ROSATI, J.A. The power of human cognition

The Power of Human Cognition
in the Study of World Politics
Jerel A. Rosati
T
his essay demonstrates that the study of world politics should be situated
in a cognitive approach, along with the study of foreign policymaking.
As I will show, the so-called “rationality-cognitive debate” has become
a pseudo-debate. Theories of both foreign policy and world politics must be
realistically grounded in the assumptions and knowledge of cognitive actors to
advance our grasp of practice as well as theory.
What Motivates International Actors:

The Traditional Debate over Rationality
There has been a long-running debate about to what extent foreign policies of
states are a function of rationality. Foreign policy often has been explained
from a rational actor perspective, embedded most predominantly within the
realist and power politics tradition. The assumption has been that governments
and their leaders think and act rationally in their quest for power, wealth, and
prestige. Such rationality assumes that “decision-makers usually perceive the
world quite accurately and that those misperceptions that do occur can. . . be
treated as random accidents.” 1 There is no need to delve into psychological
predispositions or closely examine the decisionmaking process—these can be
minimized, ignored, or assumed away. Hans Morgenthau states, “To search for
the clue to foreign policy exclusively in the motives of statesmen is both futile
and deceptive.” Instead, one can “consider all decision-makers to be alike.” 2
Therefore, observers should focus on larger forces, such as the international
1
Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton,
N.J: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 6.
2
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), p. 6.
© 2001 International Studies Association

Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK.
46 Jerel A. Rosati
system and state power as sources of foreign policy; treat the government as a
unitary and rational actor; and speak in terms of an overriding shared national
interest in foreign policymaking.
At the same time, critics have raised important questions. For example,
how do we explain the rise of an Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime in Germany
in 1933 that became so consequential for World War II and subsequent world
events? According to Gordon Craig, “In our historical explanations we are biased
in favor of great impersonal forces and long-term trends and dominant political
and cultural developments, and are uneasy with the contingent, the unexpected,
and the accidental.” 3 Yet Henry Ashby Turner writes that although such larger
forces “may in many cases have been necessary to the outcome, they were not
sufficient. They can help to understand how the Third Reich became a possi-
bility, but they cannot explain how it became a reality.” 4
By late 1932, after three years of unbroken success, Hitler and the Nazi
Party were weakening, with little hope of gaining political control. In the Novem-
ber Reichstag elections, the Nazi Party suffered a serious setback, receiving
two million fewer votes than in the elections of July 1932 and losing thirty-four
Reichstag seats. How could Hitler be sworn in four weeks later as chancellor of
the republic he was soon to destroy? This fateful turn of events was not inevi-
table but “rather the result of chance occurrences, of accident and luck, and of
the passions and follies of a small group of politicians.” 5
Once in power, why did Nazi Germany pursue policies of expansionism
and extermination that significantly influence world politics now? Again, we
may point to the historical setting and large, impersonal forces at work. Saul
Friedlander argues that “as essential as these conditions were in preparing the
ground for the Holocaust. . . they nonetheless do not alone constitute the nec-
essary cluster of elements that shaped the course of events leading from perse-
cution to extermination.” 6 The key to the genesis and implementation of the
policies of expansionism and extermination was Hitler’s personal role, along
with other prominent players close to him and their beliefs and ideology. In
fact, Daniel Goldhagen, in a controversial work, traces Hitler’s extermination-
ist policies all the way down to the anti-Semitic values and cognitive orienta-
tions of ordinary Germans who became “willing” executioners.7
3
Gordon Craig, “Becoming Hitler,” New York Review of Books, May 29, 1997, p. 7.
4
Henry Ashby Turner, Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power (Waltham, Mass.: Addison-
Wesley, 1997), pp. 165–166.
5
Craig, “Becoming Hitler,” p. 7.
6
Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews (New York: Harper Collins, 1997),
pp. 2–3.
7
Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans, and the
Holocaust (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).
The Power of Human Cognition 47
The critical role of human and cognitive elements in the course of world
history is not limited to the case of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. How else
can one fully explain the rise of the Cold War? Despite the high probability of
conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, given changes in the
distribution of power throughout the international system after World War II
and the antagonistic nature of the two political-economic systems, policymak-
ers still played an important role in the rise and growing intensity of a Cold War
that would dominate world politics for the next few decades. As Daniel Yergin
states, “Diplomacy did matter. There has been too much of a tendency to assume
that all that happened was of a single piece, foreordained and determined. But
how world leaders perceived their interests and acted on those perceptions
counted for a very great deal.” 8
This is not to argue in favor of a “great man theory” of foreign policy and
world politics. Instead, it is to argue that the study of international relations
cannot trivialize the impact of policymakers on policy and world politics. To
say that “the United States intervened” is part of our everyday language. In
reality, countries do not act; people act. States (and organizations) are made up
of individuals who act on their behalf. Ultimately, human cognition matters—in
politics, foreign policy, and world politics.
The Need for a “Realistic” Psychology of Foreign Policy

and World Politics
Many of the classic proponents of realism and power politics, from Thucydides
to Saint Augustine and Niccolò Machiavelli to Reinhold Niebuhr to Ray-
mond Aron and Hans Morgenthau, had a sophisticated understanding of
human frailty and irrationality. Their work demonstrates that the intellectual
foundations of realism have been, and should be, embedded in a more realistic
psychology.9
During the development of international relations as a discipline of study,
the premises of realism and power politics concerning policymaking became
simplified, routinely treating states as the equivalent of unitary rational actors
in pursuit of a few basic goals and interests while overwhelmingly constrained
8
Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National
Security State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), p. 8.
9
Raymond Aron, Peace and War (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966); Michael L.
Doyle, Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism (New York: Norton,
1997); Hans J. Morgenthau, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1946); Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of
Darkness (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944).
48 Jerel A. Rosati
by their structural environment.10 For example, Michael Loriaux finds that

“Saint Augustine’s skepticism is grounded in the claim that the human psychol-
ogy is complex.” Yet, “The modern realist has tried to ground his skepticism
regarding the progressive power of reason in assumptions of rational behavior.
The effort is, to say the least, counterintuitive. It has weakened the realist’s
claims to be a skeptic by making him a believer in rational strategic inter-
action.” 11 Likewise, according to Michael Doyle,
Realism need not be economistic. It did and does not lack “a motive for
action.”. . . Motives for action are an essential part of [realists’] theoretical
foundations. They vary across forms of Realism from Thucydides’s trinity of
security, honor, and self-interest, to Machiavelli’s glory, liberty, and security
to Hobbes’s competition, honor, and self-interest to Rousseau’s security and
then, if reformed, national or, if corrupt, factional interests and passions.12
The assumption of rational strategic interaction is true of most theoretical

perspectives that emphasize a systemic or global approach in world politics—
whether from realist, liberal, or more radical orientations. This continues to be
the case for “new” or neo-approaches, such as neorealism, neoliberalism, or
constructivism. Such theoretical approaches have become more sophisticated,
incorporating the role of societal forces and identity along with global factors
and taking a more institutional approach to the state. Yet governmental and
political leadership remain tangential and are usually treated as a “black box”
with shared interests.13 As James Goldgeier observes, “The buzzwords that
dominate major works in these fields today are ideas, beliefs, perceptions, iden-
tity. Yet most of these works fail to address the psychological dimensions of
10
I focus on realism and neorealism because of their long-standing and continued
prominence in the study of international relations. See Hayward R. Alker and Thomas
J. Biersteker, “The Dialectics of World Order: Notes for a Future Archeologist of
International Savoir Faire,” International Studies Quarterly 28 (1984), pp. 121–142;
Torbjorn L. Knutsen, A History of International Relations Theory (Manchester, U.K.:
Manchester University Press, 1997); and John Vasquez, The Power of Power Politics
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1983).
11
Michael Loriaux, “The Realists and Saint Augustine: Skepticism, Psychology,
and Moral Action in International Relations Thought,” International Studies Quarterly
36 (1992), pp. 402, 418.
12
Doyle, Ways of War and Peace, p. 196.
13
See, e.g., James D. Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War,” International
Organization 49 (1995), pp. 379– 414, and G. John Ikenberry, David A. Lake, and
Michael Mastanduno, eds., “The State and American Foreign Economic Policy,” Inter-
national Organization 42, special issue (1988).
these variables. . . . Our research and analysis need to make their role more
explicit, particularly in efforts to develop more predictive power.” 14
Richard Ned Lebow notes that “The proximate causes of conflict may even
be as important as the underlying ones if a crisis can determine whether long-
standing tensions are ultimately eased or lead to war” (my emphasis), for how
crises are resolved “can determine whether war breaks out or peace is main-
tained. They can also intensify or ameliorate the underlying sources of conflict
in cases where war is averted.” 15 This explains the disproportionate amount of
attention that international crises have received in the study of international
relations–a time, it is crucial to point out, when individuals and their psycho-
logical characteristics often dramatically affect outcomes.
Kenneth Waltz wisely concludes in the classic work Man, State, and War:
The third image [the international system] describes the framework of world
politics; but without the first and second images [man and the state] there can
be no knowledge of the forces that determine policy; the first and second
images describe the forces in world politics, but without the third image it is
impossible to assess their importance or predict their results.16
Ultimately, A Pseudo-Debate?
The cognitive approach usually has been viewed as an alternative to rationality
in the study of foreign policy and international relations. Yet the approaches
may not be as divergent as commonly assumed. A convergence is developing
between the rational perspective and the cognitive perspective. The latter has
developed a more sophisticated and less pessimistic image of the individual’s
intellectual process over the years. Furthermore, there is often a different focus
that may be complementary. Those who emphasize rationality tend to focus on
“preferences” and “outcomes,” while cognitive perspectives tend to focus on
“beliefs” and “process,” as well as where “preferences come from” and “how
preferences are established” among policymakers. Thus, we should probably
14
James M. Goldgeier, “Psychology and Security,” Security Studies 4 (1997), pp. 145,
139. See also Charles A. Kupchan, The Vulnerability of Empire (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1994) and Jack S. Levy, “Misperception and the Causes of War:
Theoretical Linkages and Analytical Problems,” World Politics 38 (1983), pp. 76–99.
See also the related literature on the “agent–structure” debate and the more traditional
“levels-of-analysis” debate.
15
Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis
(Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), pp. 4, 334.
16
Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Colum-
bia University Press, 1954), p. 238. See also Quincy Wright’s overlooked classic work,
The Study of International Relations (New York: Appleton, 1955). Waltz has since
moved away from this more sophisticated view.
50 Jerel A. Rosati
think about the state, policymakers, and the process of cognition in ways that
go beyond the concept of “rationality,” for the term is simply too loaded and
ambiguous.17
As Richard Snyder, H. W. Bruck, and Burton Sapin note in their landmark
work, Foreign Policy Decision-Making, “We deliberately did not employ a
concept of rationality in our scheme, nor did we make the assumption that
decision-makers are or can be necessarily rational. We did assume purposeful
behavior—that activities are more or less explicitly motivated and behavior is
not random.” 18 It was this type of individual purposefulness that allowed Her-
bert Simon to argue throughout his work that “to understand and predict human
behavior, we have to deal with the realities of human rationality, that is, with
bounded rationality.” 19 The recurring debate over the rationality of individuals,
including their level of political sophistication and ideological reasoning, may
be more a difference of degree than of kind and, thus, a pseudo-debate. Ulti-
mately, humans and policymakers are cognitive actors.
The Cognitive Approach

