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When Misperception Matters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

A. A. Stein
A. A. Stein
Affiliation:
University of California
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Abstract

This essay is an analysis of the implications of misperception—the inaccurate assessment by one actor of the other actor's preferences—in international relations. The author finds that misperception cannot affect the choice of an actor with a dominant strategy, although it can affect that actor's expectations as long as both actors are self-interested and seek to maximize their own payoffs. Misperception creates conflict only in a narrowly circumscribed range of situations, and even then the misperceived actor has no incentive to mask its true preferences. An actor who deceives does so in order to facilitate coordination through the other's misperception of its preferences, and thus to avoid conflict—not to create it. Three possible outcomes can occur when both actors misperceive, and in only one of the three does misperception cause conflict that would otherwise be avoidable. In a formal analysis of the limited set of situations that characterize international crises, misperception is found neither to create conflict nor to lead to the escalation of crisis into war.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , July 1982 , pp. 505 - 526
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1982

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References

1 White, Ralph K., “Misperception as a Cause of Two World Wars,” in Nobody Wanted War: Misperception in Vietnam and Other Wars, rev. ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970), 3–33Google Scholar; Hosoya, Chihiro, “Miscalculations in Deterrent Policy: Japanese—U.S. Relations, 1938–41,” Journal of Peace Research, V (No. 2, 1968), 97–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoffmann, Stanley, “Revisionism Revisited,” in Miller, Lynn H. and Pruessen, Ronald W., eds., Reflections on the Cold War: A Quarter Century of American Foreign Policy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1974), 3–26Google Scholar; White, Ralph K., “Misperception in the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” Journal of Social Issues, XXXIII (Winter 1977). 190–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Jervis, , Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976).Google Scholar

3 In a competitive market, an actor may misperceive the market and the nature of supply and demand conditions. But this does not involve misperception of any individual actor's intentions. The market analogy is prevalent in the works of Waltz and Kaplan: see Waltz, Kenneth N., Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979)Google Scholar; Kaplan, Morton A., Towards Professionalism in International Theory: Macrosystem Analysis (New York: Free Press, 1979).Google Scholar

4 If an actor knows not only its own preferences and the fact that it is in a constant-sum game but recognizes the game as zero-sum, then it can determine not only the other's preferences but its actual utilities as well.

5 Farrar, L.L. Jr,, “The Limits of Choice: July 1914 Reconsidered,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, XVI (March 1972), 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holsti, Ole R., Crisis Escalation War (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Snyder, Glenn H. and Diesing, Paul, Conflict Among Nations: Bargaining, Decision Making, and System Structure in International Crises (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

7 This analysis provides an interesting perspective on the question of whether President Roosevelt acted to bring on the war with Japan. It is not accurate to suggest that he wanted war, for the most preferred outcome was Japanese capitulation to American demands. On the other hand, he did prefer war to either compromise or capitulation by the United States, and understood that the American commitment to standing firm made war a possible outcome. In view of his belief that Japan would capitulate, Roosevelt did not expect war to be the outcome, but he did intend to stand firm, the possibility of war notwithstanding.

An interesting revisionist challenge might then be the following: Roosevelt did not misperceive Japanese preferences, recognized the game to be “deadlock,” and knew that war was coming. Although he continued to stand firm by American demands, he did not actively prepare for war because he did not want to be accused of wanting war or of bringing it about. He thus pretended to expect Japanese concessions, knowing full well that, given the context, war was inevitable.

8 Misperception need not even affect an actor's expectations. An actor can assess the actual preference ordering inaccurately and still perceive another's dominant strategy accurately.

9 Brams, Steven J., “Deception in 2 × 2 Games,” Journal of Peace Science, II (Spring 1977), 171–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar, analyzes the situations in which actors have an incentive to deceive others. One cannot simply call misperception the flip side of deception, however, and presume that situations in which the outcome is affected by deception constitute the universe of situations in which misperception affects the outcome. After all, mis-perception can occur even when the misperceived actor has no incentive to deceive. Moreover, the present paper is specifically concerned with assessing the implications of misperception for international conflict and cooperation, and the conclusions suggest that situations in which actors have an incentive to deceive are not the ones in which misperception results in otherwise avoidable conflict.

10 Cf. Jervis (fn. 2), 217–82; May, Ernest R., “Lessons” of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).Google Scholar

11 Rapoport, Anatol and Guyer, Melvin J., “A Taxonomy of 2 × 2 Games,” General Systems, XI (1966), 203–14Google Scholar, enumerate the 78 unique 2 × 2 games. Most do not have labels and probably not all have real-world equivalents.

12 The analysis that follows assumes that actors know that these games constitute the universe of crisis situations. Although Snyder and Diesing's (fn. 6) argument-that the universe of crisis situations they analyze reduces to these nine games—is convincing, there may, of course, be other games that capture the essence of situations which occur in international relations. Nevertheless, many preference orderings are nonsensical when applied to international politics; thus, decision makers may implicitly understand that the universe of possible situations is limited.