Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon argue we are too quick to pick a fight:
Social and cognitive psychologists have identified a number of predictable errors (psychologists call them biases) in the ways that humans judge situations and evaluate risks. Biases have been documented both in the laboratory and in the real world, mostly in situations that have no connection to international politics. For example, people are prone to exaggerating their strengths: About 80 percent of us believe that our driving skills are better than average. In situations of potential conflict, the same optimistic bias makes politicians and generals receptive to advisors who offer highly favorable estimates of the outcomes of war. Such a predisposition, often shared by leaders on both sides of a conflict, is likely to produce a disaster. And this is not an isolated example.
In fact, when we constructed a list of the biases uncovered in 40 years of psychological research, we were startled by what we found: All the biases in our list favor hawks. These psychological impulses–only a few of which we discuss here–incline national leaders to exaggerate the evil intentions of adversaries, to misjudge how adversaries perceive them, to be overly sanguine when hostilities start, and overly reluctant to make necessary concessions in negotiations. In short, these biases have the effect of making wars more likely to begin and more difficult to end.
Since the first-best, optimal number of wars is zero, this is correct. The more difficult and also more important question is whether "the good guys" fight too many or too few wars, given this strong martial propensity of "the bad guys," and treating the bad guys as the first movers. Another bias is that some "just wars" (but can they succeed?) remain unfought, usually when we do not care much about the slaughter of "out-group innocents," as evidenced by Timor, Rwanda, Darfur, etc. The U.S. entered World War II too late rather than too early, and did too little to limit the Holocaust.
Of course we need to adjust any estimate by the probability that we are sometimes "the bad guys" rather than "the good guys."
Here is one critical comment, here is Matt Yglesias. Dan Drezner offers commentary.
Comments are open, but the discussion will be better if we consider the biases rather than debating the merits of particular wars.
I know I’m biased, but I don’t understand how this can be reconciled with the existence or behavior of the European Union, the Oxford Union of the 1930′s, or even the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1916. IMHO there must be some countervailing factor that Kahnemann hasn’t considered. Are academic psychologists predisposed to look for conservative biases and not for liberal ones? Are these biases found in the US but not in Europe? Do the institutions of democratic republics correct foreign policy biases while increasing economic biases? Or maybe the pysch studies rely too much on college students, and not on the wealthy elder statesmen who populate most legislatures?
P.S. Dan Gilbert argued along related lines on the basis of different biases in July last year in “He Who Cast the First Stone Probably Didn’t” (available here: http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/gilbert/blog/ )
Conchis,
Do you believe that large, centralized government projects usually produce rational results?
I don’t. And I didn’t say that I thought Kahneman and Renshon are entirely wrong, just that there must be some countervailing force that they haven’t identified. Just to take Europe as an example,
the success of the European Union in pacifying most of a continent is a stunningly rational achievement, especially when you compare it to the irrationality of many European labor market interventions, GMO bans based more on emotion than on evidence, and emotionally charged policies on cultural protection and immigration. If “all the biases favor hawks”, then why does peace seem to be easier to achieve than other rational outcomes? (And I don’t mean to pick on the Europeans; U.S. policies are probably more irrational across the board, but Europe provides a clearer contrast).
Continetti (via Drezner) nails this one — overconfidence applies equally to hawkish and dovish tendencies. Hitler was disastrously overconfident, yes, but so was Neville Chamberlain (also disastrously). The bias is toward overconfidence in ourselves and, by extension, overconfidence in the efficacy of our preferred approaches.
About 80 percent of us believe that our driving skills are better than average.
I too find this stat unconvincing. I am a very safe driver. My best friend would make a great racecar driver but gets in lots of accidents. Each of us think we are good drivers and the other is bad. The problem is that we have different ideas of what a “good driver” is.
Similarly, the “bias” detected may just be misunderstood incentives rather than “psychological impulses.” I find it unlikely that their model reduces decisions of politicians and generals of many different nations and situations down to a level that can be explained by simple psychological bias.
I too find this stat unconvincing. I am a very safe driver. My best friend would make a great racecar driver but gets in lots of accidents. Each of us think we are good drivers and the other is bad. The problem is that we have different ideas of what a “good driver” is.
I was just about to write this very thing. This particular anecdote has always seemed thin to me; more of a problem of definition than an example of bias.
I am a very safe driver. My best friend would make a great racecar driver but gets in lots of accidents. Each of us think we are good drivers and the other is bad. The problem is that we have different ideas of what a “good driver” is.
This is interesting because there is another “bias” where people will define ambiguous terms in a flattering way. For example people who excel in math but are weaker in communication will give a definition of “smart” that is centered around solving abstract problems. People who have stronger verbal ability will define smart around the ability to craft a persuasive argument. Additionally people tend to believe that the areas in which they excel have more merit/importance than the areas which they are weakest. Humans have a real need to feel exceptional. The fact that by and large we are not is but a small hurdle for our ego’s defense mechanisms.
Kahneman and Renshon are cases in point. They indulge the “fundamental attribution error” when they assert, “these psychological impulses … have the effect of making wars more likely to begin and more difficult to end”
The utility of war has declined dramatically in recent centuries. When the prime components of wealth were acres of farmland and the minerals underground, war to conquer land could make a lot of economic sense. But now when wealth consists mostly of buildings and the human capital of people, the destructive costs of war are far more likely to outweight the economic advantages. Bismarck understood that after 1870, but Hitler did not, with dire consequences.
One further point on (3) above. The sort of reactive devaluation Continetti thinks should even the score here can only appear *after* the hawk and dove camps have already formed. As a result, if there are biases that tilt in one direction during the formation of those camps, you would still expect to end up with more hawks to begin with (and consequently the biases won’t even necessarily cancel).
“Since the first-best, optimal number of wars is zero, this is correct.”
Back the truck up on this one. The optimal number of wars for WHO exactly? The people fighting the wars or the people starting them?
Tony wrote:
I second Tony’s point, but for a different reason:
I suggest that people are not all using the same definition of “better”. Some people consider safety paramount. Other’s consider speed paramount. Other’s care about legalisms (like always yielding the right of way when appropriate, and always taking it when appropriate), which is not necessarilly the same as safety.
Near my house is a six-way intersection, with stop signs on five of the six entrances. Some people stop at the stop-sign-less entrance, and others (correctly) barrel through.
I’d be willing to bet that both sets consider themselves better drivers than members of the other set.
It does indeed beg the question of why the human species isnt constantly at war. I think there is truth to it, but on the other hand inertia is also a massive component to human psychology, and grows in power as the size of groups grows. Starting wars is relatively hard, but then so is stopping them sometimes.
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