A cognitive approach assumes a complex, and realistic, psychology about human
reasoning and decisionmaking. It does not assume individual awareness, open-
mindedness, and adaptability relative to an “objective” environment, but assumes
individuals are likely to view their environment differently and operate within
their own “psychological environment.” 20 Such a cognitive approach has grown
in visibility, prominence, and sophistication since the 1950s, as social scientists
17
For the distinction between subjective “procedural rationality” (rationality as pro-
cess), developed predominantly within psychology, and objective “substantive ratio-
nality” (rationality as outcome), which has been emphasized within economics (and
rational choice theory), see Herbert A. Simon, “Human Nature in Politics: The Dia-
logue of Psychology with Political Science,” American Political Science Review 79
(1985), pp. 293–304. A cognitive approach (like much of the rational paradigm) is
premised on the perspective of procedural rationality and how humans process infor-
mation and arrive at decisions, assuming that greater procedural rationality within the
process increases the likelihood of a substantively rational final choice. The notion of
convergence is more problematic when it comes to rational choice theory. See, e.g.,
Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory: A Critique
of Applications in Political Science (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994).
18
Richard C. Snyder, H.W. Bruck, and Burton Sapin, Foreign Policy Decision-
Making (New York: Free Press, 1962), p. 8.
19
Simon, “Human Nature in Politics,” p. 297. See also Herbert A. Simon: Admin-
istrative Behavior (New York: Free Press, 1947), and Models of Man: Social and
Rational (New York: Wiley, 1957).
20
Harold Sprout and Margaret Sprout, The Ecological Perspective on Human Affairs
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965).
have attempted to be more systematic in identifying and explaining major pat-

terns of foreign policy.21
We may even speak of a cognitive paradigm. The landmark work in delin-
eating such a paradigm for the study of foreign policy is The Cybernetic Theory
of Decision, in which John Steinbruner develops a “cognitive theory of deci-
sion.” 22 He demonstrates that the analytic (rational actor) paradigm has great
difficulty in accounting for decisionmaking, especially under complex and uncer-
tain situations. “Critics have long noted that rational theory assumes such sophis-
ticated processing of information that it strains credulity to impute such
procedures to real decision makers. The mind of man, for all its marvels, is a
limited instrument.” 23 In response, Steinbruner synthesizes a large body of
knowledge from cybernetics and cognitive theory to develop a cognitive pro-
cess paradigm or approach as an alternative to the rational actor model.
Steinbruner argues that relatively simple and “routine” decisions can be
explained by a simple cybernetic process of “satisficing” and “incremental-
ism” commonly found in humans and within organizations. “Roughly speak-
ing, the mechanism of decision, advanced by the cybernetic paradigm, is one
that works on the principle of the recipe. The decisionmaker has a repertory
of operations that he performs in sequence while monitoring a few feedback
variables. He produces an outcome as a consequence of completing the se-
quence.” 24 Much of our everyday behavior, at both the individual and
organizational-bureaucratic levels, is a function of such simple, but powerful,
cybernetic decision processes.
To explain more complex decisions involving more highly unstructured
environments we must turn to a cognitive process perspective to understand the
cognitive regularities of how the mind deals with uncertainty and infers induc-
tively. The rational paradigm tends to assume a “deep, conscious, thoughtful”
thinker. In reality, most operations of the mind are automatic and subconscious.
Not only is this a necessary cognitive trait, but it is also an efficient and pow-
erful way of processing information and making decisions. As we become more
21
See Hazel Markus and R.B. Zajonc, “The Cognitive Perspective in Social Psy-
chology,” in G. Lindzey and E. Aronson, eds., Handbook of Social Psychology, vol. 2
(New York: Random House, 1985), pp. 139–230; and Jerel A. Rosati, “A Cognitive
Approach to the Study of Foreign Policy,” in Laura Neack, Patrick J. Haney, and
Jeanne A. K. Hey, eds., Foreign Policy Analysis: Continuity and Change in Its Second
Generation (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1995), pp. 49–70.
22
John Steinbruner, The Cybernetic Theory of Decision (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1974). See also Jervis, Perception and Misperception. Clearly, Stein-
bruner’s work has not received the attention or had the impact in the study of inter-
national relations and foreign policy it has deserved.
23
Ibid., pp. 12–13.
24
Ibid., p. 55.
52 Jerel A. Rosati
skilled, we have to consciously “think” less and may operate more automati-
cally and intuitively, based on certain cognitive processes.
People are creatures of habit, and general patterns exist in their images and
thought processes, ultimately premised on a mind that “constantly struggles to
impose clear, coherent meaning on events.” 25 As Alexander George summarizes:
Every individual acquires during the course of his development a set of beliefs
and personal constructs about the physical and social environment. These beliefs
provide him with a relatively coherent way of organizing and making sense of
what would otherwise be a confusing and overwhelming array of signals and
cues picked up from the environment from his senses. . . . These beliefs and
constructs necessarily simplify and structure the external world.26
In other words, the process of “cognition”—the dynamics of the mind—

produces the “beliefs” and constructs (such as “images” and “schemas”) that
allow us to make sense of our environment.27
Such regularities in the workings of the mind make it both possible and
necessary to have a science of foreign policy and world politics based on a
cognitive approach and grounded in the realities of human cognition. A cogni-
tive approach, as Robert Jervis states, assumes that “perceptions of the world
and of other actors diverge from reality in patterns that we can detect and for
reasons that we can understand.” 28 The mind clarifies and comprehends reality
through reliance on a few “common cognitive assumptions or principles” that
are the basis for a cognitive approach 29 and include: (1) cognitive structures of
25
Ibid., p. 112.
26
Alexander L. George, Presidential Decisionmaking in Foreign Policy: The Effec-
tive Use of Information and Advice (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1980), p. 57.
27
The field of political psychology and the cognitive study of foreign policy is
multidisciplinary; thus language and terms have fluctuated over time, depending upon
disciplinary orientation (and sometimes individual orientation). For consistency and
clarity, here we use “cognition” as the generic term that refers to the dynamics and
processes of the mind; “beliefs” and “attitudes” are the generic terms that loosely refer
to the substantive representations (or empirical observations and normative thoughts)
that exist within the mind; “images” and “schemas” refer to particular sets, groupings,
and structures of beliefs.
28
Jervis, Perception and Misperception, p. 3.
29
As Steinbruner writes, “The state of cognitive theory necessitates great caution in
attempting to extend its basic results.” But “if one looks not at the frontiers of the field,
but rather at its underlying consensus, there is in fact general agreement on some
fundamental propositions about human mental operations. This agreement has weath-
ered decades of rigorous research and intense argument, and that is about as good a
criterion of proof as can be found outside of pure mathematics” (The Cybernetic Theory
of Decision, p. 91). This is even truer today. See Susan T. Fiske and Shelly E. Taylor,
Social Cognition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991), esp. the preface.
beliefs: the human mind tends to consist of many beliefs, or mental represen-
tations, that are organized and internally structured, especially around more
central beliefs; (2) selective memory: people tend to remember certain things
better than others, especially general pictures or concepts, and be loose with
details; (3) selective attention and perception: although the mind can perceive
stable, significant features of the environment, it tends to be selective and incom-
plete in its attention; (4) causal inference: people tend to makes inferences
about what happened and why based on their beliefs; and (5) cognitive stabil-
ity: that the mind tends to keep internal belief relationships stable once formed,
especially in the core structure of beliefs.
The net result of these cognitive principles is that “structure will be imposed
on uncertain situations, and uncertainty thereby resolved, not by probabilistic
judgements, but by categorical inferences,” given the universal tendency of the
human mind to generalize. Such cognitive dynamics conditions human deci-
sionmaking and explains “quite naturally and directly precisely those events
which are most puzzling when understood within a rational framework.” 30
“This knowledge can be used not only to explain specific decisions but also to
account for patterns of interaction and to improve our general understanding of
international relations.” 31 In other words, it provides the foundation for focus-
ing on the significant role of policymakers and treating international actors as
cognitive actors.
Why International Actors Are Cognitive Actors:

