Jeffrey D Berejikian
Biographic Data
| ID | 305697 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jeffrey D Berejikian |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jeffrey D |
| FAMILY NAME | Berejikian |
| SIGNATURE | BEREJIKIAN J D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Georgia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2899-6319 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 90 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The causes and consequences of public misperceptions about the origins of the Russo-Ukrainian war
In this paper, we examine (1) how effective Russia’s propaganda is at legitimizing its military operation in Ukraine, (2) how effectively U.S. political elites can ‘fact-check’ the conflict justifications provided by the Russian government, and (3) how exposure to false claims influences public support for various U.S. responses. Our data analysis is based on two survey experiments. Survey 1 took place on February 24, 2022 (i.e., immediately afte…
Deserving Special Treatment? The Effect of Psychological Entitlement on Support for International Law
Previous studies in Psychology have identified Psychological Entitlement (PE) as an important variable that affects a wide variety of attitudes and behaviors in humans. PE is an individual-level character trait that describes a tendency to expect unwarranted and unearned rewards. In this paper, we build on existing research in Psychology and we investigate the effect of PE on foreign policy attitudes. Theoretically, we expect that those who score…
Does Military Experience Really Matter? An Empirical Examination of Decision Framing and Deterrence Decision-Making
While it is widely understood that risk tolerance shapes conflict behavior, research in cognitive psychology has long demonstrated that reframing otherwise identical objective conditions can significantly alter people’s risk perception. Nonetheless, the potential impact of reframing during immediate deterrence has received little empirical scrutiny. In this study, we focus our attention on a comparison of the lay public and experienced military o…
Conditional Assistance
In this paper, we explore how concerns about entrapment influence mass attitudes about armed support for an alliance partner. We focus on two separate dimensions of entrapment: allied crisis instigation and the risk of direct entanglement in a nuclear conflict. Our empirical analysis is based on US experimental survey data, collected in 2021. Our data analysis reveals two main findings. First, people are less likely to endorse military action in …
Defense treaties increase domestic support for military action and casualty tolerance
Do security guarantees affect people's willingness to spend their country's “blood and treasure” in a military crisis? Recent research finds that international legal commitments reshape domestic policy preferences. However, the focus of that scholarship is traditionally on issues such as human rights that define a society's normative obligations. In this study, we deploy two original survey experiments in the United States describing a potential …
Is There a Public–Military Gap in the United States? Evaluating Foundational Foreign Policy Beliefs
The presumed “gap” in fundamental foreign policy beliefs between what Huntington (1957) described as “liberal society” and the “conservative military mind” lies at the core of research on civil–military relations. However, we still know surprisingly little about the precise nature of differences between the two groups’ core foreign policy orientations. This study presents the first empirically grounded evaluation of the public–military gap. We de…
Analyzing Mass Attitudes Toward the International Court of Justice
This paper analyzes public attitudes about the International Court of Justice (ICJ). We explore two questions: (1) Why are some people in favor of submitting their country's disputes to the ICJ while others are opposed? (2) How can we explain variations in public support for compliance with a costly ICJ ruling? We argue that individual-level attitudes about both issues are driven by different psychological dynamics. While we expect that cost–bene…
Referenda as commitment devices – an experimental approach
This research note evaluates the claim that referenda can serve as useful commitment devices in international negotiations. More specifically, we relied on individual-level survey data to test the claim that governments can successfully “tie their hands” to policy choices by calling referenda on political issues. Our empirical analysis relied on original survey data collected in April 2019 in Belize. In so doing, we took advantage of an unusual p…
Why language matters
Despite the obvious the risks involved in deterrence bargaining, we know surprisingly little about how the public evaluates risk during a crisis. A limited deterrence scholarship considers domestic preferences and tends to assume that the public’s risk tolerance remains stable throughout a deterrence episode. Yet, robust findings in cognitive psychology suggest that people’s risk tolerance can shift dramatically based on how the potential outcome…
Behavioral Economics and Nuclear Weapons
Behavioral Economics and Nuclear Weapons
Recent discoveries in psychology and neuroscience have improved our understanding of why our decision making processes fail to match standard social science assumptions about rationality. As researchers such as Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and Richard Thaler have shown, people often depart in systematic ways from the predictions of the rational actor model of classic economic thought because of the influence of emotions, cognitive biases, an av…
Measuring social trust and trusting the measure
