Hypotheses on Misperception
Author(s): Robert Jervis
Source: World Politics , Apr., 1968, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Apr., 1968), pp. 454-479
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2009777
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HYPOTHESES ON MISPERCEPTION
By ROBERT JERVIS*
I N determining how he will behave, an actor must try to predict
how others will act and how their actions will affect his values. The
actor must therefore develop an image of others and of their intentions.
This image may, however, turn out to be an inaccurate one; the actor
may, for a number of reasons, misperceive both others' actions and their
intentions. In this research note I wish to discuss the types of misperceptions
of other states' intentions which states tend to make. The
concept of intention is complex, but here we can consider it to comprise
the ways in which the state feels it will act in a wide range of
future contingencies. These ways of acting usually are not specific and
well-developed plans. For many reasons a national or individual actor
may not know how he will act under given conditions, but this
problem cannot be dealt with here.
I. PREVious TREATMENTS OF PERCEPTION IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Although diplomatic historians have discussed misperception in their
treatments of specific events, students of international relations have
generally ignored this topic. However, two sets of scholars have applied
content analysis to the documents that flowed within and between
governments in the six weeks preceding World War I. But the data
have been put into quantitative form in a way that does not produce
accurate measures of perceptions and intentions and that makes it
impossible to gather useful evidence on misperception.1
The second group of theorists who have explicitly dealt with general
questions of misperception in international relations consists of those,
like Charles Osgood, Amitai Etzioni, and, to a lesser extent, Kenneth
Boulding and J. David Singer, who have analyzed the cold war in
* I am grateful to the Harvard Center for International Affairs for research support.
An earlier version of this research note was presented at the International Studies
Association panel of the New England Political Science Association in April i967.
I have benefited from comments by Robert Art, Alexander George, Paul Kecskemeti,
Paul Leary, Thomas Schelling, James Schlesinger, Morton Schwartz, and Aaron
Wildavskv.
1 See, for example, Ole Holsti, Robert North, and Richard Brody, "Perception and
Action in the I9I4 Crisis," in J. David Singer, ed., Quantitative International Politics
(New York i968). For a fuller discussion of the Stanford content analysis studies and
the general problems of quantification, see my "The Costs of the Quantitative Study of
International Relations," in Klaus Knorr and James N. Rosenau, eds., Contending Approaches
to International Politics (forthcoming).
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HYPOTHESES ON MISPERCEPTION 455
terms of a spiral of misperception.2 This app
the mathematical theories of L. F. Richardso
ings of social and cognitive psychology, many of which will be discussed
in this research note.
These authors state their case in general, if not universal, terms, but
do not provide many historical cases that are satisfactorily explained
by their theories. Furthermore, they do not deal with any of the
numerous instances that contradict their notion of the self-defeating
aspects of the use of power. They ignore the fact that states are not
individuals and that the findings of psychology can be applied to
organizations only with great care. Most important, their theoretical
analysis is for the most part of reduced value because it seems largely to
be a product of their assumption that the Soviet Union is a basically
status-quo power whose apparently aggressive behavior is a product of
fear of the West. Yet they supply little or no evidence to support this
view. Indeed, the explanation for the differences of opinion between
the spiral theorists and the proponents of deterrence lies not in differing
general views of international relations, differing values and morality,4
or differing methods of analysis,5 but in differing perceptions of Soviet
intentions.
II. THEORIES-NECESSARY AND DANGEROUS
Despite the limitations of their approach, these writers have touched
on a vital problem that has not been given systematic treatment by
theorists of international relations. The evidence from both psychology
and history overwhelmingly supports the view (which may be labeled
Hypothesis i) that decision-makers tend to fit incoming information
into their existing theories and images. Indeed, their theories and
images play a large part in determining what they notice. In other
words, actors tend to perceive what they expect. Furthermore (Hypothesis
ia), a theory will have greater impact on an actor's interpretation
of data (a) the greater the ambiguity of the data and (b) the
2See, for example, Osgood, An Alternative to War or Surrender (Urbana i962);
Etzioni, The Hard Way to Peace (New York i962); Boulding, "National Images and
International Systems," Journal of Conflict Resolution, iii (June I959), I20-3I; and
Singer, Deterrence, Arms Control, and Disarmament (Columbus i962).
3 Statistics of Deadly Quarrels (Pittsburgh i960) and Arms and Insecurity (Chicago
i960). For nonmathematicians a fine summary of Richardson's work is Anatol Rapoport's
"L. F. Richardson's Mathematical Theory of War," journal of Conflict Resolution,
I (September I957), 249-99.
4 See Philip Green, Deadly Logic (Columbus i966); Green, "Method and Substance
in the Arms Debate," World Politics, xvi (July i964), 642-67; and Robert A. Levine,
"Fact and Morals in the Arms Debate," World Politics, xiv (January i962), 239-58.
5 See Anatol Rapoport, Strategy and Conscience (New York i964).
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456 WORLD POLITICS
higher the degree of confide
For many purposes we can u
ceptual thresholds to deal wi
unambiguous, information for an actor to recognize an unexpected
phenomenon than an expected one. An experiment by Bruner and
Postman determined "that the recognition threshold for . . . incongruous
playing cards (those with suits and color reversed) is significantly
higher than the threshold for normal cards."7 Not only are
people able to identify normal (and therefore expected) cards more
quickly and easily than incongruous (and therefore unexpected) ones,
but also they may at first take incongruous cards for normal ones.
However, we should not assume, as the spiral theorists often do, that
it is necessarily irrational for actors to adjust incoming information to
fit more closely their existing beliefs and images. ("Irrational" here
describes acting under pressures that the actor would not admit as
legitimate if he were conscious of them.) Abelson and Rosenberg label
as "psycho-logic" the pressure to create a "balanced" cognitive structure-i.e.,
one in which "all relations among 'good elements' [in one's
attitude structure] are positive (or null), all relations among 'bad
elements' are positive (or null), and all relations between good and
bad elements are negative (or null)." They correctly show that the
"reasoning [this involves] would mortify a logician."' But those who
have tried to apply this and similar cognitive theories to international
relations have usually overlooked the fact that in many cases there are
important logical links between the elements and the processes they
describe which cannot be called "psycho-logic." (I am here using the
term "logical" not in the narrow sense of drawing only those conclusions
that follow necessarily from the premises, but rather in the
sense of conforming to generally agreed-upon rules for the treating of
evidence.) For example, Osgood claims that psycho-logic is displayed
when the Soviets praise a man or a proposal and people in the West
react by distrusting the object of this praise.' But if a person believes
that the Russians are aggressive, it is logical for him to be suspicious
of their moves. When we say that a decision-maker "dislikes" another
6 Floyd Allport, Theories of Perception and the Concept of Structure (New York
1955), 382; Ole Holsti, "Cognitive Dynamics and Images of the Enemy," in David
Finlay, Ole Holsti, and Richard Fagen, Enemies in Politics (Chicago i967), 70.
7 Jerome Bruner and Leo Postman, "On the Perceptions of Incongruity: A Paradigm,"
in Jerome Bruner and David Krech, eds., Perception and Personality (Durham, N.C.,
I949), 2IO.
8 Robert Abelson and Milton Rosenberg, "Symbolic Psycho-logic," Behavioral Science,
iII (January I958), 4-5.