Synthesizing the Literature
How do human cognition and policymaker beliefs matter? How do they affect
world politics? The literature suggests they do so in at least five basic ways:
(1) through the content of policymaker beliefs; (2) through the organization and
structure of policymaker beliefs; (3) through common patterns of perception
(and misperception); (4) through cognitive rigidity (and flexibility) for change
and learning; and (5) through impact on policymaking. For these reasons, inter-
national actors, such as states, should be considered cognitive actors.
The last few decades have witnessed major developments and scholarly
advances in understanding the dynamics of cognition in psychology, political
science, and political psychology. Given all the literature that exists, I will
highlight only major developments relative to the study of foreign policy and
world politics during the past few decades.32
30
Ibid., pp. 110, 14.
31
32
See Ole R. Holsti, “Foreign Policy Formation Viewed Cognitively,” in R. Axel-
rod, ed., Structure of Decision: The Cognitive Maps of Political Elites (Princeton, N.J.:
54 Jerel A. Rosati
The Content of Policymaker Beliefs

What policymakers believe is consequential for understanding foreign policy
and world politics. One thing all cognitive approaches share is that they provide
an excellent perspective for determining the actual contents of the beliefs, images,
and preferences held by policymakers. A myriad of cognitive approaches can
be drawn upon to infer the content of beliefs held by policymakers, especially
those most central. A cognitive approach allows us to examine any aspect of a
policymaker’s foreign policy beliefs and images so as to contribute to a better
understanding of foreign policy, from very broad and general images to very
specific beliefs and preferences. This is a significant accomplishment because
historians, social scientists, and observers of foreign policy and world politics
often make judgments and disagree about the contents of policymaker beliefs,
preferences, and intentions.
One of the most popular approaches for getting at broad, general images has
been the development of what has been called “the operational code,” based
upon Nathan Leites’s study of communism in the Soviet Union and sub-
sequently refined by Alexander George.33 The operational code assumes an
overall coherent set of beliefs about the nature of political life and consists of
two fundamental types of central beliefs (organized around ten broad ques-
tions): “philosophical” beliefs, which help diagnose the definition of the situ-
ation, and “instrumental” beliefs, which affect the likely choice of action.
Cognitive approaches, such as the operational code, allow scholars to describe
the general ideological and foreign policy orientations of policymakers.
Another approach, popular in the area of international political economy,
examines broad ideas that permeate American society and culture, such as
liberalism and the free market ethos. Strangely, most of this interesting liter-
ature addresses ideas and beliefs at such a general level that it ignores, or is
poorly grounded, in the workings of the human mind (as noted above) at ei-
ther the individual level (as found in political psychology) or the collective or
mass level (as found in the study of public opinion), weakening its contribu-
Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 18–54; Rosati, “A Cognitive Approach”; Philip
E. Tetlock, “Social Psychology and World Politics,” in Daniel T. Gilbert, Susan T.
Fiske, and Gardner Lindzey, eds., The Handbook of Social Psychology (Boston:
McGraw-Hill, 1998), pp. 868–912; and Yaacov Y.I. Vertzberger, The World in Their
Minds: Information Processing, Cognition, and Perception in Foreign Policy Deci-
sionmaking (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990).
33
Nathan Leites: The Operational Code of the Politburo (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1951), and A Study of Bolshevism (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1953); Alexander L. George,
“The ‘Operational Code’: A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and
Decision Making,” International Studies Quarterly 13 (1969), pp. 190–222. See also
Stephen G. Walker, “The Evolution of Operational Code Analysis,” Political Psychol-
ogy 11 (1990), pp. 403– 417.
tion to the study of foreign policy and world politics.34 Yet, in an impressive
study about broad ideas and images within American culture, Stephen Twing
examines how cultural myths and traditions in American society colored the
worldviews, identities, and decision-making styles of three policymakers—
John Foster Dulles, Averell Harriman, and Robert McNamara—during the
Cold War.35
Cognitive approaches also examine a policymaker’s foreign policy beliefs
and preferences toward specific issues. For example, cognitive mapping is a
specific way of representing a person’s assertions about some limited domain,
such as a policy problem. The foundation of cognitive mapping is based upon
the early formulations of Robert Axelrod, Michael Shapiro, and G. Matthew
Bonham, where a decisionmaker progresses through sequential cognitive steps
when he or she perceives a new international situation may require a policy
response (allowing for a mathematical modeling and computer simulation of
the mind).36 Such an approach has been particularly useful for examining spe-
cific policy decisions and analyzing the cognitive complexity of decisionmak-
ers in various contexts.37
Whether the emphasis is on broad, general images or more specific prefer-
ences, a cognitive perspective provides a more sophisticated foundation for
examining the content of the myriad beliefs held by policymakers and elites for
better understanding the evolution of foreign policy. In the study of U.S. for-
eign policy, for example, cognitive approaches have contributed to a better
understanding of the origins of the Cold War, the anticommunism of the “high”
Cold War era, the American decision to intervene in Vietnam, the pragmatic
Kissinger years, the rise and decline of a world order approach during the
Jimmy Carter years, and the return of a Cold War approach under Ronald
34
See, e.g., Judith Goldstein, Ideas, Interests, and American Trade Policy (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993); Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, Ideas
and Foreign Policy Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1993); For sympathetic critiques, see note 14.
35
Stephen Twing, Myths, Models, and U.S. Foreign Policy: The Cultural Shaping
of Three Cold Warriors (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1998).
36
Axelrod, ed., Structure of Decision. Michael J. Shapiro and Matthew G. Bonham,
“Cognitive Process and Foreign Policy Decision-Making,” International Studies Quar-
terly 17 (1973), pp. 147–174. More recent work on cognitive mapping has placed
greater emphasis on discourse analysis and the importance of discursive space within
bargaining situations.
37
For an overview, see Alice H. Eagly and Shelly Chaiken, The Psychology of
Attitudes (Dallas: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993), pp. 118–223; Irving L. Janis and
Leon Mann, “Cognitive Complexity in International Decision Making,” in Peter Sued-
feld and Philip E. Tetlock, eds., Psychology and Social Policy (New York: Hemisphere
Publishing, 1992), pp. 33– 49.
56 Jerel A. Rosati
Reagan.38 In sum, as Charles Kupchan recommends in his analysis of the rise

and decline of states, “More research should focus on the content of elite beliefs
and the historical trajectory of the ideas and suppositions that shape policy.” 39
The Organization and Structure of Policymaker Beliefs

