Political psychology

Abstract

Robert Jervis’s book Perception and Misperception in International Politics (1976) offered a novel approach to understanding international relations from the perspective of social psychology, addressing some of the ways in which the individual predispositions of leaders in particular might affect their behavior and decisions in the realm of foreign policy.1 Because in many ways this work proved both seminal and definitive, few others attempted to move beyond these contributions to further contextualize these hypotheses, or fill in any remaining lacunae. While this work remains a towering achievement, psychology has moved far beyond the research program it describes, to investigate many other phenomena using more advanced methods than were available in the 1970s. If the field of political psychology as applied to international relations is to move forward, it needs to incorporate the newest research in cognitive psychology, behavior genetics and neuroscience in order to remain vital and topical. While some of the initial insights offered by Perception and Misperception retain relevance, some of the central ideas have been superseded by more recent discoveries, particularly in the area of emotion and its influence on decision-making. Jervis’s work was always unified in part by his attempt to understand how people make sense of the world they inhabit, and how and why they become motivated to act as they do. He strove to link these insights to real- world policy problems, attempting to make academic study relevant to policymakers and the public at large. This research led him to examine the basis of perception among and between leaders in international politics, 2 to explore the basis of human nature, 3 and to investigate the causes and consequences of beliefs.4 What renders his work distinct from that of most other political scientists is the implicit recognition that individuals, while similar in many important aspects, do differ from one another in systematic and often predictable ways. Synthesizing this apparent contradiction represents no mean task, and recent developments in the areas of psychology and neuroscience have begun just this reconciliation. In this chapter, I contextualize their meaning both within the legacy of broader scientific developments in psychology as well as in terms of their engagement with real-world political events. With this perspective in mind, I reflect on the meaning and importance of Jervis’s seminal work in political psychology by examining some of the recent advances in psychology which expand and perhaps reconceptualize some of his earlier arguments concerning the origins of conflict and the nature of human decision-making in particular. In so doing, I address critical questions which have preoccupied much of his work, concerning the basis and sequelae of individual difference, and attempt to reconcile the reality of this fundamental truth with the equally irrefutable observation of universal characteristics. Through a theoretical integration of evolutionary psychology and behavior genetics, I re-examine the foundations of the human nature Jervis sought to characterize, 5 highlighting the inextricably intertwined functioning of affect and cognition. I then link the insights derived from recent neuroscientific research to a conceptual reformulation of the influence of psychological bias on the propensity toward conflict. This analysis helps clarify the distinction between ideas whose influence deserves continuing credence, and concepts which require replacement or refinement as we develop a progressive program for future research.