9 P. 27.
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HYPOTHESES ON MISPERCEPTION 457
state this usually means that he believes th
conflicting with those of his nation. Reaso
to the decision-maker that the "disliked" s
interests. Thus in these cases there is no need to invoke "psychologic,"
and it cannot be claimed that the cases demonstrate the substitution
of "emotional consistency for rational consistency.'"10
The question of the relations among particular beliefs and cognitions
can often be seen as part of the general topic of the relation of incoming
bits of information to the receivers' already established images. The
need to fit data into a wider framework of beliefs, even if doing so does
not seem to do justice to individual facts, is not, or at least is not only,
a psychological drive that decreases the accuracy of our perceptions of
the world, but is "essential to the logic of inquiry."1 Facts can be interpreted,
and indeed identified, only with the aid of hypotheses and
theories. Pure empiricism is impossible, and it would be unwise to
revise theories in the light of every bit of information that does not
easily conform to them.12 No hypothesis can be expected to account for
all the evidence, and if a prevailing view is supported by many theories
and by a large pool of findings it should not be quickly altered. Too
little rigidity can be as bad as too much.13
This is as true in the building of social and physical science as it is
10ibid., 26.
11 I have borrowed this phrase from Abraham Kaplan, who uses it in a different but
related context in The Conduct of Inquiry (San Francisco i964), 86.
12 The spiral theorists are not the only ones to ignore the limits of empiricism. Roger
Hilsman found that most consumers and producers of intelligence felt that intelligence
should not deal with hypotheses, but should only provide the policy-makers with "all
the facts" (Strategic Intelligence and National Decisions [Glencoe I956], 46). The
close interdependence between hypotheses and facts is overlooked partly because of the
tendency to identify "hypotheses" with "policy preferences."
13 Karl Deutsch interestingly discusses a related question when he argues, "Autonomy
. requires both intake from the present and recall from memory, and selfhood can
be seen in just this continuous balancing of a limited present and a limited past....
No further self-determination is possible if either openness or memory is lost. . . . To
the extent that [systems cease to be able to take in new information], they approach the
behavior of a bullet or torpedo: their future action becomes almost completely determined
by their past. On the other hand, a person without memory, an organization
without values or policy . . . -all these no longer steer, but drift: their behavior depends
little on their past and almost wholly on their present. Driftwood and the
bullet are thus each the epitome of another kind of loss of self-control . . ." (Nationalism
and Social Communication [Cambridge, Mass., I954], i67-68). Also see Deutsch's
The Nerves of Government (New York i963), 98-I09, 200-256. A physicist makes a
similar argument: "It is clear that if one is too attached to one's preconceived model,
one will miss all radical discoveries. It is amazing to what degree one may fail to
register mentally an observation which does not fit the initial image.... On the other
hand, if one is too open-minded and pursues every hitherto unknown phenomenon,
one is almost certain to lose oneself in trivia" (Martin Deutsch, "Evidence and Inference
in Nuclear Research," in Daniel Lerner, ed., Evidence and Inference [Glencoe
I958], I02).
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458 WORLD POLITICS
in policy-making.14 While it
throws serious doubt on acce
and when instead it was caused by experimental mistakes or minor
errors in the theory, it is clear that scientists would make no progress
if they followed Thomas Huxley's injunction to "sit down before fact
as a mere child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion,
follow humbly wherever nature leads, or you will learn nothing."1
As Michael Polanyi explains, "It is true enough that the scientist must
be prepared to submit at any moment to the adverse verdict of observational
evidence. But not blindly.... There is always the possibility
that, as in [the cases of the periodic system of elements and the quantum
theory of light], a deviation may not affect the essential correctness
of a proposition.... The process of explaining away deviations is in
fact quite indispensable to the daily routine of research," even though
this may lead to the missing of a great discovery.16 For example, in
i795, the astronomer Lalande did not follow up observations that contradicted
the prevailing hypotheses and could have led him to discover
the planet Neptune."7
Yet we should not be too quick to condemn such behavior. As
Thomas Kuhn has noted, "There is no such thing as research without
counter-instances."'8 If a set of basic theories-what Kuhn calls a paradigm-has
been able to account for a mass of data, it should not be
lightly trifled with. As Kuhn puts it: "Lifelong resistance, particularly
from those whose productive careers have committed them to an older
tradition of normal science [i.e., science within the accepted paradigm],
is not a violation of scientific standards but an index to the nature of
scientific research itself. The source of resistance is the assurance that
the older paradigm will ultimately solve all its problems, that nature
14 Raymond Bauer, "Problems of Perception and the Relations Between the U.S. and
the Soviet Union," Journal of Conflict Resolution, v (September i96i), 223-29.
15 Quoted in W. L. B. Beveridge, The Art of Scientific Investigation, 3rd ed. (London
1957), 50.
16 Science, Faith, and Society (Chicago i964), 31. For a further discussion of th
problem, see ibid., i6, 26-41, 90-94; Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (London 1958), 8-I5,
30, 143-68, 269-98, 3Io-II; Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution
(Chicago i964); Kuhn, "The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research," in A. C.
Crombie, ed., Scientific Change (New York 1963), 344-69; the comments on Kuhn
paper by Hall, Polanyi, and Toulmin, and Kuhn's reply, ibid., 370-95. For a related
discussion of these points from a different perspective, see Norman Storer, The Social
System of Science (New York i960), ii6-22.
17 "He found that the position of one star relative to others . . . had shifted. Lalande
was a good astronomer and knew that such a shift was unreasonable. He crossed out
his first observation, put a question mark next to the second observation, and let the
matter go" (Jerome Bruner, Jacqueline Goodnow, and George Austin, A Study of
Thinking [New York i962], o05).
18 The Structure of Scientific Revolution, 79.
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HYPOTHESES ON MISPERCEPTION 459
can be shoved into the box the paradigm p
of revolution, that assurance seems stubbor
it sometimes becomes. But it is also something more. That same assurance
is what makes normal science or puzzle-solving science possible."1
Thus it is important to see that the dilemma of how "open" to be to
new information is one that inevitably plagues any attempt at understanding
in any field. Instances in which evidence seems to be ignored
or twisted to fit the existing theory can often be explained by this
dilemma instead of by illogical or nonlogical psychological pressures
toward consistency. This is especially true of decision-makers' attempts
to estimate the intentions of other states, since they must constantly take
account of the danger that the other state is trying to deceive them.
The theoretical framework discussed thus far, together with an
examination of many cases, suggests Hypothesis 2: scholars and decision-makers
are apt to err by being too wedded to the established view
and too closed to new information, as opposed to being too willing to
alter their theories.20 Another way of making this point is to argue that
actors tend to establish their theories and expectations prematurely. In
politics, of course, this is often necessary because of the need for action.
But experimental evidence indicates that the same tendency also occurs
on the unconscious level. Bruner and Postman found that "perhaps the
greatest single barrier to the recognition of incongruous stimuli is the
tendency for perceptual hypotheses to fixate after receiving a minimum
of confirmation.... Once there had occurred in these cases a partial
confirmation of the hypothesis ... it seemed that nothing could change
the subject's report."21
9lIbid., 150-5I.
20 Requirements of effective political leadership may lead decision-makers to voice
fewer doubts than they have about existing policies and images, but this constraint can
only partially explain this phenomenon. Similar calculations of political strategy may
contribute to several of the hypotheses discussed below.