How policymakers organize their beliefs is consequential for understanding
foreign policy and world politics. Sometimes policymakers and statesmen have
grand designs in their minds, but often they do not. Either scenario may be
consequential for explaining foreign policy behavior and is a function of the
organization and structure of policymaker beliefs. According to Daryl Bem,
beliefs “differ from one another in the degree to which they are differentiated
(vertical structure), in the extent to which they are broadly based (horizontal
structure), and in their underlying importance to other beliefs (centrality).” 40
This tends to produce two basic cognitive structural patterns: (1) coherent belief
systems and images, and (2) fragmented belief systems and images.
The two dominant theoretical approaches in cognitive psychology—
cognitive consistency theory and schema theory—agree that central beliefs are
most consequential, but they differ regarding the level of coherence and inter-
connectedness among beliefs. During the 1950s and 1960s, it was popular to
view the individual as a “consistency seeker”—motivated to maintain consis-
tency and reduce discrepancies among beliefs. The assumption behind cogni-
tive consistency is that “individuals do not merely subscribe to a random
collection of beliefs,” but make sense of the world by acquiring and maintain-
ing “coherent systems of beliefs which are internally consistent.” 41 Therefore,
individuals attempt to avoid the acquisition of information that is inconsistent
or incompatible with their belief systems, especially central beliefs.
A second generation of scholarship emerged in the 1970s, describing a more
complex cognitive process based on developments in social cognition and schema
theory. From this perspective the individual was viewed as a “cognitive miser”—
that is, the minds of individuals are limited in their capacity to process infor-
38
See, e.g., Deborah W. Larson, Origins of Containment: A Psychological Expla-
nation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985); Ole R. Holsti, “Cognitive
Dynamics and Images of the Enemy: Dulles and Russia,” in John C. Farrell and Asa P.
Smith, eds., Image and Reality in World Politics (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1967), pp. 16-39; Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien
Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1992).
39
Kupchan, The Vulnerability of Empires, p. 491.
40
Daryl J. Bem, Beliefs, Attitudes, and Human Affairs (Belmont, Calif.: Brooks/
Cole, 1970), p. 12.
41
Ibid., p. 13.
mation, so they tend to rely on schemas, take shortcuts, and simplify. Schemas
are mental constructs that represent different clumps of knowledge (or compre-
hension) about various facets of the environment. They necessarily simplify
and structure the external environment, enabling individuals to absorb new
information and intelligibly make sense of the world around them. The more
complex and uncertain the environment, the more likely individuals will rely
on schemas and cognitive heuristics—shortcuts in information processing—to
make sense of the world and the situation at hand.42
Social cognition and schema theory emphasize the dominant role of pre-
existing beliefs in interpreting new information, much like cognitive consis-
tency theory. Yet, a social cognition perspective depicts individual belief systems
as internally much more fragmented, with different beliefs or schemas being
evoked under different situations for making sense of the environment, sug-
gesting a greater likelihood that some beliefs may change over time. From this
perspective, although the beliefs held by an individual may appear inconsistent
and contradictory to an outside observer, the overall belief system may be func-
tional within the mind of the individual, indicating a complex and messy cog-
nitive process. From this perspective, people’s beliefs tend to be much less
coherent, less interconnected, and more contradictory than originally con-
ceived by cognitive consistency theory.
Two studies demonstrate that both cognitive patterns are likely. Deborah
Larson found that while Dean Acheson had a coherent image of the Soviet Union
from 1944 to 1947, Averell Harriman, Harry Truman, and James Byrnes held in-
consistent beliefs until 1947, when a more coherent image finally crystalized for
them around an enemy image of the Soviet Union. Likewise, Jerel Rosati found
that Jimmy Carter’s worldview became increasingly inconsistent during 1978 to
the point that in 1979 he constantly wavered between Cyrus Vance’s optimistic
image and Zbigniew Brzezinski’s increasingly pessimistic one.43
What accounts for these contrasting cognitive structures suggested by cog-
nitive consistency and schema theory? Much depends on the following factors:
(1) the level of knowledge and expertise (reflecting individual background and
personal development); (2) the role an individual occupies; and (3) the situation
and expectations involved.
42
Eagly and Chaiken, The Psychology of Attitudes; S. Fiske and Taylor, Social
Cognition; Markus and Zajonc, “The Cognitive Perspective in Social Psychology”;
and Michael A. Milburn, Persuasion and Politics: The Social Psychology of Public
Opinion (Pacific Cove, Calif.: Brooks/Cole, 1991).
43
Larson, Origins of Containment; Jerel A. Rosati: The Carter Administration’s
Quest for Global Community: Beliefs and Their Impact on Behavior (Columbia, S.C.:
University of South Carolina Press, 1987), and “Continuity and Change in the Foreign
Policy Beliefs of Political Leaders: Addressing the Controversy over the Carter Admin-
istration,” Political Psychology 9 (1990), pp. 471–505.
58 Jerel A. Rosati
As the literature on the differences between experts and novices reveals,

coherent images and belief systems are more likely to be formed if individuals
have developed relevant expertise and experience. Fragmented, inconsistent,
and contradictory beliefs are more likely to exist when individuals have given
little thought or have little knowledge and experience. Richard Lau and David
Sears summarize:
Experts should be faster than novices in processing schema-relevant informa-
tion, at least information which is consistent with the schema; experts will be
more aware than novices of incongruities between new data and an existing
schema; experts will less readily make “false recognitions” of schema-
consistent information, compared to novices; the schemata of experts will
include more elements, and more tightly constrained elements, than those of
novices.44
Steinbruner pointed out that the role an individual occupies also is conse-
quential. He identified three common modes of thinking, or cognitive pro-
cesses, among policymakers: (1) “grooved thinking,” characteristic of bureaucrats
(the simple cybernetic process associated with routines); (2) “theoretical think-
ing,” more characteristic of middle-level officials and in-outers (who engage in
more “abstract and extensive belief patterns. . . which are internally consistent
and stable over time” and who often display a great deal of commitment); and
(3) “uncommitted thinking,” characteristic of the cross-pressures faced by high-
level officials who tend to be generalists (who, “beset with uncertainty and
sitting at the intersection of a number of information channels, will tend at
different times to adopt different belief patterns for the same decision prob-
lem”).45 From these general tendencies, it is not surprising that Dean Acheson,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Cyrus Vance—each an expert in foreign policy with
considerable experience—were most likely to develop relatively coherent belief
systems, while Averell Harriman (to a lesser extent), James Byrnes, Harry Tru-
man, and Jimmy Carter, as nonexperts and politicians, were more prone to
uncommitted thinking.
Such interpretations are consistent with the emphasis placed by cognitive
theorists over the years on the importance of the situation for perception and
cognition. Different situations may trigger different schemas and sets of beliefs.
As Lau and Sears state, “Certain information will be highly relevant to some
44
Richard R. Lau and David O. Sears, “Social Cognition and Political Cognition:
The Past, the Present, and the Future,” in Richard R. Lau and David O. Sears, eds.,
Political Cognition (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1986), pp. 354–355.
45
Steinbruner, The Cybernetic Theory of Decision, pp. 124–136. Despite these ten-
dencies, Steinbruner acknowledges that “It is reasonably clear that every person at
different times and, most critically, in different decision problems, is likely to operate
according to different syndromes” (p. 136).
people’s schemata (and therefore easily processed, stored, and later recalled)
and at the same time totally irrelevant to other people’s schemata (and therefore
not processed or remembered).” 46 In other words, although individuals may
have little difficulty making sense of situations that are relatively stable and
familiar in terms of their beliefs, complex and uncertain situations may result in
much cognitive inconsistency and confusion, especially if individuals do not
have sufficient knowledge and well-developed belief systems for providing
some degree of understanding.
Much may depend on the expectations people have at the moment. As high-
lighted by Jervis, “ Perceptions are influenced by immediate concerns as well as
by more deeply rooted expectations. A person will perceive and interpret stim-
uli in terms of what is at the front of his mind. . . . Familiarity with an object is
not enough. The person must also expect it to be present.” 47
The immediate post–World War II years were a time of great uncertainty
and flux in global developments for which most policymakers were not pre-
pared. The particular situation and expectations help explain why Truman admin-
istration policymakers, compared to Carter administration officials, were more
vulnerable to inconsistent beliefs. These variations in cognitive structures for
policymakers—due to differences in their expertise, the roles they occupy, and
the situation and expectations involved—need to be explored further.
Common Patterns of Perception (and Misperception)

Beyond the general importance of cognitive beliefs and structures, policymak-
ers are prone to rely on common perceptual patterns for making sense of the
world around them. Put concisely, the mind tends to: (1) categorize and stereo-
type, (2) simplify causal inferences, and (3) use historical analogies. These
common cognitive tendencies are crucial to managing uncertainty, often reinforc-
ing preexisting beliefs and cognitive structures.
Tendency to Categorize and Stereotype. The human mind perceives the world
and processes information by compartmentalizing and sorting things into cat-
egories. This process often leads to stereotyping. According to Bem, “Gener-
alizing from a limited set of experiences and treating individuals as members of
a group are not only common cognitive acts but necessary ones. They are think-
ing devices which enable us to avoid conceptual chaos by packaging our world
into manageable number of categories.” 48
A common tendency in world politics is for the mind to form images and
schemas of the “other” (us versus them). In Ole Holsti’s classic study, the
46
Lau and Sears, “Social Cognition and Political Cognition,” p. 355.
47
Jervis, Perception and Misperception, pp. 203, 145.
48
Bem, Beliefs, Attitudes, and Human Affairs, p. 8.
60 Jerel A. Rosati
concept of the image of the enemy helped to explain and sustain international
conflict and war during the Cold War. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’s
hostile image of the Soviet Union resisted change, regardless of changes in
Soviet behavior. Dulles rejected new information inconsistent with his “inher-
ent bad faith” image of Moscow by engaging various psychological processes,
reflecting the cognitive consistency (and persuasive communications) litera-
ture: discrediting (the information), searching (for other consistent informa-
tion), reinterpreting (the information), differentiating (between different aspects
of the information), engaging in wishful thinking, and refusing to think
about it.49
The study of mirror images is consistent with the study of the image of the en-
emy but involves the images held by both parties in a hostile relationship: each
party has a positive and benevolent “self-image” while holding a negative and ma-
levolent image of the enemy. In analyzing the two world wars and the Vietnam
War, Ralph White examined how each party in a conflict situation holds a “dia-
bolical enemy-image” and a “virile and moral self-image” that become the source
of selective attention, absence of empathy (for the “other”), and military over-
confidence. Although the result of diverse social and psychological factors, such
black-and-white thinking leads to escalation and war. White concludes: “The eth-
nocentric black-and white picture is a transcultural, almost universal phenom-
enon, the details of which vary greatly from nation to nation, but the essence of
which remains much the same. . . . In view of this it is not surprising that there is
a ‘mirror image’ quality in the reality-worlds of combatants.” 50
Tendency to Simplify Causal Inferences. Given the mind’s need for certainty
and clarity and the tendency to categorize and stereotype, there is a correspond-
ing tendency to simplify inferences about causality. As Jervis states, “ People
want to be able to explain as much as possible of what goes on around them. To
admit that a phenomenon cannot be explained, or at least cannot be explained
without adding numerous and complex exceptions to our beliefs, is both psy-
chologically uncomfortable and intellectually unsatisfying.” 51 The result, accord-
ing to Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross, is that “the same organism that routinely
solves inferential problems too subtle and complex for the mightiest computers
often makes errors in the simplest of judgments about everyday events.” 52
49
Holsti, “Cognitive Dynamics”; David J. Finlay, Ole R. Holsti, and Richard R.
Fagen, Enemies in Politics (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967), pp. 29–96.
50
Ralph K. White, Nobody Wanted War: Misperception in Vietnam and Other Wars
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968), p. 275.
51
52
Richard E. Nisbett and Lee Ross, Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings
in Social Judgment (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980), p. xi.
Psychology has developed attribution theory to identify the types of biases