Decades of rigorous quantitative scholarship have generated a wealth of knowledge regarding the causes and consequences of crossnational variations in social trust. However, while some social science disciplines have made significant contributions to this conversation, others have largely failed to do so. The field of international relations, for example, has lagged behind in producing aggregate-level scholarship on social trust. This is surprisi…
David versus Goliath
Confronting a more powerful rival can be a risky proposition. This paper integrates prospect theory into the growing Neoclassical Realist (NCR) literature to identify the conditions under which decision makers are most likely to accept foreign policy risks. I argue that decision makers governing regimes with low levels of political counterframing are more likely to settle into a dominant loss frame when their external security environment erodes.…
The Political Psychology of Israeli Prime Ministers
Why do some foreign policy hawks evolve into doves? This is the central question motivating Yael S. Aronoff's examination of six Israeli prime ministers. While scholars have spent considerable energy focusing on why leaders opt for conflict, we know less about why hard-liners undergo a transformation that leads them to pursue negotiations in good faith. To address this question, Aronoff constructs a typology of decision making that combines relev…
Loss Aversion and Foreign Policy Resolve
This article draws upon recent findings from the field of neuroscience to explore how loss aversion affects foreign policy resolve. We theorize that U.S. policy makers are more resolute in pursuing preventive policies that seek to avoid losses than they are in pursuing promotive policies that seek to acquire new gains. To test our theory, we conduct the first large‐n analysis of foreign policy hypotheses derived from the neuroscience of loss aver…
Disaggregating Noncompliance
Why do states make disingenuous treaty commitments? Under what conditions will countries refrain from entering cooperative agreements with which they do not expect to comply? This article addresses these questions by analyzing how states that are pursuing nuclear weapons treat the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The authors develop a distinction between two types of noncooperative behavior. The first is cheating while part of the NPT (pred…
Model Building With Prospect Theory
Despite the growing call for new models of politics grounded in the capacities of real–world decision–makers, much international relations theory still incorporates rationalist assumptions. Scholars defend such assumptions as the best way to produce parsimonious theoretical structures. Recent attempts to deploy prospect theory in the study of international politics are consistent with the call for empirically grounded models of political behavior…
A Cognitive Theory of Deterrence
Prospect theory is an empirical model of choice that stands as the leading alternative to rationality for explaining decisions under conditions of risk. While many still defend the assumption of rationality as an appropriate starting point for the construction of international relations theory - deterrence theory especially - there is growing support for models of international politics grounded in the actual capacities of real-world decisionmake…
Reflexive Action in International Politics
Realist and liberal theories of international politics both assume that the essential parameters of international politics are fixed, though they differ as to the character of these parameters. We deploy decision psychology and discourse analysis to show how the seemingly limited choices of actors can and do affect these parameters. Thus realism and liberalism are poor guides to action, for they rest on empirical misconception and faulty logic. I…
Risk-Taking in International Politics
Revolutionary Collective Action and the Agent-Structure Problem
Unraveling the nexus between agents and structures is fundamental to an understanding of political and social change. The two most prominent methodological approaches to explain revolutionary collective action involve either individual reductionism or structural reductionism. Both approaches result in theoretical inconsistencies and/or explanatory anomalies. An alternative proposed here utilizes the concept offramingdeveloped in behavioral decisi…
Revolutionary Collective Action and the Agent-Structure Problem
Unraveling the nexus between agents and structures is fundamental to an understanding of political and social change. The two most prominent methodological approaches to explain revolutionary collective action involve either individual reductionism or structural reductionism. Both approaches result in theoretical inconsistencies and/or explanatory anomalies. An alternative proposed here utilizes the concept offramingdeveloped in behavioral decisi…
Disaggregating Noncompliance
Why do states make disingenuous treaty commitments? Under what conditions will countries refrain from entering cooperative agreements with which they do not expect to comply? This article addresses these questions by analyzing how states that are pursuing nuclear weapons treat the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The authors develop a distinction between two types of noncooperative behavior. The first is cheating while part of the NPT (pred…
A Cognitive Theory of Deterrence
Prospect theory is an empirical model of choice that stands as the leading alternative to rationality for explaining decisions under conditions of risk. While many still defend the assumption of rationality as an appropriate starting point for the construction of international relations theory - deterrence theory especially - there is growing support for models of international politics grounded in the actual capacities of real-world decisionmake…
Model Building With Prospect Theory