21 P. 221. Similarly, in experiments dealing with his subjects' perception of other
people, Charles Dailey found that "premature judgment appears to make new data
harder to assimilate than when the observer withholds judgment until all data are
seen. It seems probable . . . that the observer mistakes his own inferences for facts"
("The Effects of Premature Conclusion Upon the Acquisition of Understanding of a
Person," Journal of Psychology, xxx [January 1952], I49-50). For other theory and
evidence on this point, see Bruner, "On Perceptual Readiness," Psychological Review,
LXIV (March I957), 123-52; Gerald Davidson, "The Negative Effects of Early Exposure
to Suboptimal Visual Stimuli," Journal of Personality, xxxii (June i964), 278-
95; Albert Myers, "An Experimental Analysis of a Tactical Blunder," Journal of
Abnormal and Social Psychology, LXIX (November i964), 493-98; and Dale Wyatt and
Donald Campbell, "On the Liability of Stereotype or Hypothesis," Journal of Abnormal
and Social Psychology, XLIV (October 1950), 496-500. It should be noted that this
tendency makes "incremental" decision-making more likely (David Braybrooke and
Charles Lindblom, A Strategy of Decision [New York i963]), but the results of this
process may lead the actor further from his goals.
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460 WORLD POLITICS
However, when we apply these and other findings to politics and
discuss kinds of misperception, we should not quickly apply the label
of cognitive distortion. We should proceed cautiously for two related
reasons. The first is that the evidence available to decision-makers
almost always permits several interpretations. It should be noted that
there are cases of visual perception in which different stimuli can produce
exactly the same pattern on an observer's retina. Thus, for an
observer using one eye the same pattern would be produced by a sphere
the size of a golf ball which was quite close to the observer, by a baseball-sized
sphere that was further away, or by a basketball-sized sphere
still further away. Without other clues, the observer cannot possibly
determine which of these stimuli he is presented with, and we would
not want to call his incorrect perceptions examples of distortion. Such
cases, relatively rare in visual perception, are frequent in international
relations. The evidence available to decision-makers is almost always
very ambiguous since accurate clues to others' intentions are surrounded
by noise22 and deception. In most cases, no matter how long, deeply,
and "objectively" the evidence is analyzed, people can differ in their
interpretations, and there are no general rules to indicate who is
correct.
The second reason to avoid the label of cognitive distortion is that
the distinction between perception and judgment, obscure enough in
individual psychology, is almost absent in the making of inferences in
international politics. Decision-makers who reject information that
contradicts their views-or who develop complex interpretations of itoften
do so consciously and explicitly. Since the evidence available
contains contradictory information, to make any inferences requires
that much information be ignored or given interpretations that will
seem tortuous to those who hold a different position.
Indeed, if we consider only the evidence available to a decision-maker
at the time of decision, the view later proved incorrect may be supported
by as much evidence as the correct one-or even by more.
Scholars have often been too unsympathetic with the people who were
proved wrong. On closer examination, it is frequently difficult to point
to differences between those who were right and those who were wrong
with respect to their openness to new information and willingness to
modify their views. Winston Churchill, for example, did not openmindedly
view each Nazi action to see if the explanations provided by
the appeasers accounted for the data better than his own beliefs. Instead,
22 For a use of this concept in political communication, see Roberta Wohlstetter,
Pearl Harbor (Stanford i962).
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HYPOTHESES ON MISPERCEPTION 461
like Chamberlain, he fitted each bit of am
own hypotheses. That he was correct shou
fact that his methods of analysis and use o
consistency did not basically differ from t
A consideration of the importance of expectations in influencing
perception also indicates that the widespread belief in the prevalence of
"wishful thinking" may be incorrect, or at least may be based on inadequate
data. The psychological literature on the interaction between
affect and perception is immense and cannot be treated here, but it
should be noted that phenomena that at first were considered strong
evidence for the impact of affect on perception often can be better
treated as demonstrating the influence of expectations.24 Thus, in
international relations, cases like the United States' misestimation of the
political climate in Cuba in April i96i, which may seem at first glance
to have been instances of wishful thinking, may instead be more adequately
explained by the theories held by the decision-makers (e.g.,
Communist governments are unpopular). Of course, desires may have
an impact on perception by influencing expectations, but since so many
other factors affect expectations, the net influence of desires may not
be great.
There is evidence from both psychology25 and international relations
that when expectations and desires clash, expectations seem to be more
important. The United States would like to believe that North Vietnam
is about to negotiate or that the USSR is ready to give up what the
United States believes is its goal of world domination, but ambiguous
23 Similarly, Robert Coulondre, the French ambassador to Berlin in 1939, was one of
the few diplomats to appreciate the Nazi threat. Partly because of his earlier service in
the USSR, "he was painfully sensitive to the threat of a Berlin-Moscow agreement. He
noted with foreboding that Hitler had not attacked Russia in his Reichstag address
of April 28.... So it went all spring and summer, the ambassador relaying each new
evidence of the impending diplomatic revolution and adding to his admonitions his
pleas for decisive counteraction" (Franklin Ford and Carl Schorske, "The Voice in the
Wilderness: Robert Coulondre," in Gordon Craig and Felix Gilbert, eds., The Diplomats,
Vol. III [New York i963] 573-74). His hypotheses were correct, but it is difficult
to detect differences between the way he and those ambassadors who were incorrect,
like Neville Henderson, selectively noted and interpreted information. However, to the
extent that the fear of war influenced the appeasers' perceptions of Hitler's intentions,
the appeasers' views did have an element of psycho-logic that was not present in their
opponents' position.
24See, for example, Donald Campbell, "Systematic Error on the Part of Human
Links in Communications Systems," Information and Control, i (1958), 346-50; and
Leo Postman, "The Experimental Analysis of Motivational Factors in Perception," in
Judson S. Brown, ed., Current Theory and Research in Motivation (Lincoln, Neb.,
I953), 59-I08.
25Dale Wyatt and Donald Campbell, "A Study of Interviewer Bias as Related to
Interviewer's Expectations and Own Opinions," International Journal of Opinion and
Attitude Research, iv (Spring I950), 77-83.
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462 WORLD POLITICS
evidence is seen to confirm the opposite conclusion, which conforms
to the United States' expectations. Actors are apt to be especially sensitive
to evidence of grave danger if they think they can take action to
protect themselves against the menace once it has been detected.
III. SAFEGUARDS
Can anything then be said to scholars and decision-makers other
than "Avoid being either too open or too closed, but be especially aware
of the latter danger"? Although decision-makers will always be faced
with ambiguous and confusing evidence and will be forced to make
inferences about others which will often be inaccurate, a number of
safeguards may be suggested which could enable them to minimize
their errors. First, and most obvious, decision-makers should be aware
that they do not make "unbiased" interpretations of each new bit of
incoming information, but rather are inevitably heavily influenced by
the theories they expect to be verified. They should know that what
may appear to them as a self-evident and unambiguous inference often
seems so only because of their preexisting beliefs. To someone with a
different theory the same data may appear to be unimportant or to
support another explanation. Thus many events provide less independent
support for the decision-makers' images than they may at first
realize. Knowledge of this should lead decision-makers to examine
more closely evidence that others believe contradicts their views.