that people commonly make when inferring the causes of human behavior.
According to Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor,
The attribution process may be almost automatic, and we may have little aware-
ness that we have actually made a causal attribution. . . . But there are many
circumstances in which causal analyses are more intentional, deliberate, and
time-consuming. The imputation of causality becomes a more self-conscious
process when people are surprised or threatened by unexpected or negative
events that undermine their beliefs and expectations.53
Four causal inferences likely to be simplified are particularly relevant to

policymakers and the study of world politics: (1) a tendency to overestimate or
underestimate dispositional or situational causes of behavior; (2) a tendency to
overestimate or underestimate one’s importance; (3) a tendency to overestimate
how much the behavior of others is planned and centralized; and (4) a tendency
to overindulge in pessimistic and wishful thinking.54
The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to overemphasize exter-
nal or situational causes when explaining our own behavior (“The situation
forced me to do what I did”) and, conversely, to overemphasize internal and
dispositional causes when explaining the behavior of others (“He did it because
he is bad and aggressive”). This is reinforced by the halo effect: the tendency to
see friends (and oneself ) in a positive light and those that we dislike in a neg-
ative light.
Daniel Heradstveit analyzed interviews of political activists conducted in
Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria and found strong support for the
existence of the fundamental attribution bias mitigated by the halo effect. Infer-
ences of internal causes of an opponent’s behavior were particularly enhanced
when the observer disliked the actor who performed the blameworthy act:
If I have a devil-image of the opponent and the opponent behaves in an indis-

putably friendly way, I can still maintain my beliefs about the opponent by
explaining his friendly behavior as caused by environmental influences and
constraints. His disposition to act in an unfriendly way remains the same, but
certain characteristics of the situation have forced him to be temporarily friendly.
In other words, the opponent is not given responsibility (credit) for what he is
doing.55
53
S. Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition, p. 22.
54
See Jervis, Perception and Misperception.
55
Daniel Heradstveit, The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Psychological Obstacles to Peace
(Oslo: Universititesforlaget, 1979), p. 4.
62 Jerel A. Rosati
Such attribution biases contribute to a further understanding of the rise and

rigidity of enemy images and mirror images that must be overcome if conflicts
are to be resolved.
A second common, and related, causal inference is to either overestimate or
underestimate our own importance. This is a function of the self-serving bias,
which is the tendency to take credit for good or positive behaviors but to deny
responsibility for bad or negative behaviors. As Jervis relates to world politics,
When the other behaves in accord with the actor’s desires, he will overesti-
mate the degree to which his policies are responsible for the outcome. . . .
When the other’s behavior is undesired, the actor is likely to see it as derived
from internal sources rather than as being a response to his own actions. In this
case the actor believes that the other is trying to harm him rather than that the
effect was an unintended consequence or a side-effect.56
This often means that “actors overestimate the degree to which they are the
focus of the other’s policy,” but also “actors injure others more than they mean
to because they do not see the degree to which their policies conflict with the
other’s interests.” 57
A third important perceptual pattern is the tendency to overestimate how
much the behavior of others is planned and centralized. “Most people are slow
to perceive accidents, unintended consequences, coincidences, and small causes
leading to large effects. Instead, coordinated actions, plans, and conspiracies
are seen.” 58
The fourth common inferential pattern is the tendency to overindulge in
pessimistic or wishful thinking. This is particularly important when people are
assessing a situation and thinking about future possibilities. It is not uncommon
to think that the immediate situation will result in a favorable outcome with
time. People also are prone to be overly pessimistic about current and future
situations; where policymakers may assume terrible consequences if they do
not “do something.” For American policymakers during the Vietnam War, it
was inconceivable that the United States could lose. Yet they worried that the
situation was deteriorating and thought that they had to prevent South Viet-
nam’s fall to communism. In other words, the (especially civilian) policymak-
ers constantly fluctuated between optimistic and pessimistic assessments, thereby
producing the fateful decisions to intervene militarily and Americanize the war.59
56
57
Ibid., pp. 350, 354.
58
Ibid., p. 320.
59
David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972);
Leslie H. Gelb and Richard K. Betts, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (Wash-
ington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1979). See the interesting literature on “prospect
Tendency to Use Historical Analogies. As Fiske and Taylor explain, “The

social perceiver often must make complex judgements under conditions that
may not be best suited to accuracy or thoroughness.” Because of “time con-
straints, complexity and/or volume of relevant information, and uncertainty
about the evidence itself—it is unrealistic for the social perceiver to use ex-
haustive strategies for making judgements.” Not surprisingly, “people often
use heuristics or shortcuts that reduce complex problem solving to more sim-
ple judgmental operations.” They conclude: “Certainly, there are circum-
stances in which people become more thoughtful and less reliant on heuristics,
and under such circumstances, better inferences may sometimes be reached.
But heuristics are fundamental to inference, making rapid information process-
ing possible.” 60
Among the most common cognitive heuristics we use while perceiving and
reasoning are the “representative” and the “availability” heuristics. These are
judgments made about how much an event or situation fits a category and how
readily an association comes to mind. These heuristics help to explain the ten-
dency of people and policymakers to use historical analogies in world politics.
“ Previous international events provide the statesman with a range of imagin-
able situations and allow him to detect patterns and causal links that can help
him understand his world,” for “we cannot make sense out of our environment
without assuming that, in some sense, the future will resemble the past,” Jervis
states. But a too narrow conception of the past and a failure to appreciate the
impact of changed circumstances also result in “the tyranny of the past upon the
imagination.” 61
From what events do people and policymakers learn most? Jervis identifies
four sets of factors that have the greatest impact on one’s perceptual predispo-
sitions: (1) firsthand experiences, (2) early personal and career experiences,
(3) generational effects, and (4) major events.62 For policymakers, much depends
on the level of previous experience and knowledge—such as the expert-novice
distinction—they bring to an event. People who are more knowledgeable and
experienced tend to have more stable and consistent beliefs and schemas. Jervis
believes that American policymakers during the Cold War, given their lack of
theory,” which indicates that individual choices of risk propensity are affected under
varying situations of probable gains (or losses)—that is, individuals tend to take greater
risks when faced with “losses” and are more risk-averse under situations of likely
“gains” (and tend to be more sensitive to losses than to gains). Jack S. Levy, “An
Introduction to Prospect Theory,” Political Psychology 13 (1992), pp. 171–186.
60
S. Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition, pp. 381–382, 391. See also Daniel Kahne-
man, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky, Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and
Biases (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
61
62
Ibid., pp. 239–271.
64 Jerel A. Rosati
international knowledge and experience, were particularly vulnerable to the

influence of a few dominating historical analogies.63
Relying on the public record, interviews, and archival documents, Yuen
Foong Khong demonstrates that the lessons policymakers drew from Munich,
Dien Bien Phu, and, most important, the Korean War had a powerful influence
on President Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam decision-making process. These les-
sons helped produce simple images or metaphors, such as the so-called Domino
Theory, and predisposed the United States toward military intervention.64 Sim-
ilarly, James Goldgeier found that the domestic experience and political suc-
cess of Soviet leaders—especially those who had little prior exposure to
international politics—shaped the political bargaining styles of Stalin, Khrush-
chev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev throughout the Cold War.65 Policymakers rely
on historical analogies (and past experience) not merely to promote and justify
policies, but also because they affect policymaker cognitive and political styles,
which help define the nature of the situation, assess the stakes involved, and
affect the consideration of policy options.
Cognitive Rigidity (and Flexibility) for Change and Learning

