Threat Perceptions and Hidden Profiles in Alliances: Revisiting Suez

Abstract

What factors influence whether allies have the same understandings of threats and adversaries? Allies may infer they share each other's views without verifying if this is so, with harmful consequences. A set of psychological biases can cause policymakers to neglect valuable information held by one or more allies, and instead disproportionately discuss information that every allied contributor to a threat assessment already knows. Psychologists call the unshared assessments “hidden profiles”: an evaluative profile that postulates key features of a problem or threat, hidden in the sense that it is unintentionally withheld from the wider group. This manuscript compares the hidden-profiles model and alternative theories of threat perception using the 1956 Suez Crisis as a case study.