Perception and Misperception in International Politics

Fülszöveg

Perception and Misperception in International Politics
"Professor Jervis' new book will be-come a Iandmark in the study of psychological factors affecting foreign policy-making. It provides a major new critical synthesis of psychological the-ories and findings on perception and misperception, and indicates in a con-crete, illuminating way their relevance for understanding how foreign policy-makers diagnose and deal with emer-gent situations in international politics."
—Alexander L. George, Stanford University
This book demonstrates that deci-sion-makers' perceptions of the world and of other actors diverge from reality in patterns that we can detect and for reasons that we can comprehend. Draw-ing on a wide rangé of historical cases, Róbert Jervis shows how this knowl-edge can be used not only to explain specific decisions but alsó to account
Limited Paperback Editions (LPEs) make available a limited quantity of certain of our larger and more specialized books in solt-cover... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Perception and Misperception in International Politics
"Professor Jervis' new book will be-come a Iandmark in the study of psychological factors affecting foreign policy-making. It provides a major new critical synthesis of psychological the-ories and findings on perception and misperception, and indicates in a con-crete, illuminating way their relevance for understanding how foreign policy-makers diagnose and deal with emer-gent situations in international politics."
—Alexander L. George, Stanford University
This book demonstrates that deci-sion-makers' perceptions of the world and of other actors diverge from reality in patterns that we can detect and for reasons that we can comprehend. Draw-ing on a wide rangé of historical cases, Róbert Jervis shows how this knowl-edge can be used not only to explain specific decisions but alsó to account
Limited Paperback Editions (LPEs) make available a limited quantity of certain of our larger and more specialized books in solt-cover editions, with the soft covers priced at 50 to 60 per cent of the price of the cioth-bound edition. These books are, in our judgment, too specialized to be issued in the larger quantities that are ordi-nariiy required for paperback editions, but we hope that LPEs will make them more widely available to students and scholars.
Princeton University Press
for patterns of interaction and to im-prove our understanding of interna-national relations.
The first section discusses the con-, cept of an actor's intentions, develops a framework of rules by which ob-servers infer others' future behavior from past behavior, and analyzes the dominant psychological approach to international relations. The second section examines the ways that decision-makers process information and form, maintain, and change their beliefs. In the third section, several common mis-perceptions are considered—the tend-ency to see others as more centralized and calculating than they are and the conditions under which others' actions are perceived to be autonomous rather than reactions to the actor's own behavior. Ways in which decision-makers could minimize misperception are the subject of the final section.
"This book is very important. It rep-resents what I regard as a new wave in political science, the application of psychology concepts conceraing attitűdé, thought, perception, and language to the situations confronting decision-makers. Róbert Jervis is the best rep-resentative of this new point of view for a book aimed at a wide academic audience."—Róbert P. Abelson, Yale University
Róbert Jervis is Professor of Political Science at the University of Cali-fornia, Los Angeles.
Written under the auspices of the Center for International Affairs, Harvard University Vissza