Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon have a fascinating article in Foreign Policy arguing that a variety of human cognitive biases all tilt the scales in arguments unduly in favor of hawkish, aggressive solutions and away from dovish, compromise oriented ones. The editors of the FP website asked Matt Continetti and myself (aka "the Matt Continetti of the left") to write responses. You can see Continetti's take here and mine here. A second round should emerge online soon.
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Why Hawks Win
03 Jan 2007 09:27 am
Comments (29)
Matt, I actually think you very uncharacteristically whiff in your analysis linked above. The notion that wars happen far more often than they "ought" may indeed be correct, but your reasons do not prove it so. For one, you don't take into account uncertainty. Maybe there was a 50% chance Hitler's regime would emerge from WWII better off than he entered it. The fact that the "other" 50% outcome ended up happening does not in itself de-justify the argument for taking the action that ultimately proved unfortunate (for him). That's like saying it was dumb of a homeowner to buy fire insurance because his house did not, ultimately, burn down.
Second, you ignore the universe of wars that were not fought. Maybe for every war that is fought where one or more participants end up being worse off and thus should have avoided war, there is another war that is not fought where the winners would have benefitted more than the losers would have been harmed.
Finally, this whole stylised analysis is very, very old-fashioned in its view of how wars actually happen. Maybe the model fits well enough when you have something like Iraq War I, where Saddam and the coalition essentially decided to go to war with each other (though still it was quite a bit more complex). But mostly, the two sides don't "decide" to fight. Did WWII-era Rumania "decide" to fight a war with the United States? Think of your run-of-the-mill catastrophic African civil war where many factions fight over resources. It's not as though one leader and his advisors choose the war option, wisely or unwisely.
I'm not sure war always means someone was mistaken--if sociopathic country A has a 99% chance of being able to completely wipe out wimpy country B and take all of B's resources, then it could be in A's interest to invade and in B's interest to make any desperate attempt at resistance that they can.
You could argue that if both nations were rational they could reach a compromise position in which B gives A some massive tribute, but failure to reach such a position could be attributed to breakdowns in trust and credibility rather than cognitive bias.
Take the USA's oppression of Native Americans, for example. We succeeded in taking a great deal from them to our immense material benefit, but it hardly follows from that the any tribes resisting our domination were "mistaken".
At the risk of sounding cynical, I think you really have to separate the interests of the country as a whole from those of its leaders, when discussing war.
The fact is, war is a very exciting thing. I'm almost certain that the post 9-11 world has (until recently at least) been the most exhilirating time for neocons and Bush supporters. Bush clearly wanted to be a war president. If the Iraq war involved real personal sacrifices for these people, I doubt they would have favored it.
Or, look at Adolf Hitler. Launching his country into war fed his grandiose fantasies and made his life more exciting and meaningful, for a while.
Other wars, in which the agressor really does have somthing to gain from it, are often motivated from the bottom up rather than the top down. Here, think of the British colonization of India, which in its early stages took place mostly as a private venture. Or, think of the expansion against native Americans by the colonies and later the U.S. This was largely motivated by private people who wanted the land and saw that they would be able to take it. In both these cases, war was a rational response in the sense that the perpetrators calculated that they would come out ahead.
even when people are aware of the context and possible constraints on someone’s behavior, they often do not factor it in when assessing the other side’s motives
Matt - when you look at the context and possible constraints on your behavior, you can see your article as more an emotional reaction than a rational reaction.
You were a hawk on Iraq, initially. It's easy to imagine this caused some emotional pain for you, as it separated you from your natural, political tribesmen, such as Atrios.
You eventually changed your mind on Iraq and have become aggressive in your dovishness. Your predictable reaction to the FP article is that the authors didn't push their analysis far enough.
I mention this as a way of saying that these types of 'analysis' of how our brains impact decision-making all can be turned back on the person making the argument. In that way, I find they are very unpersuasive.
Having said that, I am on your side with regard to both Iraq and Iran. I just don't think the science of decision-making is particularly useful as a way to support one side versus the other.
P.S. For my money, Antonio Damasio is the world's leading researcher on emotion and decision-making. His most recent book, Looking for Spinoza offers an excellent primer on how emotion impacts every aspect of the decision-making process, though I doubt you'll find something in there which will help you win political arguments.
