credibility of, 10-11; political psychology as, 261, 263 Scots rebellion, 202 Sears, David, 23, 27, 99 self, psychology of, 19-21,30-31, 96,108,137,201 Seligman, Martin, 19 Selye, H., 174 Senate, U.S., 199-200 September 11,2001 attacks, 1-2,66, 119,141-42,148-49,243;post-, 151,174; understanding of, 261. See also terrorism sexuality, 159,178-80,191 Shafir, E., 272 Shapiro, P., 103 Shepard, Matthew, 105 Sherif, Muzafer, 86, 105-8 Shichman, S., 131 Sidanius, J., 99 Silicon Valley, 236 Silverstein, Brett, 104 Simon, H., 51 Simonton, D., 234--35 simulations, 21, 23-29 Skinner, B. F., 48, 153 small numbers law, 61 Smith, Kate, 33 Sniderman, Paul, 12,43,100-103, 266 Sniezek, J., 235-36 social class, 46 social comparison theory, 258 social psychology, 49,57 social science, 53, 80-86, 99, 102, 258; conformity and, 84, 86-89; rules and roles, 81-84 societal concerns, 9 Somalia, 149,233 SOPs. See standard operating procedures Soviet Union, 33,43,47,171-73, 215,243; arms control of, 138-39; assumptions about, 120; defection from, 129; leadership in, 231 ;

stereotypes of, 104; U.S. policy toward, 121; U -2 surveillance over, 85 spiral model, 127-28 Stalin, Josef, 57, 172-73,231 Stam, A., 56 standard operating procedures (SOPs), 241-44, 246 Stanford University, 82-83,93-94 State Department, U.S., 231, 241, 243 status quo, 74, 139-40 Steele, Claude, 106 Stein, J., 108 Steiner, M., 248 stereotypes, 66, 104-6, 257 Stevenson, Adlai, 202 Stockholm syndrome, 150 Stoner, J., 257 stress, 173-76 Study in Bolshevism, A (Leites), 219 style, 223-24 Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, 63, 170 Suez crisis, 74 suicide bombers, 134, 149 Suleiman, R., 29 Sullivan, John, 101-2, 184 Sullwold, L., 144 Sumner, W. G., 108 Supreme Court, U.S., 158 surveillance, U-2, 74, 82, 85, 121-22, 124-29,241,243 surveys, 22-23, 38-44,100-101 Taiwan, 126, 128, 129 Tajfel, H., 107 tautological reasoning, 37 Taylor, Shelley, 174 technology, 50 Telling Lies (Ekman), 160 terrorism, 119,141-43,152,174; factional, 148; motivation for, 237; responding to, 261; state-sponsored, 144. See also September 11, 2001 attacks terrorists, recruitment of, 144-48 Tetlock, P., 9-12; on biases, 261, 265; on ethics, 42-43; on experi-

Index

mentation, 266; on groupthink, 253; multiple methods used by, 29; on psychobiography, 206, 211; on Q-sorts, 36; on racism, 100 Texas, 107 Theodor, Mary, 201 theories, 16-17, 156,204-6,262-63, 273; application of, 9, 12, 74; development of, 3, 8-9,44, 186 Thompson, Leigh, 133 threat, policy choices and, 185 tit-for-tat model, 265 Tokyo, 66 Tompkins, S., 160 Tooby, John, 69 Tourangeau, R., 38 trade-offs, 133 tragedy, outcomes of, 1 transitivity, 52 trauma, stress of, 174--75 Treaty of Versailles, 171 Tripp, Linda, 177 Truman, Harry S., 232 trust, 169 Turkey, 152 Turner, M., 253-55 Tversky, Aunos, 24,270, 272; on anchoring, 67; on bias, 60, 212; on cognition, 154, 181; criticisms of, 68-69; on framing effects, 70; on information search, 122; on law of small numbers, 61; on nonregressive prediction, 62; on prospect theory, 69-70, 75 Tyler, A., 115 Uganda, 231 Ukraine, 140 uncertainty, 137-39 United Nations, l38 United States, 140, 171, 2lO; arms control of, 138-39; election study in, 183; foreign policy of, 47, 113-14; in hostage crisis, 121; internment of Japanese during World War II in, 98; military of, 147; model of foreign policy of, 111; perceived threat of, 185-86; research in, 260; sanctions on Iraq

309

by, 138; in Somalia, 149; terrorism in, 150-51; U-2 surveillance by, 82,85,121-22,124-29,241,243; in Vietnam, 121, 173; in wars, 171-72; World War II bonds campaign in, 33 universities, political psychology in, 5 University of California, Berkeley, 30, 89 Ury, W., l31 U.S. Navy, 124, 146, 161 U.S.S.R. See Soviet Union utility, expected, 50, 71-72 utility theory, 270 U-2 surveillance, 82, 85,121-22, 124-29,241,243 validity, 12,34; external, 26-27, 31 Vallone, R., 61 value function, 70-72 values, 58, 67 Vance, Cyrus, 33, 120 van Raaij, F., 167-68 Vertzberger, Y., 115 Vienna, 4, 154 Vietnam War, 57, 63, 121, 153, 173, 231; information processing on, 115, 250; Nixon on, 225 Visser, P., 43 Volkan, V., 201 voting behavior, 119, 183 Waco, Texas, 142 Wagner, Harrison, 55 Walker, S., 28,110,220 Wallace, Doris, 209 Waltz, K., 15 war, 37; combat in, 175-76; models of, 127; structural causes of, 232; theory of, lO4. See also specific war

Washington, George, 225 Washington, DC, 138 Wattle, David, 125 Way, B., 183 weapons, 56,138-39,151,170 weighting function, 70, 72-73, l37, 139

310

Index

Weinstein, E., 199 Werner, Suzanne, 56 West, Dean Andrew Fleming, 207 Western Europe, 210 White, Ralph, 203, 227 White, T., 97 White House, 142,227. See also presidents, U.S.; and specific president Whyte, G., 254 Wiggins, J., 209 Wilder, D., 103 William, Bobbie, 201 Wilson, T., 41, 96-97 Wilson, Woodrow, 4,171; League of Nations and, 199,200,207; psychobiography of, 198-200, 205, 207,212-13; style of, 223, 225, 232 Winter, David, 32-33, 227 wishful thinking, 170 Wittenberg, Germany, 193 Wittkopf, E., 113 Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House (George and George), 199 Worchel, S., 107 world history, impact of individual

on, 20. See also international relations; political psychology World Trade Center, 66,119, 141-42,243 worldview, 223 World War I, 37, 63,171,172; Freud on, 155; post-, 198,231; as spiral model, 127; start of, 129 World War II, 33, 63, 161, 171; as deterrence model, 127; internment of Japanese in, 98; SOPs in, 244; Stalin in, 231. See also Hitler, Adolf writers, psycho biography of, 208 Wyoming, 105 Yale University, 91, liS Yerkes-Dodson law, 168 Yom Kippur War, 115 Young -Bruehl, Elisa beth, 210 Youseff, Ramsey, 141 Zajonc, Robert, 166 Zaller, J., 39-41 Zeckhauser, Richard, 73 zero-sum assumption, 132 Zimbardo, P., 83-84

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