Second, decision-makers should see if their attitudes contain consistent
or supporting beliefs that are not logically linked. These may be
examples of true psycho-logic. While it is not logically surprising nor
is it evidence of psychological pressures to find that people who believe
that Russia is aggressive are very suspicious of any Soviet move, other
kinds of consistency are more suspect. For example, most people who
feel that it is important for the United States to win the war in Vietnam
also feel that a meaningful victory is possible. And most people who
feel defeat would neither endanger U.S. national security nor be costly
in terms of other values also feel that we cannot win. Although there
are important logical linkages between the two parts of each of these
views (especially through theories of guerrilla warfare), they do not
seem strong enough to explain the degree to which the opinions are
correlated. Similarly, in Finland in the winter of 1939, those who felt
that grave consequences would follow Finnish agreement to give Russia
a military base also believed that the Soviets would withdraw their
demand if Finland stood firm. And those who felt that concessions
would not lead to loss of major values also believed that Russia would
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HYPOTHESES ON MISPERCEPTION 463
fight if need be.26 In this country, those w
tended to argue that fallout was very harm
provements in technology would flow from
test ban would increase the chances for pe
opposed the test ban were apt to disagree
not mean, of course, that the people holdi
views were necessarily wrong in any one element. The Finns who
wanted to make concessions to the USSR were probably correct in both
parts of their argument. But decision-makers should be suspicious if
they hold a position in which elements that are not logically connected
support the same conclusion. This condition is psychologically comfortable
and makes decisions easier to reach (since competing values do
not have to be balanced off against each other). The chances are thus
considerable that at least part of the reason why a person holds some of
these views is related to psychology and not to the substance of the
evidence.
Decision-makers should also be aware that actors who suddenly find
themselves having an important shared interest with other actors have a
tendency to overestimate the degree of common interest involved. This
tendency is especially strong for those actors (e.g., the United States,
at least before i950) whose beliefs about international relations and
morality imply that they can cooperate only with "good" states and
that with those states there will be no major conflicts. On the other
hand, states that have either a tradition of limited cooperation with
others (e.g., Britain) or a strongly held theory that differentiates occasional
from permanent allies27 (e.g., the Soviet Union) find it easier
to resist this tendency and need not devote special efforts to combating
its danger.
A third safeguard for decision-makers would be to make their assumptions,
beliefs, and the predictions that follow from them as explicit
as possible. An actor should try to determine, before events occur, what
evidence would count for and against his theories. By knowing what
to expect he would know what to be surprised by, and surprise could
indicate to that actor that his beliefs needed reevaluation.28
A fourth safeguard is more complex. The decision-maker should try
26Max Jacobson, The Diplomacy of the Winter War (Cambridge, Mass., i96i),
I36-39.
27 Raymond Aron, Peace and War (Garden City i966), 29.
28 Cf. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution, 65. A fairly high degree of
knowledge is needed before one can state precise expectations. One indication of the
lack of international relations theory is that most of us are not sure what "naturally"
flows from our theories and what constitutes either "puzzles" to be further explored
with the paradigm or "anomalies" that cast doubt on the basic theories.
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464 WORLD POLITICS
to prevent individuals and org
political future, and identity b
of other actors.29 If this occu
contribution to higher ends w
mation indicating possible alt
not be carefully considered. F
unable to carry out its origin
see its distinctive competence
forests but rather in preventi
Organizations that claim to b
to which their definition of t
beliefs about the world. Allen
standing when he says, "I gra
including CIA officials, but b
our central intelligence servic
and is married to no particular military hardware, we can avoid, to
the greatest possible extent, the bending of facts obtained through
intelligence to suit a particular occupational viewpoint."31 This statement
overlooks the fact that the CIA has developed a certain view of
international relations and of the cold war which maximizes the importance
of its information-gathering, espionage, and subversive activities.
Since the CIA would lose its unique place in the government if it
were decided that the "back alleys" of world politics were no longer
vital to U.S. security, it is not surprising that the organization interprets
information in a way that stresses the continued need for its techniques.
Fifth, decision-makers should realize the validity and implications
of Roberta Wohlstetter's argument that "a willingness to play with
material from different angles and in the context of unpopular as well
as popular hypotheses is an essential ingredient of a good detective,
whether the end is the solution of a crime or an intelligence estimate."32
However, it is often difficult, psychologically and politically, for any
one person to do this. Since a decision-maker usually cannot get "unbiased"
treatments of data, he should instead seek to structure conflicting
biases into the decision-making process. The decision-maker, in
other words, should have devil's advocates around. Just as, as Neustadt
points out,33 the decision-maker will want to create conflicts among his
29 See Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration (Evanston I957).
30 Ashley Schiff, Fire and Water: Scientific Heresy in the Forest Service (Cambridge,
Mass., i962). Despite its title, this book is a fascinating and valuable study.
31 The Craft of Intelligence (New York i963), 53.
32 P. 302. See Beveridge, 93, for a discussion of the idea that the scientist should keep
in mind as many hypotheses as possible when conducting and analyzing experiments.
33Presidential Power (New York i960).
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HYPOTHESES ON MISPERCEPTION 465
subordinates in order to make appropriate
to ensure that incoming information is ex
perspectives with many different hypothe
this kind of examination will be done automatically through the divergence
of goals, training, experience, and information that exists in
any large organization. But in many cases this divergence will not be
sufficient. The views of those analyzing the data will still be too
homogeneous, and the decision-maker will have to go out of his way
not only to cultivate but to create differing viewpoints.
While all that would be needed would be to have some people examining
the data trying to validate unpopular hypotheses, it would probably
be more effective if they actually believed and had a stake in the
views they were trying to support. If in I94I someone had had the
task of proving the view that Japan would attack Pearl Harbor, the
government might have been less surprised by the attack. And only a
person who was out to show that Russia would take objectively great
risks would have been apt to note that several ships with especially
large hatches going to Cuba were riding high in the water, indicating
the presence of a bulky but light cargo that was not likely to be anything
other than strategic missiles. And many people who doubt the
wisdom of the administration's Vietnam policy would be somewhat
reassured if there were people in the government who searched the
statements and actions of both sides in an effort to prove that North
Vietnam was willing to negotiate and that the official interpretation of
such moves as the Communist activities during the Tet truce of i967
was incorrect.
Of course all these safeguards involve costs. They would divert resources
from other tasks and would increase internal dissension. Determining
whether these costs would be worth the gains would depend
on a detailed analysis of how the suggested safeguards might be implemented.
Even if they were adopted by a government, of course, they
would not eliminate the chance of misperception. However, the safeguards
would make it more likely that national decision-makers would
make conscious choices about the way data were interpreted rather than
merely assuming that they can be seen in only one way and can mean
only one thing. Statesmen would thus be reminded of alternative
images of others just as they are constantly reminded of alternative
policies.
These safeguards are partly based on Hypothesis 3: actors can more
easily assimilate into their established image of another actor information
contradicting that image if the information is transmitted and
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466 WORLD POLITICS
considered bit by bit than if it comes all at once. In the former case,
each piece of discrepant data can be coped with as it arrives and each
of the conflicts with the prevailing view will be small enough to go
unnoticed, to be dismissed as unimportant, or to necessitate at most a
slight modification of the image (e.g., addition of exceptions to the
rule). When the information arrives in a block, the contradiction between
it and the prevailing view is apt to be much clearer and the
probability of major cognitive reorganization will be higher.
IV. SOURCES OF CONCEPTS
An actor's perceptual thresholds-and thus the images that ambiguous
information is apt to produce-are influenced by what he has
experienced and learned about.34 If one actor is to perceive that another
fits in a given category he must first have, or develop, a concept for
that category. We can usefully distinguish three levels at which a
concept can be present or absent. First, the concept can be completely
missing. The actor's cognitive structure may not include anything corresponding
to the phenomenon he is encountering. This situation can
occur not only in science fiction, but also in a world of rapid change
or in the meeting of two dissimilar systems. Thus China's image of the
Western world was extremely inaccurate in the mid-nineteenth century,
her learning was very slow, and her responses were woefully inadequate.