A cognitive approach also contributes to better understanding how much poli-
cymakers’ beliefs (and policies) are likely to change over time and how they
learn and adapt to changes in the environment. Cognitive theory, as informed
by the literature on both cognitive consistency and schemas, is based on the
premise that central beliefs are most consequential. As Milton Rokeach describes,
“First, not all beliefs are equally important to the individual; beliefs vary along
a central-peripheral dimension. Second, the more central a belief, the more it
will resist change. Third, the more central the belief changed, the more wide-
spread the repercussions in the rest of the belief system.” 66 Beyond this com-
mon core, cognitive consistency and schema theory differ as to the likelihood
and nature of attitudinal change. Nevertheless, both orientations predict that
change and learning tend to be resisted and incomplete.
Cognitive consistency theory tends to emphasize the overall rigidity of belief
systems due to their interconnectedness and, should change occur, the abrupt
and all-encompassing nature of belief system change. As Jervis explains, “If a
63
Ibid., p. 270ff.
64
See Khong, Analogies at War. See also Keith L. Shimko, “Metaphors and Foreign
Policy Decision Making,” Political Psychology 15 (1994), pp. 655– 671.
65
James M. Goldgeier, Leadership Style and Soviet Foreign Policy: Stalin, Khrush-
chev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1994).
66
Milton Rokeach, Beliefs, Attitudes, and Values (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1968),
p. 3. For an overview, see Eagly and Chaiken, Psychology of Attitudes.
person’s attitude structure is to be consistent, then incremental changes among

interconnected elements cannot be made. Change will be inhibited, but once it
occurs, it will come in large batches. Several elements will change almost simul-
taneously.” 67 The classic case of belief system stability is the study of Ben-
nington College alumnae by Theodore Newcomb et al. The study found that
once the participants’ political attitudes had been formed when they were stu-
dents during the 1930s, most of the same attitudes were retained twenty-five
years later.68
Foreign policy studies from different cognitive research perspectives sup-
port such an explanation. As already discussed, Holsti found that Dulles’s enemy
image of the Soviet Union was fundamentally resistant to change and constant
over time. Heradstveit found stability in Arab and Israeli images throughout the
1970s. Matthew Bonham and his colleagues, employing cognitive mapping,
found no difference in the belief systems of American policymakers before and
after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Harvey Starr reviewed the literature on Henry
Kissinger’s foreign policy beliefs and found considerable stability in his pre-
office, official, and post-office beliefs. Finally, Abraham Ben-Zvi found that,
following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the fighting of the war in the Pacific,
the images that American leaders held of Japan were dramatically altered as
predicted by cognitive consistency theory.69
Conversely, schema theory stipulates that beliefs are much more isolated
and inconsistent, hence less resistant and more open to piecemeal, incremental
changes over time. This suggests that in addition to consistency-based, category-
based, or “top-down” processing of information—where information is inter-
preted in accordance and conformity with preexisting cognitive structures—
individuals also engage in data-based, piecemeal, or “bottom-up” processing. 70
67
68
Theodore H. Newcomb, K.E. Koenig, R. Flacks, and D. P. Warwick, Persistence
and Change: Bennington College and Its Studies after 25 Years (New York: John
Wiley, 1967).
69
Holsti, “Cognitive Dynamics”; Heradstveit, The Arab-Israeli Conflict; Matthew
G. Bonham, Michael J. Shapiro, and Thomas L. Trumble, “The October War: Changes
in Cognitive Orientation toward the Middle East Conflict,” International Studies Quar-
terly 23 (1979), pp. 3– 44; Harvey Starr, “The Kissinger Years: Studying Individuals
and Foreign Policy,” International Studies Quarterly 24 (1980), pp. 465– 496; Abra-
ham Ben-Zvi, “The Outbreak and Termination of the Pacific War: A Juxtaposition of
American Preconceptions,” Journal of Peace Research 15 (1978), pp. 33– 49.
70
See, for example, S. Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition, p. 136. See also Susan T.
Fiske and S.L. Neuberg, “A Continuation of Impression Formation, from Category-
Based to Individuating Processes: Influences of Information and Motivation on Atten-
tion and Interpretation,” in M. P. Zanna, ed., Advances in Experimential Social
Psychology (New York: Academic Press, 1990), pp. 1–74.
66 Jerel A. Rosati
Clearly, further study of the patterns of cognitive rigidity and flexibility in the
beliefs of policymakers is warranted.
The patterns of cognitive rigidity and flexibility have profound implica-
tions for individual and organizational (including governmental) learning. The
more rational and analytically oriented paradigm provides optimism about the
ability of governments to learn and change their foreign policy, which explains
why this perspective is considered the “ideal type” and preferable way to arrive
at decisions, as well as to theorize about foreign policy. The implications of
bounded rationality and a cognitive approach are much less optimistic about
individual and governmental learning.71
Once individuals acquire their images and beliefs, along with their cogni-
tive structures and styles, the mind tends to close; the closure is reinforced by
the organizational, political, and social contexts in which the individuals oper-
ate. This process is more likely for elites and policymaking experts, who tend
to be more attentive, informed, and committed to their beliefs, thus being more
cognitively consistent and rigid. Ironically, policymakers who are most cogni-
tively flexible and open to learning—possibly overlearning—are those who are
more inattentive, uninformed, inexperienced, and uncommitted. These patterns
are reinforced by the psychological commitment and importance that an indi-
vidual attaches to his beliefs, reflecting one’s personality and the underlying
motivational needs the beliefs serve.72
As Milton Rokeach explains, individuals vary along an “open-minded”
and “closed-minded” continuum.73 Yet people tend to be creatures of habit.
For most individuals, this results in instrumental and constrained learning.
“Instrumental learning” means the adjustment process “tends to be slow [and]
instead of being a consistent process it occurs only sporadically.” Learning
also tends to be “constrained,” with new information and new decision prob-
lems fitting into already established cognitive beliefs and structures. This means
that “after some period of time of operating in a certain issue area both indi-
viduals and organizational entities will have learned to structure their deci-
sions in a particular way, and changes in the established structures will be
unlikely.” 74
71
See George W. Breslauer and Philip E. Tetlock, eds., Learning in U.S. and Soviet
Foreign Policy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1971); and Jack S. Levy, “Learning
and Foreign Policy: Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield,” International Organization
48 (1994), pp. 279–312.
72
See S. Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition, on the impact of motivation on cog-
nition and the individual as a “motivated tactician,” and Eagly and Chaiken, Psychol-
ogy of Attitudes, for a review of the literature.
73
Milton Rokeach, The Open and Closed Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1960).
74
See Steinbruner, The Cybernetic Theory of Decision, pp. 79, 137, 136.
The net result is that policymakers and organizations often fail to readily
adjust to new situations and changes in their environment. Not surprisingly, it
often takes profound (and usually negative) events—unsuccessful ventures, fail-
ures, tragedies—to help trigger change and greater learning. Such profound
events are usually times of personal crisis for policymakers and may be crises
for people throughout society as well. At the same time, it is important to note
that major successes, in addition to failures, can have important implications
for learning, as Dan Reiter found when examining alliance behavior.75
Ole Holsti and James Rosenau found that the tragedy of the Vietnam War
was responsible for the collapse of the Cold War consensus: almost 50 percent
of American elites changed their views about the war and another 20 percent
modified their position. Yet they also found that new foreign policy views and
lessons learned from the war have been maintained over the years. Janice Stein
found that the profound changes during the late 1980s in Mikhail Gorbachev’s
“new thinking” about foreign policy occurred through trial and error experi-
mentation stimulated largely by failure (such as the Afghanistan war).76 The
difficulty in overcoming the impediments to change and learning and the human
tendency toward cognitive rigidity have significant consequences for foreign
policymaking.
Impact on Policymaking
As already noted, policymakers are influenced profoundly by cognitive beliefs
and structures, common patterns of perception (and misperception), and cog-
nitive rigidity (and flexibility) to change and learning. Now I will briefly exam-
ine the general impact of cognition on two basic stages of policymaking:
(1) policy agenda-setting and framing issues, and (2) policy formulation and
choice (i.e., decisionmaking).77
75
Dan Reiter, Crucible of Beliefs: Learning, Alliances, and World Wars (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996). See also Karl W. Deutsch and Richard I. Mer-
ritt, “Effects of Events on National and International Images,” in Herbert C. Kelman,
ed., International Behavior (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), pp. 132–
187; Charles F. Hermann, “Changing Course: When Governments Choose to Redirect
Foreign Policy,” International Studies Quarterly 34 (1990), pp. 3–21; and Jerel A.
Rosati, Joe D. Hagan, and Martin W. Sampson, eds., Foreign Policy Restructuring:
How Governments Respond to Global Change (Columbia, S.C.: University of South
Carolina Press, 1994).
76
Ole R. Holsti and James N. Rosenau, American Leadership in World Affairs:
Vietnam and the Breakdown of Consensus (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1984); Janice
Gross Stein, “ Political Learning by Doing: Gorbachev as Uncommitted Thinker and
Motivated Learner,” International Organization 48 (1994), pp. 155–183.
77
A third stage, policy behavior and implementation, is beyond the scope of this
paper.
68 Jerel A. Rosati
Policy Agenda-Setting and the Framing of Issues. The process of policy agenda-
setting has not received adequate attention in the study of foreign policy and
world politics, although an issue must first get the attention of individuals and
governmental officials. Also, issues are necessarily framed and interpreted.
Clearly, cognitive patterns affect setting policy agendas and framing issues in
basic ways.78
Crises especially have a profound impact on setting policy agendas and
framing decisions for policymakers. At the same time, crises still allow leeway
in terms of how they are perceived and defined. In the classic study of the
surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Roberta Wohlstetter found that intelligence
failures are often inevitable because of the complexity and ambiguity of most
situations—what she called the “signal-to-noise” ratio.79 Donald Sylvan and
Stuart Thorson, in a reanalysis of the Cuban missile crisis, noted that the dis-
pute over how the naval blockade option was represented had profound impli-
cations for the ultimate American decision.80 Larson discovered that Cold War
policymakers’ beliefs framed issues that reinforced mistrust and resulted in
“missed opportunities” for promoting cooperation (and reducing conflict) in
U.S.—Soviet relations.81 Zeev Maoz found that framing issues during crises
may be politically manipulated by decisionmakers in group settings.82 Clearly
agenda-setting and framing issues requires much further study in the context of
policy formulation and choice.
Policy Formulation and Choice. The cognitive approach and patterns identi-
fied above profoundly affect decisionmaking. Because individuals and policy-
makers rarely formulate decisions through an open intellectual process where
goals and preferences are clearly ordered, a strong search is made for relevant
information, various different alternatives are considered, and the option that
tends to maximize the benefits while minimizing the costs is selected. Often
this process is too demanding and time-consuming for the human mind. Not
only is this the case for relatively routine decisions, where a simple but pow-
erful cybernetic process of satisficing and incrementalism is much more likely,
78
See John W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1994), and David A. Rochefort and Roger W. Cobb, “ Problem Definition,
Agenda Access, and Policy Choice,” Policy Studies Journal 21 (1993), pp. 56–71.
79
Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford, Calif.: Stan-
ford University Press, 1962).
80
Donald A. Sylvan and Stuart J. Thorson, “Ontologies, Problem Representation,
and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 36 (1992), pp. 706–732.
81
Deborah W. Larson, Anatomy of Mistrust: U.S.-Soviet Relations during the Cold
War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997).
82
Zeev Maoz, “Framing the National Interest: The Manipulation of Foreign Policy
in Group Settings,” World Politics 43 (1990), pp. 77–110.
but it is especially the case under complex and uncertain situations, where the
cognitive paradigm and predispositions become much more consequential.
The cognitive approach tends to result in mental operations where decisions
are made in the following ways: values and goals are separated rather than
integrated or prioritized; the search for information is limited; the consideration
of alternatives is narrow; the alternative most consistent with the dominant
value or goal is chosen; and instrumental and constrained learning limits feedback.
These are the general decision-making tendencies of individuals, although
they are likely to vary as a result of their cognitive structures. According to
Steinbruner,
Quite generally, the inferential structures which cognitive operations impose

