Often, insecure, authoritarian regimes play up the negative news and graphically broadcast them. Curbs on alternative views tend to accentuate this phenomenon of panic and general uncertainty. In many wars, personalities of actors who committed genocide are linked with Hitler, Milosovic and others which engrave the message still further. This bias reinforces the over-estimation of rare events: they attract a disproportionate level of attention with few instances that actually occur being splashed all over the news. Moreover, because people vividly remember those rare events they conclude that since they are more frequent, that is the reality. Disinformation, misinformation and pseudo- information play a major part in as vested interests are involved in pursuing their motives.
In addition, the regime type of states can be of central importance. For example, in democracies, the existence of a free press, greater policy debates, institutional checks and balances, social media and number of actors involved in the decision-making process raise chances that particular nature of information could be correct as against the ingrained cognitive stereotypes and mindsets.
A bias, that is part of the available meta-bias, is the 'hindsight bias': "I knew it all along". The inability to reconstruct past beliefs will inevitably cause one to underestimate the extent than being surprised by past events. This bias is also known as the 'outcome bias.' One is often prone to blame the decision-makers for good decisions that worked out badly and to give them too little credit for successful moves that appear obvious only after the fact.
This hindsight bias also leads to the belief that the future is predictable. After all, in hindsight it seems obvious how the course of events led to the now known outcome. Here, the basic illusion is that one believes to understand and know the past; and therefore implies that the future also should be likewise knowable. But, in fact, we know the past less than we believe we do. In hindsight, one neglects all the signs that pointed in a different direction and overlooks all the other possible outcomes that seemed to be at the time.
Another common bias of the human mind is known as the 'negativity bias' also linked with 'availability bias.' Negativity bias, as a fundamental principle of human cognition, negative factors have a greater impact than positive ones across a wide-range of psychological phenomena.
Why are human beings so susceptible to negativity bias? Psychologists believe that the dominance of bad over good has existed since ancient times as survival syndrome as an adaptive trait to avoid lethal dangers to humans in evolutionary history caused by natural catastrophes and threats from wild animals.
For instance, this negativity bias could have an impact on the 'threat sensitivity' of states: how states identify opportunities and dangers prior to conflict. A heightened reaction to negative information indicates potential dangers compared to positive information suggesting opportunities. This negativity bias helps explain many critical behaviours in international relations, including security dilemma, threat inflation, the outbreak and persistence of war, loss aversion, the neglect of opportunities for cooperation and the prominence of failure in institutional memory and learning.
A bias that at first glance seems to contradict with the negativity bias is the 'positivity bias': over-confidence about own capacity, abilities, over-estimate own control over events, over-optimism about future prospects. However, this bias could actually go together with the negativity bias because they apply to different contexts.
People often privilege negative information about external environment and other actors but only adhere to positive information about themselves. The co-existence of these biases can actually raise the odds of conflict. Decision-makers simultaneously exaggerate the severity of threats and overconfident about own capacity to deal with the situation could be problematic.
The effect of the negativity bias could be pronounced if it is combined with the halo-effect: the tendency to (like or dislike) everything about a person or as an illustration (or country) - including things one has not observed. The negative form of the halo-effect, called horn-effects is a common bias that plays major role in shaping views of people and situations. As an illustration, one can see this kind of effect, for example, pertaining to Russia: everything Russia says or does nowadays is viewed suspiciously. An act or statement that would be viewed as neutral if coming from Germany, but viewed negatively about Russia.
The same halo-effect, both positive and negative, can be observed with US president Trump in everything he says or does. In a polarized situation, he is viewed negatively or positively leaving out a balanced view on merits. A yet another bias that could increase both the negativity and positivity bias effect is the 'confirmation bias'. This bias entails the tendency to look for information that confirms people's pre-emptive view on the world or a particular person - thereby ignoring any piece of information that contradict those views.
People will seek data that is likely to be compatible with their beliefs they hold. For example, on US President Trump, people who dislike everything about him will ignore a smart, sensible decision by him and the people who love him conveniently ignore the lies that he tells or just say it is fake news.
Perception for security risk variance and the reality vary is the perception of the severity of a certain risk. Utility theory assumes that actors are fully rational and make trade-offs on a calculation of relative gains and losses, people should choose In contrast, the utility theory, prospect theory acknowledges that people have subjective values towards gains and losses. This clarifies why people tend to prefer a sure gain over a chance at a greater gain, while a sure loss is worse than a chance at a greater loss.
The fact that people act in this way can be attributed to the cognitive framing effect. People make different trade-offs when something is presented as a gain as opposed to something presented as a loss.
Hence, it can be said that, when a trade-off is framed in terms of a 'gain', people tend to be risk averse, while when trade-offs are framed as a 'loss', people tend to be risk-seeking. The outcome can also be explained by two different elements. On the one hand, people tend to place more value on changes closer to status quo in terms of time, than they do to changes further away from their current state. On the other hand, people also attach greater value to something when it is considered to be a potential loss as opposed to when it is a potential gain.
This also applies to countries because countries are led by people. Sometimes in ultra or hyper- nationalism, certain countries do not view world economics/globalization as a 'win-win' situation, but as a 'zero-sum' game. Countries that see the world through a 'zero-sum' template are likely to suffer risks to avoid a bigger losses over what they perceive as a certain loss. America's protectionist and isolationist measures could be partly explained by this phenomenon.
When applying this to the (international) security, two important implications are apparent. First, people will trade more often for security that lets them keep what they already possess. For example, a country will invest more in maintaining control over territory it already possesses than over territory it can potentially acquire. Second, when considering security gains, people are more likely to accept a smaller, but more certain gain, than a larger gain, but when faced with security losses, people are willing to risk a larger loss as opposed to accepting the certainty of a small loss.
"Security is both a feeling and a reality. And they're not the same." On the basis of the above, it can be said that humans are vulnerable to a various range of biases, which influence the output. Consequently, this also affects the policies and actions of countries, as countries are led by people. Hence, being aware of the existence of biases is a first step in overcoming them. Biases are usually as products from fast, intuitive and impulsive cognitive system that are possessed by humans. By recognizing situations in which biases might creep in or dominate it is possible to actively mitigate actual decisions that may affect downstream economic, social and other decisions. This can be done by activating slower, more calculating cognitive deliberative system 'Mindfulness' is a relatively three decade new term in psychology (now recommended in almost all walks of life) to prevent unsound decisions leading to ill-adaptive behavior resulting there from. Gut feeling or common sense is quick, reassuring but generally impulsive, temperamental and bias- laden: this emotionalized thinking is a poor substitute for calm, logical decision-making. Still, with the best of intentions and precautions things can go awry as since there are many variables. So, security issues call for an introspective, ruminative and measured approach for minimizing wrong decisions that could affect the lives of millions of people.
(Concluded)
(The writer is presently Visiting Faculty, Dept of Defence and Strategic Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad)
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