The West was spared a similar struggle only because it had the power
to reshape the system it encountered. Once the actor clearly sees one
instance of the new phenomenon, he is apt to recognize it much more
quickly in the future.35 Second, the actor can know about a concept
but not believe that it reflects an actual phenomenon. Thus Communist
and Western decision-makers are each aware of the other's explanation
of how his system functions, but do not think that the concept cor-
34Most psychologists argue that this influence also holds for perception of shapes.
For data showing that people in different societies differ in respect to their predisposition
to experience certain optical illusions and for a convincing argument that this
difference can be explained by the societies' different physical environments, which
have led their people to develop different patterns of drawing inferences from ambiguous
visual cues, see Marshall Segall, Donald Campbell, and Melville Herskovits,
The Influence of Culture on Visual Perceptions (Indianapolis i966).
35 Thus when Bruner and Postman's subjects first were presented with incongruous
playing cards (i.e., cards in which symbols and colors of the suits were not matching,
producing red spades or black diamonds), long exposure times were necessary for
correct identification. But once a subject correctly perceived the card and added this
type of card to his repertoire of categories, he was able to identify other incongruous
cards much more quickly. For an analogous example-in this case, changes in the
analysis of aerial reconnaissance photographs of an enemy's secret weapons-testing
facilities produced by the belief that a previously unknown object may be present-see
David Irving, The Mare's Nest (Boston i964), 66-67, 274-75.
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HYPOTHESES ON MISPERCEPTION 467
responds to reality. Communist elites, furth
could correspond to the democracies' descri
the actor may hold a concept, but not belie
at the present moment. Thus the British an
I930's held a concept of states with unlimit
that Napoleons were possible, but they did
that category. Hypothesis 4 distinguishes t
tion is most difficult to correct in the case
difficult to correct in the case of a recogni
concept. All other things being equal (e.g., the degree to which the
concept is central to the actor's cognitive structure), the first case requires
more cognitive reorganization than does the second, and the
second requires more reorganization than the third.
However, this hypothesis does not mean that learning will necessarily
be slowest in the first case, for if the phenomena are totally new the
actor may make such grossly inappropriate responses that he will
quickly acquire information clearly indicating that he is faced with
something he does not understand. And the sooner the actor realizes
that things are not-or may not be-what they seem, the sooner he is
apt to correct his image.36
Three main sources contribute to decision-makers' concepts of international
relations and of other states and influence the level of their
perceptual thresholds for various phenomena. First, an actor's beliefs
about his own domestic political system are apt to be important. In
some cases, like that of the USSR, the decision-makers' concepts are tied
to an ideology that explicitly provides a frame of reference for viewing
foreign affairs. Even where this is not the case, experience with his own
system will partly determine what the actor is familiar with and what
he is apt to perceive in others. Louis Hartz claims, "It is the absence
of the experience of social revolution which is at the heart of the whole
American dilemma.... In a whole series of specific ways it enters into
our difficulty of communication with the rest of the world. We find it
difficult to understand Europe's 'social question'. . . . We are not familiar
with the deeper social struggles of Asia and hence tend to interpret
even reactionary regimes as 'democratic.' "3 Similarly, George
Kennan argues that in World War I the Allied powers, and especially
America, could not understand the bitterness and violence of others'
internal conflicts: ". . . The inability of the Allied statesmen to picture
to themselves the passions of the Russian civil war [was partly caused
86 Bruner and Postman, 220.
37 The Liberal Tradition in America (New York I955), 306.
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468 WORLD POLITICS
by the fact that] we represen
of evil have been carefully bu
of people, as in their very c
despite our widely traveled and outwardly cosmopolitan lives, the
mainsprings of political behavior in such a country as Russia tend to
remain concealed from our vision."38
Second, concepts will be supplied by the actor's previous experiences.
An experiment from another field illustrates this. Dearborn and Simon
presented business executives from various divisions (e.g., sales, accounting,
production) with the same hypothetical data and asked them
for an analysis and recommendations from the standpoint of what
would be best for the company as a whole. The executives' views heavily
reflected their departmental perspectives.39 William W. Kaufmann
shows how the perceptions of Ambassador Joseph Kennedy were affected
by his past: "As befitted a former chairman of the Securities
Exchange and Maritime Commissions, his primary interest lay in
economic matters.... The revolutionary character of the Nazi regime
was not a phenomenon that he could easily grasp.... It was far simpler,
and more in accord with his own premises, to explain German aggressiveness
in economic terms. The Third Reich was dissatisfied, authoritarian,
and expansive largely because her economy was unsound.""0
Similarly it has been argued that Chamberlain was slow to recognize
Hitler's intentions partly because of the limiting nature of his personal
background and business experiences.41 The impact of training and ex-
38 Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin (New York i962), I42-43.
9 DeWitt Dearborn and Herbert Simon, "Selective Perception: A Note on the Departmental
Identification of Executives," Sociometry, xxi (June I958), 140-44.
40 "Two American Ambassadors: Bullitt and Kennedy," in Craig and Gilbert, 358-59.
41 Hugh Trevor-Roper puts this point well: "Brought up as a business man, successful
in municipal politics, [Chamberlain's] outlook was entirely parochial. Educated Conservative
aristocrats like Churchill, Eden, and Cranborne, whose families had long
been used to political responsibility, had seen revolution and revolutionary leaders
before, in their own history, and understood them correctly; but the Chamberlains,
who had run from radical imperialism to timid conservatism in a generation of life in
Birmingham, had no such understanding of history or the world: to them the scope
of human politics was limited by their own parochial horizons, and Neville Chamberlain
could not believe that Hitler was fundamentally different from himself. If Chamberlain
wanted peace, so must Hitler" ("Munich-Its Lessons Ten Years Later," in
Francis Loewenheim, ed., Peace or Appeasement? [Boston i965], 152-53). For a
similar view see A. L. Rowse, Appeasement (New York i963), 117.
But Donald Lammers points out that the views of many prominent British public
figures in the I930's do not fit this generalization (Explaining Munich [Stanford i966],
13-140). Furthermore, arguments that stress the importance of the experiences and
views of the actors' ancestors do not explain the links by which these influence the
actors themselves. Presumably Churchill and Chamberlain read the same history books
in school and had the same basic information about Britain's past role in the world.
Thus what has to be demonstrated is that in their homes aristocrats like Churchill
learned different things about politics and human nature than did middle-class people
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HYPOTHESES ON MISPERCEPTION 469
perience seems to be demonstrated when
peasers is compared to that of their opponen
out: "A substantially higher percentage of t
tive of class origins) had the kind of kno
close acquaintance, mainly professional, with
members of the diplomatic corps are respon
the nation's security before these grow to m
they have learned about cases in which aggre
nized as such until very late, they may be pr
data as showing that others are aggressive
we cannot say that the professionals of th
make accurate judgments of other states. Ra
more sensitive to the chance that others we
then rarely take an aggressor for a status-qu
often make the opposite error.43 Thus in th
the permanent officials in the British For
German aggressiveness.44
A parallel demonstration in psychology of
perception is presented by an experiment in
were shown to both advanced and beginn
students. The advanced group perceived m
than did the beginners. The probable exp
enforcer may come to accept crime as a fa
one which he himself is not surprised to enc
crime as a familiar experience in turn increa
to perceive violence where clues to it are pot
like Chamberlain and that these experiences had a sig
could be argued that the patterns of child-rearing p
influenced the children's personalities in a way tha
others as aggressive.
42lbid., i5.