on inherently uncertain situations tend to be simple and coherently organized
to present a single-valued problem and a single-preferred alternative to which
the decision is committed from the outset of the decision process. . . . The
mind, in this view, does not match the uncertain structure of the environment
in which events might take a number of alternative courses. Rather, it imposes
an image and works to preserve that image.83
This is especially true for the grooved and theoretical thinkers who have coher-
ent (and consistent) images. Those who are more open minded and uncom-
mitted, with more fragmented images, are likely to be much less predictable.
These decision-making patterns also are affected by situations like crises—
involving surprise, a threat to values, and little time to respond—for they
produce stress for individuals and policymaking groups.84 Evidence from psy-
chological experiments, field research, and historical studies suggests crises
have two consequences. On the one hand, low and moderate stress levels may
be conducive to better decisionmaking, for individuals become more con-
sciously attentive and motivated to find a solution to the problem. In some
cases, high stress levels may actually increase performance for “elementary
tasks” over limited periods of time. On the other hand, prolonged periods of
high stress tend to produce inefficient and defective decisionmaking, especially
for tasks that are complex, ambiguous, and involve uncertainty—such as dur-
ing international crises. During such crises, “lack of rest and diversion, com-
bined with excessively long working hours, [is] likely to magnify the stress in
83
Steinbruner, Cybernetic Theory, p. 123.
84
See, for example, Charles F. Hermann, ed., International Crisis: Insights from
Behavioral Research (New York: Free Press, 1972); Ole R. Holsti, “Crisis Decision
Making,” in Betty Glad, ed., Psychological Dimensions of War (Beverly Hills, Calif.:
Sage, 1990), pp. 116–142; and Irving R. Janis and Len Mann, Decision Making: A
Psychological Analysis of Conflict, Choice, and Commitment (New York: Free Press,
1977).
70 Jerel A. Rosati
the situation [and] erodes rather than enhances the ability of individuals to cope
with complex problems.” 85
Poor cognitive habits are likely to prevail during international crises where
high stress tends to: heighten the salience of time and concern for the present
and immediate future; reduce the size of the policy-making group or the indi-
viduals with which one interacts; minimize communication with potential adver-
saries; increase use of ad hoc communication channels; encourage random and
selective search for information; reduce tolerance for ambiguity and increase
the likelihood to stereotype and rationalize; increase cognitive rigidity, reliance
on familiar decision rules, and metaphorical thinking; limit the search and assess-
ment of alternatives, often to one approach; increase the likelihood of a polar-
ized choice, favoring positions of overcautiousness or greater risk taking; and
disrupt learning and the reexamination of decisions.
The stress produced by international crises often contributes to a more closed
decision-making process, poor policy-making performance, and maladaptive be-
havior. Yet it is important to note that crises and stress do not guarantee defective
decisionmaking; they are likely to constrain or inhibit only so-called open-
minded decisionmaking. This is because, as Holsti states, “individuals appear to
differ rather widely in the ability to tolerate stress, the threshold at which it be-
gins to impair performance, and strategies for coping with various types of stress.”
Furthermore, “just as we cannot assume that ‘good’ processes will ensure high-
quality decisions, we cannot assume that erratic processes will always result in
low-quality decisions” or end up in fiascoes.86 Cybernetic and cognitive pro-
cesses are often very functional and powerful, although not necessarily optimal,
for making the myriad decisions we face. Ultimately, policy formulation and choice
will be affected heavily by individual cognition and personality, which are usu-
ally heightened during periods of crisis and high stress.
Theories of world politics that have been central to great power politics,
such as deterrence and compellence theory, “presuppose rational and predict-
able decision processes” and “scholars and policymakers tend to be sanguine
about the ability of policymakers to be creative when the situation requires
it.” 87 Instead, it is important to understand that periods of intense crisis and
stress may inhibit and overwhelm more rational decisionmaking at a time when
it is most needed. In this respect, even the quality of American decisionmaking
during the Cuban missile crisis—the ideal case of so-called rational decision-
making—has been questioned.88
85
Holsti, “Crisis Decision Making,” p. 124.
86
Ibid., pp. 127, 117.
87
Ibid., p. 117.
88
See Graham Allison and Phillip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the
Cuban Missile Crisis, 2d ed. (New York: Longman, 1999); Bruce J. Allyn, James G.
An Idiosyncratic and Cultural Qualification

I have reappraised much accumulated knowledge, demonstrating the existence
of a powerful cognitive approach that results in certain cognitive predisposi-
tions and tendencies that characterize most policymakers most of the time. Yet
we must understand that individual variation in cognitive styles exists. Although
cognitive predispositions and tendencies are likely, similar cognitive patterns
for individuals do not automatically trigger similar outcomes, and different
individuals may not rely on the same cognitive patterns. The likelihood of such
idiosyncratic cognitive dynamics is a function of the times, the situation, and
the characteristics of the individual—such as the role of personality (which
deserves further study). Hence, there is a need to be sensitive to variations in
cognitive dynamics and styles across individuals within the same culture.89
More important, the literature on cognition reviewed here is based predom-
inantly on the study of Westerners and, in particular, Americans. We must be
aware of the implications of applying a Western, especially American-oriented,
cognitive orientation to different societies with different cultures. This is con-
sistent with a broader interdisciplinary approach to human behavior known as
“cultural psychology,” which is growing in popularity.90
Variations in content—the beliefs and images held—are likely to be influ-
enced strongly by cultural (and language) differences, as expected from a cog-
nitive perspective. In a cross-cultural study of crises, for example, Davis Bobrow
and colleagues found that whereas Americans tended to view crises as funda-
mentally dangerous times of great risk, Chinese were more likely to view crises
as times of opportunity as well as risk.91 John Dower examines the powerful
role that race may play in the development of mirror images during war.92
Clearly, cultural differences accentuate the likelihood for misperception and
miscommunication already discussed.
Blight, and David A. Welch, “Essence of Revision: Moscow, Havana, and the Cuban
Missile Crisis,” International Security, Winter, 1989/90, pp. 136–172.
89
Stein highlights this point in “ Political Learning by Doing.”
90
See Alan Page Fiske, Shinobu Kitayama, Hazel Rose Markus, and Richard E.
Nisbett, “The Cultural Matrix of Social Psychology,” in Gilbert, S. Fiske, and Lindzey,
eds., The Handbook of Social Psychology, pp. 915–981; D. R. Price-Williams, “Cul-
tural Psychology,” in G. Lindzey and E. Aronson, eds., Handbook of Social Psychol-
ogy, vol. 3, 2d ed. (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1985), pp. 993–1042; and Richard A.
Shweder and Martin A. Sullivan, “Cultural Psychology: Who Needs It?” Annual Review
of Psychology 44 (1993), pp. 497–593.
91
Davis B. Bobrow, Steve Chan, and J.A. Kringen, “Understanding How Others
Treat Crises: A Multimethod Approach,” International Studies Quarterly 21 (1977),
pp. 199–223.
92
John Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York:
Pantheon, 1987).
72 Jerel A. Rosati
What impact do cultural differences have on other cognitive structures and