A. Humans are biased towards hawkishness.
B. In the post-WW2 era, Europeans and Japanese are biased towards dovishness.
Hence,
C. Europeans and Japanese since WW2 have ceased to be human.
The fad of extrapolating current political tendencies nto permanent genetic or evo-psych causes is fucking idiotic. It is most frequently exposed as idiotic by quick cross-cultural or time-longitudinal comparisons, which show that the "permanent universal" features being described are neither permanent nor universal.
Why Hawks Win
Puzzling over this post. After all, the Hawks have lost 11 of their last 12. Almost all of their good players have been hurt at one point or another, including Joe Johnson, who has turf toe (where's the turf at?) and a sore calf.
Oh, not those Hawks?
I think the posted story is looking at things backwards, it isn't "why do hawks win when their policies are bad" but rather "that hawks win shows their policies are good". Occam's razor beats the psycho-babble explanation every day.
Thanks, Dr. Pangloss...er, I mean, Al.
brooksfoe,
I don't think the authors are trying to extrapolate current political tendencies into evo-psych explanations. Rather, I think the thesis is that humans evolved in a certain environment (small groups of 50-100 hunter gatherers, often in conflict with neighboring groups), which our psychological traits are adapted to. In the context of the current political environment, these traits may be biased too much one way or another. The authors believe, and try to support, the hypothesis that we are biased too much toward hawkishness.
Isn't there likely to be a rather large, and unacknowledged, gender gap here? Preferring "aggressive" solutions to "compromised-based" ones is seen as a key difference between male and female styles of management.
You eventually changed your mind on Iraq and have become aggressive in your dovishness. Your predictable reaction to the FP article is that the authors didn't push their analysis far enough.
Hold it--emotional reaction and rational reaction aren't mutually exclusive--presumably emotions evolved for a reason. To react to a mistake by changing your behavior is by no means irrational. The couple of studies cited by Kahneman and Renshon, on the other hand, all highlighted outcomes in which the emotional response differed from the rational one. To show causality is not to show irrationality.
I'm surprised no one has brought up the evolutionary reasons for these psychological biases. If we have evolved these biases, does that imply there is an evolutionary advantage? One would assume yes.
Take the Option A and Option B example. Statistically, Option A may be better (barely) if everyone in a large population chooses Option B 10% of them walk away without any loss at all. In all likelihood, we are decedents of those 10%.
Mark, the crucial thing to remember is that modern humanity evolved on the African savannah, where small tribes banded together to protect their vulnerable women and children from hyenas.
Now I want you to get up, and look out your window. Do you see any hyenas? I don't know about you, but I see a parking lot filled with mass-produced automobiles and a street paved by the County government.
Evolutionary psychology is fun and all, but the trouble with hawks is that those primitive hair-trigger instincts don't serve us as well in an era of economic interdependence and modern killing machinery as they did on the savannah.
"Now I want you to get up, and look out your window. Do you see any hyenas?"
Homer Simpson:"Lisa, can I buy your rock?"
it's a very good comment, matt, and excellent application to a current issue.
BUT--here's the really important thing.
you *do* not write an eponymous blog.
you *can* not write an eponymous blog.
(unless you are named after the blog, which you are not.)
it is the thing that has the name *first*, and after which the later thing is named, that is called "eponymous".
OED: eponymous: that gives (his) name to anything: said esp. of the mythical personages from whose names the names of places or peoples are reputed to be derived.
so: you are the eponymous author of a blog, "matthew yglesias", which is named after you and derives its name from yours. the blog is not eponymous, you are.
the way you are using it isn't even an alternative, or tertiary sense, or anything.
other than that, though, excellent comment.
"Now I want you to get up, and look out your window. Do you see any hyenas?"
Why, yes, I do--although my office is across the street from the courthouse, and many of them are prosecutors as well as hyenas.
I think it's a very good article and it rightly avoids coming down one way or the other on current issues - that would have instantly made it partisan and less effective.
But I wonder about the central assumption of the opening question - "Why are hawks so influential?". If we are talking about whether or not to go to war then it can be argued that hawkes are not that influential. There are far more instances of international conflict where the US has not gone to war as opposed to going to war. And when it comes to war there seems to be a marked reserve - Clinton took 3 years before being presuaded to intervene in Bosnia, it took 9/11 before the US took defintive action against the Taliban and Saddam. It doesn't suggest that the US is really at the mercy of hair-trigger hawkes.