43During a debate on appeasement in the House of Commons, Harold Nicolson
declared, "I know that those of us who believe in the traditions of our policy . . . who
believe that one great function of this country is to maintain moral standards in Europe,
to maintain a settled pattern of international relations, not to make friends with people
who are demonstrably evil . . . -I know that those who hold such beliefs are accused
of possessing the Foreign Office mind. I thank God that I possess the Foreign Office
mind" (quoted in Martin Gilbert, The Roots of Appeasement [New York i966], i87).
But the qualities Nicolson mentions and applauds may be related to a more basic attribute
of "the Foreign Office mind"-suspiciousness.
44 George Monger, The End of Isolation (London I963). I am also indebted to Frederick
Collignon for his unpublished manuscript and several conversations on this point.
45 Hans Toch and Richard Schulte, "Readiness to Perceive Violence as a Result of
Police Training," British Journal of Psychology, LII (November i96i), 392 (original
italics omitted). It should be stressed that one cannot say whether or not the advanced
police students perceived the pictures "accurately." The point is that their training preThis
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470 WORLD POLITICS
experiment lends weight to t
tivity to aggressive states w
tion procedures.
A third source of concepts, which frequently will be the most directly
relevant to a decision-maker's perception of international relations,
is international history. As Henry Kissinger points out, one
reason why statesmen were so slow to recognize the threat posed by
Napoleon was that previous events had accustomed them only to
actors who wanted to modify the existing system, not overthrow it.46
The other side of the coin is even more striking: historical traumas can
heavily influence future perceptions. They can either establish a state's
image of the other state involved or can be used as analogies. An
example of the former case is provided by the fact that for at least ten
years after the Franco-Prussian War most of Europe's statesmen felt
that Bismarck had aggressive plans when in fact his main goal was to
protect the status quo. Of course the evidence was ambiguous. The
pOst-187i Bismarckian maneuvers, which were designed to keep peace,
looked not unlike the pre-I871 maneuvers designed to set the stage for
war. But that the pOst-187I maneuvers were seen as indicating aggressive
plans is largely attributable to the impact of Bismarck's earlier
actions on the statesmen's image of him.
A state's previous unfortunate experience with a type of danger can
sensitize it to other examples of that danger. While this sensitivity may
lead the state to avoid the mistake it committed in the past, it may also
lead it mistakenly to believe that the present situation is like the past
one. Santayana's maxim could be turned around: "Those who remember
the past are condemned to make the opposite mistakes." As Paul
Kecskemeti shows, both defenders and critics of the unconditional
surrender plan of the Second World War thought in terms of the conditions
of World War L"47 Annette Baker Fox found that the Scandinavian
countries' neutrality policies in World War II were strongly influenced
by their experiences in the previous war, even though vital
aspects of the two situations were different. Thus "Norway's success
[during the First World War] in remaining non-belligerent though
disposed them to see violence in ambiguous situations. Whether on balance they would
make fewer perceptual errors and better decisions is very hard to determine. For an
experiment showing that training can lead people to "recognize" an expected stimulus
even when that stimulus is in fact not shown, see Israel Goldiamond and William F.
Hawkins, "Vexierversuch: The Log Relationship Between Word-Frequency and Recognition
Obtained in the Absence of Stimulus Words," Journal of Experimental Psychology,
LVI (December 1958), 457-63.
46, World Restored (New York i964), 2-3.
47Strategic Surrender (New York i964), 215-41.
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HYPOTHESES ON MISPERCEPTION 471
pro-Allied gave the Norwegians confidence that their country could
again stay out of war."48 And the lesson drawn from the unfortunate
results of this policy was an important factor in Norway's decision to
join NATO.
The application of the Munich analogy to various contemporary
events has been much commented on, and I do not wish to argue the
substantive points at stake. But it seems clear that the probabilities that
any state is facing an aggressor who has to be met by force are not
altered by the career of Hitler and the history of the 1930's. Similarly
the probability of an aggressor's announcing his plans is not increased
(if anything, it is decreased) by the fact that Hitler wrote Mein Kampf.
Yet decision-makers are more sensitive to these possibilities, and thus
more apt to perceive ambiguous evidence as indicating they apply to
a given case, than they would have been had there been no Nazi
Germany.
Historical analogies often precede, rather than follow, a careful
analysis of a situation (e.g., Truman's initial reaction to the news of
the invasion of South Korea was to think of the Japanese invasion of
Manchuria). Noting this precedence, however, does not show us which
of many analogies will come to a decision-maker's mind. Truman
could have thought of nineteenth-century European wars that were of
no interest to the United States. Several factors having nothing to do
with the event under consideration influence what analogies a decisionmaker
is apt to make. One factor is the number of cases similar to the
analogy with which the decision-maker is familiar. Another is the importance
of the past event to the political system of which the decisionmaker
is a part. The more times such an event occurred and the greater
its consequences were, the more a decision-maker will be sensitive to
the particular danger involved and the more he will be apt to see
ambiguous stimuli as indicating another instance of this kind of event.
A third factor is the degree of the decision-maker's personal involvement
in the past case-in time, energy, ego, and position. The lastmentioned
variable will affect not only the event's impact on the decision-maker's
cognitive structure, but also the way he perceives the
event and the lesson he draws. Someone who was involved in getting
troops into South Korea after the attack will remember the Korean
War differently from someone who was involved in considering the
possible use of nuclear weapons or in deciding what messages should
be sent to the Chinese. Greater personal involvement will usually give
the event greater impact, especially if the decision-maker's own views
48 The Power of Small States (Chicago 1959), 8i.
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472 WORLD POLITICS
were validated by the event.
learning theory to nations to
It also seems likely that if many critics argued at the time that the
decision-maker was wrong, he will be even more apt to see other situations
in terms of the original event. For example, because Anthony
Eden left the government on account of his views and was later shown
to have been correct, he probably was more apt to see as Hitlers other
leaders with whom he had conflicts (e.g., Nasser). A fourth factor is
the degree to which the analogy is compatible with the rest of his
belief system. A fifth is the absence of alternative concepts and analogies.
Individuals and states vary in the amount of direct or indirect
political experience they have had which can provide different ways
of interpreting data. Decision-makers who are aware of multiple possibilities
of states' intentions may be less likely to seize on an analogy
prematurely. The perception of citizens of nations like the United
States which have relatively little history of international politics may
be more apt to be heavily influenced by the few major international
events that have been important to their country.
The first three factors indicate that an event is more apt to shape
present perceptions if it occurred in the recent rather than the remote
past. If it occurred recently, the statesman will then know about it at
first hand even if he was not involved in the making of policy at the
time. Thus if generals are prepared to fight the last war, diplomats may
be prepared to avoid the last war. Part of the Anglo-French reaction to
Hitler can be explained by the prevailing beliefs that the First World
War was to a large extent caused by misunderstandings and could
have been avoided by farsighted and nonbelligerent diplomacy. And
part of the Western perception of Russia and China can be explained
by the view that appeasement was an inappropriate response to Hitler.50
V. THE EVOKED SET
The way people perceive data is influenced not only by their cognitive
structure and theories about other actors but also by what they are
concerned with at the time they receive the information. Information
49William Inge, Outspoken Essays, First Series (London I923), 88.
50 Of course, analogies themselves are not "unmoved movers." The interpretation
of past events is not automatic and is informed by general views of international relations
and complex judgments. And just as beliefs about the past influence the present,
views about the present influence interpretations of history. It is difficult to determine
the degree to which the United States' interpretation of the reasons it went to war in
I9I7 influenced American foreign policy in the i920's and i930's and how much the
isolationism of that period influenced the histories of the war.