predispositions? The cognitive paradigm is premised on the basis that “the
structure of human beliefs is far less varied over individuals and cultures than is
the fantastically diverse content of those beliefs.” 93 Yet, as Fiske and Taylor
acknowledge, “there are cultural differences in schema use.” 94 For example, in
more traditional and non-Western societies that tend to be less individualistic
(or “independent-oriented” and more “interdependent-oriented”), people do not
attribute traits in the same way as they do in Western society.95 Variations in
patterns of perception and cognitive dynamics occur across cultures and sub-
cultures, and they must be examined if we are to better understand the dynam-
ics of world politics, especially beyond the United States and the West.
Still, this does not alter the fundamental conclusions of the cognitive approach
that the human mind craves certainty and actively provides meaning to the
environment. The paradigmatic assumption, supported by considerable empir-
ical reality across cultures, is that humans acquire cognitive belief structures
that tend to remain stable through selective memory, perception, and causal
inference. Although some specific cognitive dynamics may vary across indi-
viduals and cultures, people nevertheless share basic cognitive predispositions
and habits. Images are acquired that may be more coherent or fragmented;
common perceptual patterns are acquired, involving the tendency to categorize
and stereotype, simplify causal inferences, and use historical analogies; and
limited learning occurs due to cognitive rigidity and closure. Such are the con-
tours of the human mind, with important consequences for both foreign policy
and world politics.
Bounded Rationality, Cognitive Actors,

and the Study of World Politics
Clearly, a cognitive approach provides considerable explanatory and predictive
power in the study of foreign policy. The beliefs and cognitive processes of
policymakers affect how they see the world and what actions they take. This
cognitive perspective provides valuable insights into the formulation and con-
duct of foreign policy. Less clear and less understood is that a cognitive orien-
tation helps us better understand the dynamics of world politics as well.
Unfortunately, as discussed above, most of the macrotheory about the dynam-
93
Steinbruner, The Cybernetic Theory of Decision, p. 14.
94
S. Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition, p. 177.
95
See A. Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, and Nisbett, “The Cultural Matrix of Social
Psychology”; Daniel Heradstveit and G. Matthew Bonham, “Attribution Theory and
Arab Images of the Gulf War,” Political Psychology 17 (1996), pp. 271–292.
ics of world politics either ignores psychological factors or assumes rationality

because it appears to provide an easier and more parsimonious explanation.
This presents an interesting paradox. Most scholars acknowledge the impor-
tance of a psychological–cognitive perspective for foreign policy but then aban-
don or ignore such a perspective at the global level. Yet this is unnecessary if
we assume the existence of cognitive actors. Cognitive dynamics are often
complex at a more idiosyncratic level, which may scare off international rela-
tions theorists. More generally, a cognitive approach is based on a simple set of
assumptions about “bounded rationality,” which provides the foundation for
powerful and parsimonious explanations in the study of world politics.
In other words, when moving from the foreign policy level to the global
level, there is no need to abandon the power of human cognition and policy-
maker beliefs for the more naive and unrealistic psychology of rational actors.
If we must “black box” the state, it should be treated as a cognitive actor in
pursuit of a dominant goal or preference; such an actor will not only regularly
misperceive its environment, but it will also make choices and pursue policies
according to its dominant goal(s). That is, international actors are purposive,
conditioned by bounded rationality and regular cognitive propensities.
This is illustrated by applying the notion of a cognitive actor—as opposed
to the more unrealistic rational actor—to hegemonic stability theory. Robert
Gilpin, for example, explains major global change as a function of the rise
and decline of great powers, which tends to result in wars where rising great
powers fight declining hegemonic states.96 Although the theory of hegemonic
stability has considerable explanatory power, Gilpin, like most systemic theo-
rists, assumes rationality as the basis of state behavior. As Robert Keohane
points out, “The link between system structure and actor behavior is forged
by the rationality assumption, which enables the theorists to predict that
leaders will respond to the incentives and constraints imposed by their
environments.” 97
If states are as rational as assumed, a hegemonic state in decline would
preemptively engage in war before challenging states grew too powerful, or
rising states would be cautious and opt for war only when they became pow-
erful enough to successfully challenge the declining hegemon. These are the
rational ways to maximize optimal outcomes from each state’s perspective. In
World Wars I and II, Great Britain did not preemptively strike Germany before
it got too powerful, and Nazi Germany expanded long before it reached its full
96
Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1981).
97
Robert O. Keohane, “Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond,”
in Robert O. Keohane, ed., Neo-Realism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1986), p. 167.
74 Jerel A. Rosati
power potential. Why? As many systemic realists are beginning to recognize,

“realism fails to address one of the most important concerns of world politics—
how states cope with uncertainty.” 98 Conversely, a cognitive approach pro-
vides the basic assumptions that explain such behavior, with as much parsimony
and greater accuracy than the overly simplistic and unnecessary assumptions of
rational choice.
In The Vulnerability of Empire, Charles Kupchan takes a neorealist perspec-
tive and finds that adjustment failure by declining and rising states is predom-
inantly a function of elite belief systems. More specifically, he offers three
broad psychological explanations of adjustment failure by states: psychological
distortions due to stress; miscalculation under conditions of complexity and
uncertainty; and regular cognitive constraints on policymakers. The theoretical
implications are significant: “This study demonstrates the critical importance
of taking beliefs seriously, of treating beliefs as variables that shape how elites
interpret events and formulate policy.” 99 Moreover, as Jervis states, “the knowl-
edge gained by studying how people view the world and process incoming
information can lead to the discovery of patterns in state behavior that would
not be apparent to an observer who had ignored decisionmaking.” 100 Thus, to
restate Keohane above, the link between system structure and actor behavior
can and should be forged by the cognitive assumption.
International relations theorists should not rely on the overly simplistic and
naive assumptions of rational choice. Instead, they should turn to bounded ratio-
nality and a cognitive approach and ground their theories in a more realistic
psychology. As James Goldgeier relates,
Because the existence of threats depends on the perceptions of individuals and
societies, we need to incorporate the psychological dimension of threat per-
ception and identity formation into our more structural analyses. . . . The grow-
ing attention given by neorealists to perceptual variables, the examination by
neoliberals of the role of ideas, and the focus of constructivists on identity, all
suggest that models operating at other levels of analysis could be strengthened
by incorporating work operating at the psychological level.101
Treating international actors as cognitive actors will produce more power-

ful theories. It will also allow scholars to transcend the level of analysis prob-
lem that has been endemic between those who study foreign policy and those
who theorize and operate at the systemic level. Kupchan’s study of how rising
and declining states adjust—or fail to adjust—powerfully illustrates “how sys-
98
Reiter, Crucible of Beliefs, p. 11.
99
Kupchan, The Vulnerability of Empire, p. 490.
100
101
James M. Goldgeier, “ Psychology and Security,” pp. 164–165.
temic, domestic, and cognitive variables interact in shaping state behavior.” 102
As Morgenthau realized, “the contingent demands of personality, prejudice,
and subjective preference, and of all the weakness of intellect and will which
flesh is heir to, are bound to deflect foreign policies from their rational course.” 103
Or, as Sidney Verba stated long ago, if “models of the international system that
either ignore or make grossly simplifying assumptions about individual decision-
making can explain international relations only imperfectly, it may well be
worth the additional effort to build variables about individual decision-making
into them.” 104
It is time for international relations scholars to seriously examine and inte-
grate a psychological and cognitive perspective within their work. In doing so,
they will produce theories that are realistically grounded in both the realities of
cognitive actors and the regularized habits of the human mind. To do otherwise
is to ignore a growing and impressive body of knowledge that may build nec-
essary bridges between the studies of foreign policy and world politics.
102
Kupchan, The Vulnerability of Empire, p. 7.
103
Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, p. 7.
104
Sidney Verba, “Assumptions of Rationality and Non-Rationality in Models of
the International System,” in Klaus Knorr and Sidney Verba, eds., The International
System: Theoretical Essays (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961, p.93).

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The Power of Human Cognition

in the Study of World Politics

What Motivates International Actors:

© 2001 International Studies Association

The Need for a “Realistic” Psychology of Foreign Policy

by their structural environment.10 For example, Michael Loriaux finds that

The assumption of rational strategic interaction is true of most theoretical

The Cognitive Approach

have attempted to be more systematic in identifying and explaining major pat-

In other words, the process of “cognition”—the dynamics of the mind—

Why International Actors Are Cognitive Actors:

The Content of Policymaker Beliefs

Reagan.38 In sum, as Charles Kupchan recommends in his analysis of the rise

The Organization and Structure of Policymaker Beliefs

As the literature on the differences between experts and novices reveals,

Common Patterns of Perception (and Misperception)

Psychology has developed attribution theory to identify the types of biases

Four causal inferences likely to be simplified are particularly relevant to

If I have a devil-image of the opponent and the opponent behaves in an indis-

Such attribution biases contribute to a further understanding of the rise and

Tendency to Use Historical Analogies. As Fiske and Taylor explain, “The

international knowledge and experience, were particularly vulnerable to the

Cognitive Rigidity (and Flexibility) for Change and Learning

person’s attitude structure is to be consistent, then incremental changes among

Quite generally, the inferential structures which cognitive operations impose

An Idiosyncratic and Cultural Qualification

What impact do cultural differences have on other cognitive structures and

Bounded Rationality, Cognitive Actors,

ics of world politics either ignores psychological factors or assumes rationality

power potential. Why? As many systemic realists are beginning to recognize,

Treating international actors as cognitive actors will produce more power-

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