CHAPTER 16: Psychology of International Relations

Psychology of International Relations

International relations, the study of the relations of states with each other and with
international organizations and certain subnational entities, such as, bureaucracies,
political parties, and interest groups. It is related to a number of other academic
disciplines, including political science, geography, history, economics, law, sociology,
psychology, and philosophy.

It would be fair to say that the development of the study of international relations (IR)
has been hampered by a common neglect of psychological factors. As James
Goldgeier says-

A major impediment to the development of adequate explanation and prediction in the

study of international relations and foreign policy is the failure by many academics in the
field to treat seriously the role of psychological factors in individual decision making and
intergroup relations. Work in both of these areas has demonstrated the prevalence of
systematic biases due to cognitive limitations and emotional needs. Key puzzles will
remain unresolved without incorporating these insights into our analytical frameworks.

The Situationism of International Relations Theory

Neorealism of Kenneth Waltz

Neorealists argue, to put it bluntly, that “situation is everything;” the individual

characteristics of the state—including the characteristics of its leaders, its domestic
political situation, whether it is a democracy or dictatorship, and so on—matter very little
in determining what happens in international politics. Instead, they focus on the
character of the international system.

Martin Hollis and Steve Smith

Situationism in international relations takes a variety of other forms as well,

For anything above the level of the individual dispositions is situational. We can
conceive of these different kinds of approach as akin to a Russian doll, in which opening
up one structure gives rise to a smaller one. When we open up the international system,
we find states. When we open up the state, we find bureaucracies. Opening up
bureaucracies, we find groups, another situational level.

Graham Allison
Like Waltz, Allison explains the behavior of leaders situationally and dispense with
psychological considerations, but there most similarities end. In their approach—
commonly referred to in the literature as the bureaucratic politics theory—the behavior
of decision-makers is mostly (though not exclusively) determined by parochial positions
within the bureaucracy. The aphorism “where you stand depends on where you sit,”
variously attributed to Rufus Miles and Don Price, captures this position especially well.

Misperception, Cold and Hot Cognition

 Wrong understanding or Misinterpret the signal

 This is an event that needs to be avoided or not happening in our country because it
can have a huge impact on the disposition of decision making.

 An example of this is the example given by Jervis which influenced the former
beliefs and views of the artists. Preliminary expectations, he said, critically affect
what we "see." You are just like World War II which caused the misconception,
Because British aircraft bombed their own clash (Sheffield) unintentionally. The
reason was that they were expected to face the German ship that Bismarck, that is
really what they are looking for.

Some Recent Innovations

-the psychology of nuclear proliferation, -risk-taking,

- deterrence respectively

The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation

One of the leading concerns of policy-makers in the post-Cold War era has been
the concern that so-called “rogue states” and terrorist groups might acquire and then
use nuclear weapons. What explains why some states decide to “go nuclear” while
others do not, though? Clearly, situationism alone cannot explain this puzzle, since a
large variety of states have access to nuclear technology, but only relatively few choose
to go nuclear. The answer, then, must have something to do with the dispositions of
states and their leaders. In a highly innovative use of the psychological literature on
international relations, Jacques Hymans has produced an interesting theory that seeks
to explain the puzzle in these terms.
To explain why some states go nuclear while others do not, Hymans develops
the useful idea of national identity conceptions (NICs). We have already seen how
social identity theory can be used to explain conflicts between groups; the NIC,
however, is not a shared or social conception of identity but an idiosyncratic, individual-
level factor that varies by leader. In other words, different leaders within the same state
can hold markedly different conceptions about their own nation. More specifically, a
leader’s NIC refers to “his or her sense of what the nation naturally stands for and of
how high it naturally stands in comparison to others.”

Table 16.1 Solidarity and Status dimensions

Solidarity dimensions Us and them (nested) Us against
them
Status dimensions
We are naturally their equals if Sportsmanlike nationalist Oppositional
not their superiors Nationalist

We are naturally below them

Sportsmanlike Subaltern Oppositional
subaltern
Source: Jacques Hymans, The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions
and
Foreign Policy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p.25

Hymans hypothesizes that nuclear proliferation will occur solely under the
leadership of “oppositional nationalists,” where a stark us-versus-them conception is
combined with the perception of state superiority. To test this theory, he examines four
cases, two of which (France and India) took the decision to go nuclear and two of which
(Australia and Argentina) decided after much deliberation against doing this. Before
1972, Australia had set out develop a nuclear weapons program under its then Prime
Minister John Gorton, characterized by Hymans as an “oppositional nationalist.” When
Gough Whitlam took over in 1972, however, he reversed his predecessor’s nuclear
strategy, a decision which Hymans traces to Whitlam’s lesser concern about Chinese
intentions in general, and more specifically to his psychological beliefs as a
“sportsmanlike subaltern.

