Supplementary Reading Summaries:
Perception and Misperception in International Politics
by Robert Jervis
&
“ ACognitive Approach to the Study of Foreign Policy”
by Jerel A. Rosati
Randall Kent Cohn
IR 725 Foreign Policy Analysis
Professor Pentony
March 2005
Jarel A. Rosati, “A Cognative Approach to the Study of Foreign Policy,” in Foreign Policy
Analysis: Continuity and Change in Its Second Generation (Neack, Hey, Haney, eds),
Prentice Hall, New Jersey,1995.
Rosati provides a useful review of the literature surrounding cognitive approaches to foreign
policy analysis. He sketches out three broad stages in the development of the field, and then He
identifies the beginnings of social-psychological analysis in what he calls the ‘early efforts’ to
apply psychological findings to the field of international relations, a time in which the
scholarship was mostly being done by psychologists with an interest in international relations.
The ‘first generation’ of cognitive IR scholarship, which was partially a reaction to the
social-psychological work, began a systematic study of how beliefs, images and attitudes effect
foreign policy decisions, focusing on theories of cognitive consistency. These theories were
brought together in Robert Jervis’ seminal book Perception and Misperception in International
Politics (see below for a summary). ‘Second-generation scholarship’ emerged from the
cognitive revolution that overtook psychology in the 1970s, and introduced social cognition
theory and schema theory, which share similar foundational beliefs, but which differ from one
another regarding the liklihood and nature of attitudinal change. From these theories, a variety
of strands of study has emerged, including operational codes, cognitive mapping, attribution
theory, and self-reflection theory, which – though much is left to be done – provide a “useful
corrective to the rational actor perspective.”
Rating: 2
Rosati manages to pack a lot of very complicated ideas into a very small amount of space, and
his article is a useful jumping off point for a student looking for examples of applied cognitive
theory. He identifies the shared roots, and then parses out some of the most important differences
among several competing theoretical accounts of cognition and foreign policy decision making.
He keeps his vocabulary accessible, and is careful to acknowledge some of the inconsistencies
and unanswered questions which plague a theoretical school to which he has obvious allegiances.
This article will not teach the reader much about how to do cognitive analysis, but it will
certainly point him towards works which can.
Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, Princeton University
Press, Princeton, 1976.
Jervis’ book was a foundational text in the movement to bring psychological analysis into the
mainstream of International Relations theory. He begins by outlining the various imperfections
in attempts to locate and describe perceptions as part of decision making – lack of complete data,
lack of convincing control for identifying causation, and the paradoxical perceptual biases of the
scholarship itself. Nonetheless, he argues, International Relations ignores psychology at great
folly. First he provides background on psychological approaches and seeks to situate them in
relation to conventional language of Foreign Policy analysis, remaining critical of both
traditions. He then takes a look at the literature on cognitive consistency, paying particular
attention to how images of others are initially created, how they become reinforced to the point
that they resist challenges based on lived experience, and how changes in established perceptions
operate in the occasions where they do occur. He identifies several categories of common
misperceptions: the attribution of increased autonomy to others, the attribution of rationality to
others, the influence of hopes and fears, and the tendency towards wishful thinking. He addresses
the motivational factors from cognitive dissonance which influence people to put themselves at
ease by restructuring the narrative of their experiences so as to remove individual responsibility.
Finally, he argues for the utility of cognitive analysis as a complementary source of scholarship
to inform and challenge traditional interest-based analysis, even as ge is careful not to suggest
that cognitive approaches can somehow replace it. Even though the discussion of perceptions is
imperfect, he argues, awareness of common models of misperception can help policymakers and
scholars minimize their recurrence and make judicious, effective decisions.
Rating: 1
Jervis’ book is popular for a reason. It is clear, well-organized, easy to read, and manages to be
both ambitious in its boldness and decisively cautious in a way that lends it a great deal of
credibility. His basic premise – that the emerging field of cognitive psychology (the book was
written in 1976) had relevance to International Relations scholarship – has proven to be
prescient, even if the nature of those links is still somewhat underdeveloped. The discourse on
perception in IR has grown a great deal since 1976, however the book does a great job of
locating that period’s scholarly avant-garde, providing a valuable resource for students who want
to better understand the origins of contemporary theories of cognition.