But the article does outline the sort of innate psychology that goes on in conflict situations but it cannot, as Matt wants, predict whether or not a hawkish or dovish stand will necessarily turn out to be the best.
I agree with Marshall above. Also, however, Continetti was sidestepping the issue at hand by attributing reactive devaluation, a concept pertaining to international relations, to doves by dint of their opposition to President Bush's policies. Similarly, he writes: "Doves optimistically argued that Saddam could be 'contained' even as the sanctions against him were unraveling and as America’s military presence in Saudi Arabia became increasingly untenable." This is the fallacy of false alternatives -- accept an allegedly unsustainable peace (I say allegedly unsustainable because he was, in fact, essentially being contained, because sanctions could have been loosened to remain viable, and the costs of keeping forces in the region, seen at the time as prohibitive, have been dwarfed by the costs of war and occupation) or initiate a war. There were probably many more than two options -- not all unalloyed wonderfulness, to be sure, any more than the death of hundreds of thousands since the invasion and the political situation in Iraq today are unalloyed wonderfulness.
Consumatopia -
Hold it--emotional reaction and rational reaction aren't mutually exclusive--presumably emotions evolved for a reason
I didn't say that they were mutually exclusive.
In fact, if you look at the work of Antonio Damasio, he would say that the fact that the brain uses emotions to guide decision-making is a more 'reasonable' approach for humans than the myth that we can make decisions based on rational analysis that is not influenced by emotions.
Regardless, my larger point is that knowing how the brain works in general doesn't lead us to much in terms of how we should make decisions. Did Bush fail to listen to his more hawkish advisors with regard to Bin Laden prior to 9/11? Had he listened to those more hawkish advisors prior to 9/11, could he have prevented it? If 9/11 was prevented through military action against Bin Laden in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, maybe Bush wouldn't have had the trigger event that allowed him to sell the Iraq War to the American people. Blah, blah, blah. There is still much to learn about how the brain operates, and jumping to conclusions about how we should change decision-making apparatus based on what we know today about the brain is premature. It just ends up in circular arguments and doesn't materially help analysis of our challenges/solutions.
Again, I agree with Matt's opinions on Iraq and Iran.
Wow, Continetti's is awful.
All of the below reasons why stock analysts are bullish apply to why fp analysts are hawkish.
http://www.slate.com/id/2108387/?nav=navoa
These realities create what might be described as Pascal's Wager for Brokerage Analysts, a risk/reward equation that, when everyone else is positive, makes it risky to be negative:
* If the analyst is positive and right, he or she gets one point (it's good to be right, but others usually share the credit).
* If the analyst is positive and wrong, he or she loses one point (a black eye, but others share the pain and blame).
* If the analyst is negative and right, he or she gets three points (companies and investors scream, but everyone respects a good call, and sooner or later they'll come groveling back).
* If the analyst is negative and wrong, he or she loses ten points (companies, investors, and bankers scream, the stock rises, and, in addition to trashing relationships, the analyst becomes the village idiot).
I didn't say that they were mutually exclusive.
Nor did you recognize the distinction, which invalidates the example you offered--it isn't enough just to offer an emotional explanation, you have to describe an instance in which the emotional result is irrational.
In fact, if you look at the work of Antonio Damasio, he would say that the fact that the brain uses emotions to guide decision-making is a more 'reasonable' approach for humans than the myth that we can make decisions based on rational analysis that is not influenced by emotions.
But Kahneman and Renshon don't buy into that myth--they aren't arguing that we could make decision in a purely rational way, but they are showing instances in which, in some simplified experiments for which the rational choice is clear, our emotional responses deviate from that choice.
Did Bush fail to listen to his more hawkish advisors with regard to Bin Laden prior to 9/11?
No, those guys were already planning to invade Iraq.
There is still much to learn about how the brain operates, and jumping to conclusions about how we should change decision-making apparatus based on what we know today about the brain is premature.
In an uncertain world, our decisions are always going to be premature. We do the best we have with the information we have. If our knowledge of what happens in any single brain is fuzzy, then surely our knowledge of what happens in collections of brains called "societies" is even fuzzier. But dealing with societies is the whole business of government. You go to war (or peace) with the neuroscience you have, not the neuroscience you want.