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HYPOTHESES ON MISPERCEPTION 473
is evaluated in light of the small part of the
presently active-the "evoked set." My percep
I pass walking home from the movies will be
saw had dealt with spies than if it had been
on aiding a country's education system and I
the need for economic development in that s
is concerned with education, whereas if I had
trying to achieve political stability in that c
his remarks in that framework.5'
Thus Hypothesis 5 states that when messag
ent background of concerns and information
receiver, misunderstanding is likely. Person
the same message quite differently if A has
sages that B does not know about. This diffe
if, as is frequently the case, A and B each ass
same background he does. This means that misperception can occur
even when deception is neither intended nor expected. Thus Roberta
Wohlstetter found not only that different parts of the United States
government had different perceptions of data about Japan's intentions
and messages partly because they saw the incoming information in
very different contexts, but also that officers in the field misunderstood
warnings from Washington: "Washington advised General Short [in
Pearl Harbor] on November 27 to expect 'hostile action' at any moment,
by which it meant 'attack on American possessions from without,'
but General Short understood this phrase to mean 'sabotage.' "52
Washington did not realize the extent to which Pearl Harbor considered
the danger of sabotage to be primary, and furthermore it
incorrectly believed that General Short had received the intercepts of
the secret Japanese diplomatic messages available in Washington which
indicated that surprise attack was a distinct possibility. Another implication
of this hypothesis is that if important information is known to
only part of the government of state A and part of the government of
state B, international messages may be misunderstood by those parts of
51 For some psychological experiments on this subject, see Jerome Bruner and A.
Leigh Minturn, "Perceptual Identification and Perceptual Organization" Journal of
General Psychology, LIII (July I955), 22-28; Seymour Feshbach and Robert Singer,
"The Effects of Fear Arousal and Suppression of Fear Upon Social Perception," journal
of Abnormal and Social Psychology, LV (November I957), 283-88; and Elsa Sippoal,
"A Group Study of Some Effects of Preparatory Sets," Psychology Monographs, XLVI,
No. 2IO (1935), 27-28. For a general discussion of the importance of the perceiver's
evoked set, see Postman, 87.
52 Pp. 73-74.
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474 WORLD POLITICS
the receiver's government t
have, the part of the sender'
Two additional hypotheses ca
sending messages. Hypothesis 6 states that when people spend a great
deal of time drawing up a plan or making a decision, they tend to think
that the message about it they wish to convey will be clear to the receiver.54
Since they are aware of what is to them the important pattern
in their actions, they often feel that the pattern will be equally obvious
to others, and they overlook the degree to which the message is apparent
to them only because they know what to look for. Those who have
not participated in the endless meetings may not understand what
information the sender is trying to convey. George Quester has shown
how the German and, to a lesser extent, the British desire to maintain
target limits on bombing in the first eighteen months of World War
II was undermined partly by the fact that each side knew the limits it
was seeking and its own reasons for any apparent "exceptions" (e.g.,
the German attack on Rotterdam) and incorrectly felt that these limits
and reasons were equally clear to the other side.55
Hypothesis 7 holds that actors often do not realize that actions intended
to project a given image may not have the desired effect because
the actions themselves do not turn out as planned. Thus even without
appreciable impact of different cognitive structures and backgrounds,
an action may convey an unwanted message. For example, a country's
representatives may not follow instructions and so may give others
impressions contrary to those the home government wished to convey.
The efforts of Washington and Berlin to settle their dispute over Samoa
in the late i88o's were complicated by the provocative behavior of their
agents on the spot. These agents not only increased the intensity of the
local conflict, but led the decision-makers to become more suspicious
of the other state because they tended to assume that their agents were
obeying instructions and that the actions of the other side represented
official policy. In such cases both sides will believe that the other is
reading hostility into a policy of theirs which is friendly. Similarly,
53 For example, Roger Hilsman points out, "Those who knew of the peripheral
reconnaissance flights that probed Soviet air defenses during the Eisenhower administration
and the U-2 flights over the Soviet Union itself . . . were better able to understand
some of the things the Soviets were saying and doing than people who did not
know of these activities" (To Move a Nation [Garden City i9671, 66). But it is also
possible that those who knew about the U-2 flights at times misinterpreted Soviet
messages by incorrectly believing that the sender was influenced by, or at least knew of,
these flights.
54 I am grateful to Thomas Schelling for discussion on this point.
5Deterrence Before Hiroshima (New York i966), I05-22.
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HYPOTHESES ON MISPERCEPTION 475
Quester's study shows that the attempt to limit bombing referred to
above failed partly because neither side was able to bomb as accurately
as it thought it could and thus did not realize the physical effects of its
actions.56
VI. FURTHER HYPOTHESES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE PERCEIVER
From the perspective of the perceiver several other hypotheses seem
to hold. Hypothesis 8 is that there is an overall tendency for decisionmakers
to see other states as more hostile than they are.57 There seem
to be more cases of statesmen incorrectly believing others are planning
major acts against their interest than of statesmen being lulled by a
potential aggressor. There are many reasons for this which are too
complex to be treated here (e.g., some parts of the bureaucracy feel it
is their responsibility to be suspicious of all other states; decisionmakers
often feel they are "playing it safe" to believe and act as though
the other state were hostile in questionable cases; and often, when
people do not feel they are a threat to others, they find it difficult to
believe that others may see them as a threat). It should be noted, however,
that decision-makers whose perceptions are described by this
hypothesis would not necessarily further their own values by trying to
correct for this tendency. The values of possible outcomes as well as
their probabilities must be considered, and it may be that the probability
of an unnecessary arms-tension cycle arising out of misperceptions,
multiplied by the costs of such a cycle, may seem less to decisionmakers
than the probability of incorrectly believing another state is
friendly, multiplied by the costs of this eventuality.
Hypothesis 9 states that actors tend to see the behavior of others as
more centralized, disciplined, and coordinated than it is. This hypothesis
holds true in related ways. Frequently, too many complex events are
squeezed into a perceived pattern. Actors are hesitant to admit or even
see that particular incidents cannot be explained by their theories.58
Those events not caused by factors that are important parts of the perceiver's
image are often seen as though they were. Further, actors see
others as more internally united than they in fact are and generally
overestimate the degree to which others are following a coherent policy.
The degree to which the other side's policies are the product of internal
56 Ibid.
57 For a slightly different formulation of this view, see Holsti, 27.
58 The Soviets consciously hold an extreme version of this view and seem to believe
that nothing is accidental. See the discussion in Nathan Leites, A Study of Bolshevism
(Glencoe I953), 67-73.
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476 WORLD POLITICS
bargaining,59 internal misun
ing instructions is underestim
tend to be unfamiliar with t
processes. Seeing only the fin
to construct a rational explanation for the policies, even though they
know that such an analysis could not explain their own policies.60
Familiarity also accounts for Hypothesis io: because a state gets most
of its information about the other state's policies from the other's foreign
office, it tends to take the foreign office's position for the stand of
the other government as a whole. In many cases this perception will
be an accurate one, but when the other government is divided or when
the other foreign office is acting without specific authorization, misperception
may result. For example, part of the reason why in i9i8 Allied
governments incorrectly thought "that the Japanese were preparing to
take action [in Siberia], if need be, with agreement with the British
and French alone, disregarding the absence of American consent,"6
was that Allied ambassadors had talked mostly with Foreign Minister
Motono, who was among the minority of the Japanesle favoring this
policy. Similarly, America's NATO allies may have gained an inaccurate
picture of the degree to which the American government was
committed to the MLF because they had greatest contact with parts
of the government that strongly favored the MLF. And states that tried
to get information about Nazi foreign policy from German diplomats
were often misled because these officials were generally ignorant of or
out of sympathy with Hitler's plans. The Germans and the Japanese
sometimes purposely misinformed their own ambassadors in order to
deceive their enemies more effectively.