This argument gains much of its power from showing that it was not “France” that
chose nuclear weapons and “Australia” that did not, but rather that leaders in these
countries fell into different places in his four-fold table developed from the two
dimensions, and that the fact—often an accidental fact—of who was in power at key
points determined what the country would do. This is not to deny that the country’s
situation and shared intellectual and cultural characteristics shape national policy, but
only that there is almost always room for individual choice.
The psychology of Risk-Taking

When do leaders take risks in international politics? Is it a matter of personality—

with some more prone to “role the dice” than others—or is it primarily a matter of the
nature of the situation the leader faces? Or is it instead a matter of how one construes
or perceives the situation one faces? Rose McDermott has pioneered the application of
prospect theory to international relations, which provides one rather interesting answer.
In essence, prospect theory—developed in the late 1970s by Daniel Kahneman and
Amos Tversky— suggests that the manner in which a problem is framed has a decisive
impact on the attractiveness of various options that foreign policy decision-makers
consider. Specifically, whether we regard ourselves as operating in a “domain of gains”
or a “domain of losses” determines the degree to which we will be prepared to take a
risk. If we perceive ourselves as being in a loss-making situation, we are far more likely
to take risks than we are if we think we are making gains. Individuals will be risk averse
(that is, will avoid risky options) when dealing with gains, but they will be risk acceptant
when dealing with losses.
Basically, the psychology of Risk-taking is all about the odds an individual think
would be more favorable is to which he or she may resort.

The Psychology of Deterrence

The visions provided by Home economicus and Home psychologicus clash most clearly
is in the study of voting behavior. But there is an area where the difference of
perspective they provide arguably matters even more, because it has to do with matters
of life and death: deterrence theory.

the rational actor version of deterrence theory on which a lot of international politicaThe
Psychology of International Relation is flawed because it relies upon assumptions which
as we have seen repeatedly in this book- human beings depurt from in practice, for both
cold cognitive and emotional [Link] deterrence theory essentially assumes,
as Lebow and Stein put it, that all leaders are "risk-prone gain maximizers;" in other
words, rational self-interest dictates that all leaders will attempt to expand their territory
at the expense of others.

Empathy: The Antidote to Attribution Error and Other Things

White explains, empathy is very different from sympathy, or at least each represents an
opposite point along a continuum. The latter implies active approval, while the former
simply entails putting oneself in the shoes of another in order to better understand his or
her motives.
Empathy, White notes, is defined as a “realistic understanding of the thoughts and
feelings of others, while sympathy with accordance to its Greek derivation, “feeling with
others-being happy because they are or unhappy because they are-which often implies
doing what one can to help them.

Empathy is primarily cognitive, in the language of psychology; sympathy is effective.

Empathy is important because it is, in White’s phrase, “the great corrective for all forms
of war-promoting misperception.” It is also a potential corrective to the fundamental
attribution error, since it forces the decision-maker to appreciate the situation that the
adversary is confronting. White’s work helped pioneer a rich tradition of work in the
study of international relations on empathy, perception, and misperception which
continues today.

An example from Errol Morris’s outstanding documentary film of Robert McNamara’s

life, The fog War- America’s escalation of the Vietnam War-illustrates another significant
problem: one has to know adversary sufficiently well to put oneself in their shoes.

Conclusion

Empathy with one’s adversary is possible to achieve when decision-makers consciously

and deliberately make an effort to place themselves in the shoes of that adversary, and
the policy-makers “know” the opponent well enough for realistic empathy to be possible.

The success of The Fog of War has brought the importance of empathy with one’s
adversary as a means of conflict resolution renewed attention in international relations
and foreign policy.

A theme echoed in McNamara’s book Wilson’s Ghost, co-authored with James Blight,
and in the book by James Blight and Janet Lang that accompanies the film. The film
features a notably successful case of empathizing: John Kennedy’s handling of the
Cuban missile crisis. Spurred on by U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Llewellyn
“Tommy” Thompson, Kennedy was able to successfully place himself in the shoes of
the adversary and thus avert nuclear disaster.
MEMBERS:

FORTUNA, CHRISDAN

NAROSA, JULIUS RYAN

PETINES, JUNE

SOZA, JOANA CLAIRE

VEA, VALERIE
Name:

Course and Year:

Activity No. 20

Date:

CHAPTER 16: Psychology of International Relations

1. Did our relationship with China helped our economy? Why or why not?

2. Why is there a need to identify the role of psychological factors in the study of
international relations and foreign policy?