I'm agnostic as to whether there actually is an overall hawk bias in our neurons, but clearly there is one in our country--for an epic disaster like Iraq to have occurred, there must have been some deep error in our thinking that caused us to be too likely to launch wars. One might fret that we could overcorrect and fail to fight a war later that needs to be fought--but given how much noise we still hear about escalating Iraq and refusing to even talk to Iran, then clearly we're a long way from that point.
If we have evolved these biases, does that imply there is an evolutionary advantage? One would assume yes.
One would be fired from one's post as a biology professor, then, wouldn't one?
Mark, the crucial thing to remember is that modern humanity evolved on the African savannah,
At the risk of sounding repetitive, no. The crucial thing to remember is that Americans were reflexively dovish in the 1930s, reflexively hawkish in the '50s and '60s, reflexively dovish in the '70s, reflexively hawkish in the '80s, reflexively dovish in the '90s, and reflexively hawkish in the early '00s, and seem to be turning back to dovishness at the moment; Germans were reflexively hawkish in the 1910s, reflexively dovish in the '20s, reflexively hawkish in the '30s, and reflexively dovish pretty much from the '50s on; Brits were reflexively hawkish in the '10s, dovish in the '20s and '30, hawkish in the '40s and '50s, dovish in the '60s and '70s, hawkish in the '80s, and dovish from the '90s on...and so forth.
The alleged "innate human bias towards hawkishness" the article advances is an explanation in search of a phenomenon. More importantly, I feel, it reflects American cross-cultural and historical illiteracy: an inability to notice that other countries do not share our political sentiments du jour, and that our political sentiments du jour are not the same as our sentiments d'hier.
Just for the record, Brooksfoe, there were several battalions of sarcasm in my response to Mark.
Not to disparage genuine research in evolutionary psychology, but most of the people who assume evolutionary bases for human behavior are just attempting to add a nice shiny veneer of pseudoscience to their own biases. Whether or not there is an evolutionary basis for a hawkish bias is irrelevant to whether the bias exists and whether it is harmful in the modern world.
But let's be clear about one thing-- cultural variability does not disprove the existence of a biological phenomenon. Nature/nurture isn't either/or. The authors of the FP piece made a specific argument based upon actual data, and your historical anecdotes really don't address their thesis.
you *can* not write an eponymous blog. - kid bitzer
Ha! Since I am not actually Matthew Yglesias, but rather another contributor who has now renamed himself *after the blog* -- *I* am now the author of this eponymous blog!
Moo ha ha ha ha!
Wow, Cornetti's response to your response ( http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3679&page=2#continetti2 ) was really disappointing--he seemed to miss the point entirely, and his examples were looney. WW1 allied powers would disagree? Right, that's why isolationism never gained any power WW1 popularity... And how are examples of nations that benefited by not winning their war examples of hawks being correct--they would have benefited more if they had surrendered immediately!
I don't have a problem with the conclusion, but MY's argument is broken. He's working off a censored sample.
Grant that every war involves at least one case of mistaken hawkishness, and that wars happens. That doesn't prove that human judgement is biased toward hawkishness, just that mistaken hawkishness happens. Some wars would still happen, even if humans had a general dovish bias, provided hawkish error could sometimes happen.
Put another way, by looking only at wars, MY's gathering cases of mistaken hawkishness and discarding cases of mistaken dovishness.
I think the basic premise is that people want to slay dragons and solve problems rather than tap dance around things. That tends to favor the hawkish, because by definition, they're the people who like to cut the Gordian Knot.
However, I think it's just a matter of how you frame the argument. Don't frame it as passiveness, frame it as active engagement. Don't frame it as avoiding a direct solution, frame it as attempting a direct solution, only by other means. Don't frame it as a halting of the process, but a means of forwarding it in the most advantageous direction. War is not the only kind of action possible.
Also, don't take war off the table. You need a Damocles sword with real potential to drop a lot of times; hell, you need it to actually drop on occasion. War, though, needs to be considered and executed carefully, and it doesn't always simplify the situation as people imagine it to.
Comments closed January 17, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Well, if you believe the democratic peace, it's clear that institutional arrangements - at least where both sides have similar institutions - overwhelm these cognitive biases.
Posted by otto | January 3, 2007 9:36 AM