Why do states fail to properly perceive threats from other countries? An introduction to 'Perception and Misperception in International Politics' (1976)

Every day, various events occur around the world, and it is impossible to know everything about them. Leaders choosing foreign policy in international politics attempt to use various information to solve the problems before them, but information is rarely fully available, and even when it is, leaders may still severely misunderstand it for some reason.

This is a critical factor that can have a significant impact on the choice of foreign policy, and it is analyzed in detail in the book 'Perception and Misperception in International Politics' (1976) by American political scientist Robert Jervis. In this pioneering work, Jervis examined how the psychology of perception influences political decision-making.

Jervis, R. (1976). Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Princeton University Press.( Jervis, Robert, 'Perception and Misperception in International Politics', Misuzu Shobo, 2025 )

When Jervis published this work, it was common in international relations to view the state as a unitary actor that acts to maximize its own gains. Especially among researchers discussing security and nuclear strategy, this assumption was accepted as the basis for analysis; for example, it was expected that if a state engaged in an arms buildup, its neighbors would either build up their own arms to counter the threat or strengthen alliances with third countries. However, the cognitive process by which a state's leader perceives another country as a threat was never clearly explained. Incorporating psychological insights to address this challenge is the significance of this research.

This work reveals that to advance research in international relations, it is important to view the state not as a unitary rational actor, but as a collection of individuals with private interests and motives. In the first place, state leaders, like ordinary people, are born and raised in historical, cultural, economic, and social environments unique to their respective countries and regions. Therefore, even if they are given the exact same information, they do not always respond in the same way. Each has a different personality, holds certain biases, and has varying capacities for processing complex information. Incorporating these psychological factors of leaders is essential for research in international relations.

Jervis is not the only researcher to have paid attention to the psychological factors of leaders. American political scientist Harold Lasswell proposed an approach to incorporate psychological factors into political science research in 'Psychopathology and Politics' (1930), contributing to the subsequent development of political psychology. While this work relies on psychological research from 1930 and its methodology is limited to qualitative analysis of a few cases, it concludes that a politician's personality, ambitions, and political thinking differ significantly depending on the family environment in which they were raised. This is important as a study attempting to explain that politicians may sometimes pursue their own ambitions at the expense of the public interest, but Lasswell's research did not contribute to the study of international relations, and it was also necessary to develop an analysis based on subsequent psychological research findings.

In the book, the concept of 'image' is introduced to explain the influence of a leader's perception on foreign policy. An image can provide either a positive or negative evaluation regarding the attributes of a certain state. Although its content is extremely vague, the author points out that it nonetheless has a strong influence on human perception, as follows:

While the degree to which individuals can accept information that contradicts their images varies, this tendency is present in everyone. Every time people process information, they attempt to integrate it with the image they already hold. The author points out that even researchers are not immune to this cognitive rigidity, noting that theoretical flaws can be concealed or that theory updates can stagnate despite the existence of new evidence (Ibid.: 187). Regardless of intellectual ability, anyone can fall into this typical closed-minded thinking.

A state leader might hold a favorable image of a certain country. A leader caught in such an image would support strengthening economic ties and promoting cultural exchange with that country. Because of this image, even if information is received that the country has ambitions and is preparing for war, they might underestimate its value and delay the decision-making required for deterrence. This does not mean that all images lead to disadvantages in foreign policy, but if the image was wrong from the start, or if the other party was engaging in deception, this misperception could deal a devastating blow to national security. Regarding this point, the author states, 'The stability of images will reduce the impact of friction in alliances that erode friendly relations. However, when other states change, or when the initial image was wrong, the cost of maintaining the existing image will be extremely high' (Ibid.: 191).

From this perspective, the author examines how historical experience shapes people's images of other countries and how that influences foreign policy. Interestingly, he argues that the images people hold of other countries tend to stem from events they experienced directly, and that these events often occurred during the individual's adulthood or at the beginning of their career (Ibid.: 239). This argument overlaps with Lasswell's analysis. According to Lasswell's view, a politician's ideology is formed from childhood through adulthood and does not change significantly thereafter. In the author's argument as well, people's images are established by adulthood. It usually takes about 20 years to reach a position of responsibility in a state, and during that time, those newly formed images do not have much influence on policy.

However, after 20 years have passed, those who were once young people come to power, and they begin to choose policies based on entirely new images (Ibid.: 260). From this, the author estimates that new events are not immediately learned and lead to changes in images, and that it takes 20 years for major policy revisions to occur. I believe that shortening this organizational learning cycle as much as possible is an important task for ensuring appropriate national foreign policy.

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