Hypothesis ii states that actors tend to overestimate the degree to
which others are acting in response to what they themselves do when
the others behave in accordance with the actor's desires; but when the
behavior of the other is undesired, it is usually seen as derived from
internal forces. If the efect of another's action is to injure or threaten
59 A. W. Marshall criticizes Western explanations of Soviet military posture for
failing to take this into account. See his "Problems of Estimating Military Power," a
paper presented at the i966 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,
i6.
60 It has also been noted that in labor-management disputes both sides may be apt
to believe incorrectly that the other is controlled from above, either from the international
union office or from the company's central headquarters (Robert Blake, Herbert
Shepard, and Jane Mouton, Managing Intergroup Conflict in Industry [Houston i964],
i82). It has been further noted that both Democratic and Republican members of the
House tend to see the other party as the one that is more disciplined and united
(Charles Clapp, The Congressman [Washington i9631, I7-I9).
61 George Kennan, Russia Leaves the War (New York i967), 484.
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HYPOTHESES ON MISPERCEPTION 477
the first side, the first side is apt to believ
purpose. An example of the first part of th
Kennan's account of the activities of official and unofficial American
representatives who protested to the new Bolshevik government
against several of its actions. When the Soviets changed their position,
these representatives felt it was largely because of their influence.62 This
sort of interpretation can be explained not only by the fact that it is
gratifying to the individual making it, but also, taking the other side
of the coin mentioned in Hypothesis 9, by the fact that the actor is most
familiar with his own input into the other's decision and has less
knowledge of other influences. The second part of Hypothesis ii is
illustrated by the tendency of actors to believe that the hostile behavior
of others is to be explained by the other side's motives and not by its
reaction to the first side. Thus Chamberlain did not see that Hitler's
behavior was related in part to his belief that the British were weak.
More common is the failure to see that the other side is reacting out of
fear of the first side, which can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies and
spirals of misperception and hostility.
This difficulty is often compounded by an implication of Hypothesis
12: when actors have intentions that they do not try to conceal from
others, they tend to assume that others accurately perceive these intentions.
Only rarely do they believe that others may be reacting to a
much less favorable image of themselves than they think they are
projecting.63
For state A to understand how state B perceives A's policy is often
difficult because such understanding may involve a conflict with A's
image of itself. Raymond Sontag argues that Anglo-German relations
before World War I deteriorated partly because "the British did not
like to think of themselves as selfish, or unwilling to tolerate 'legitimate'
German expansion. The Germans did not like to think of themselves
as aggressive, or unwilling to recognize 'legitimate' British vested
interest."64
62 Ibid., 404, 408, 500.
63Herbert Butterfield notes that these assumptions can contribute to the spiral of
"Hobbesian fear. . . . You yourself may vividly feel the terrible fear that you have of
the other party, but you cannot enter into the other man's counter-fear, or even understand
why he should be particularly nervous. For you know that you yourself mean
him no harm, and that you want nothing from him save guarantees for your own
safety; and it is never possible for you to realize or remember properly that since he
cannot see the inside of your mind, he can never have the same assurance of your
intentions that you have" (History and Human Conflict [London I95I], 20).
64European Diplomatic History 187I-1932 (New York I933), I25. It takes great
mental effort to realize that actions which seem only the natural consequence of defending
your vital interests can look to others as though you are refusing them any
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478 WORLD POLITICS
Hypothesis i3 suggests that i
the other can see him as a menace, it is often even harder for him to
see that issues important to him are not important to others. While he
may know that another actor is on an opposing team, it may be more
difficult for him to realize that the other is playing an entirely different
game. This is especially true when the game he is playing seems vital to
him.65
The final hypothesis, Hypothesis I4, is as follows: actors tend to
overlook the fact that evidence consistent with their theories may also
be consistent with other views. When choosing between two theories
we have to pay attention only to data that cannot be accounted for by
one of the theories. But it is common to find people claiming as proof
of their theories data that could also support alternative views. This
phenomenon is related to the point made earlier that any single bit of
information can be interpreted only within a framework of hypotheses
and theories. And while it is true that "we may without a vicious circularity
accept some datum as a fact because it conforms to the very
law for which it counts as another confirming instance, and reject an
allegation of fact because it is already excluded by law,"66 we should be
careful lest we forget that a piece of information seems in many cases
to confirm a certain hypothesis only because we already believe that
hypothesis to be correct and that the information can with as much
validity support a different hypothesis. For example, one of the reasons
why the German attack on Norway took both that country and England
by surprise, even though they had detected German ships moving
toward Norway, was that they expected not an attack but an attempt
by the Germans to break through the British blockade and reach the
chance of increasing their influence. In rebutting the famous Crowe "balance of power"
memorandum of I907, which justified a policy of "containing" Germany on the
grounds that she was a threat to British national security, Sanderson, a former permanent
undersecretary in the Foreign Office, wrote, "It has sometimes seemed to me that
to a foreigner reading our press the British Empire must appear in the light of some
huge giant sprawling all over the globe, with gouty fingers and toes stretching in
every direction, which cannot be approached without eliciting a scream" (quoted in
Monger, 3I5). But few other Englishmen could be convinced that others might see
them this way.
65 George Kennan makes clear that in i9i8 this kind of difficulty was partly responsible
for the inability of either the Allies or the new Bolshevik government to
understand the motivations of the other side: "There is . . . nothing in nature more
egocentrical than the embattled democracy.... It . . . tends to attach to its own cause
an absolute value which distorts its own vision of everything else. . . It will readily
be seen that people who have got themselves into this frame of mind have little understanding
for the issues of any contest other than the one in which they are involved.
The idea of people wasting time and substance on any other issue seems to them preposterous"
(Russia and the West, II-I2).
66 Kaplan, 89.
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HYPOTHESES ON MISPERCEPTION 479
Atlantic. The initial course of the ships was
but the British and Norwegians took this course to mean that their
predictions were being borne out.67 This is not to imply that the interpretation
made was foolish, but only that the decision-makers should
have been aware that the evidence was also consistent with an invasion
and should have had a bit less confidence in their views.
The longer the ships would have to travel the same route whether
they were going to one or another of two destinations, the more information
would be needed to determine their plans. Taken as a metaphor,
this incident applies generally to the treatment of evidence. Thus
as long as Hitler made demands for control only of ethnically German
areas, his actions could be explained either by the hypothesis that he
had unlimited ambitions or by the hypothesis that he wanted to unite
all the Germans. But actions against non-Germans (e.g., the takeover
of Czechoslovakia in March i938) could not be accounted for by the
latter hypothesis. And it was this action that convinced the appeasers
that Hitler had to be stopped. It is interesting to speculate on what
the British reaction would have been had Hitler left Czechoslovakia
alone for a while and instead made demands on Poland similar to
those he eventually made in the summer of I939. The two paths would
then still not have diverged, and further misperception could have
occurred.
67 Johan Jorgen Holst, "Surprise, Signals, and Reaction: The Attack on Norway,"
Cooperation and Conflict, No. i (i966), 34. The Germans made a similar mistake in
November 1942 when they interpreted the presence of an Allied convoy in the Mediterranean
as confirming their belief that Malta would be resupplied. They thus were
taken by surprise when landings took place in North Africa (William Langer, Our
Vichy Gamble [New York i966], 365).
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