Despite the growing call for new models of politics grounded in the capacities of real–world decision–makers, much international relations theory still incorporates rationalist assumptions. Scholars defend such assumptions as the best way to produce parsimonious theoretical structures. Recent attempts to deploy prospect theory in the study of international politics are consistent with the call for empirically grounded models of political behavior…
Reflexive Action in International Politics
Realist and liberal theories of international politics both assume that the essential parameters of international politics are fixed, though they differ as to the character of these parameters. We deploy decision psychology and discourse analysis to show how the seemingly limited choices of actors can and do affect these parameters. Thus realism and liberalism are poor guides to action, for they rest on empirical misconception and faulty logic. I…
Why language matters
Despite the obvious the risks involved in deterrence bargaining, we know surprisingly little about how the public evaluates risk during a crisis. A limited deterrence scholarship considers domestic preferences and tends to assume that the public’s risk tolerance remains stable throughout a deterrence episode. Yet, robust findings in cognitive psychology suggest that people’s risk tolerance can shift dramatically based on how the potential outcome…
Defense treaties increase domestic support for military action and casualty tolerance
Do security guarantees affect people's willingness to spend their country's “blood and treasure” in a military crisis? Recent research finds that international legal commitments reshape domestic policy preferences. However, the focus of that scholarship is traditionally on issues such as human rights that define a society's normative obligations. In this study, we deploy two original survey experiments in the United States describing a potential …
Loss Aversion and Foreign Policy Resolve
This article draws upon recent findings from the field of neuroscience to explore how loss aversion affects foreign policy resolve. We theorize that U.S. policy makers are more resolute in pursuing preventive policies that seek to avoid losses than they are in pursuing promotive policies that seek to acquire new gains. To test our theory, we conduct the first large‐n analysis of foreign policy hypotheses derived from the neuroscience of loss aver…
Does Military Experience Really Matter? An Empirical Examination of Decision Framing and Deterrence Decision-Making
While it is widely understood that risk tolerance shapes conflict behavior, research in cognitive psychology has long demonstrated that reframing otherwise identical objective conditions can significantly alter people’s risk perception. Nonetheless, the potential impact of reframing during immediate deterrence has received little empirical scrutiny. In this study, we focus our attention on a comparison of the lay public and experienced military o…
Measuring social trust and trusting the measure
Decades of rigorous quantitative scholarship have generated a wealth of knowledge regarding the causes and consequences of crossnational variations in social trust. However, while some social science disciplines have made significant contributions to this conversation, others have largely failed to do so. The field of international relations, for example, has lagged behind in producing aggregate-level scholarship on social trust. This is surprisi…
The Political Psychology of Israeli Prime Ministers
Why do some foreign policy hawks evolve into doves? This is the central question motivating Yael S. Aronoff's examination of six Israeli prime ministers. While scholars have spent considerable energy focusing on why leaders opt for conflict, we know less about why hard-liners undergo a transformation that leads them to pursue negotiations in good faith. To address this question, Aronoff constructs a typology of decision making that combines relev…
Revolutionary Collective Action and the Agent-Structure Problem
Unraveling the nexus between agents and structures is fundamental to an understanding of political and social change. The two most prominent methodological approaches to explain revolutionary collective action involve either individual reductionism or structural reductionism. Both approaches result in theoretical inconsistencies and/or explanatory anomalies. An alternative proposed here utilizes the concept offramingdeveloped in behavioral decisi…
Risk-Taking in International Politics
Reflexive Action in International Politics
Realist and liberal theories of international politics both assume that the essential parameters of international politics are fixed, though they differ as to the character of these parameters. We deploy decision psychology and discourse analysis to show how the seemingly limited choices of actors can and do affect these parameters. Thus realism and liberalism are poor guides to action, for they rest on empirical misconception and faulty logic. I…
Model Building With Prospect Theory
Despite the growing call for new models of politics grounded in the capacities of real–world decision–makers, much international relations theory still incorporates rationalist assumptions. Scholars defend such assumptions as the best way to produce parsimonious theoretical structures. Recent attempts to deploy prospect theory in the study of international politics are consistent with the call for empirically grounded models of political behavior…
A Cognitive Theory of Deterrence
Prospect theory is an empirical model of choice that stands as the leading alternative to rationality for explaining decisions under conditions of risk. While many still defend the assumption of rationality as an appropriate starting point for the construction of international relations theory - deterrence theory especially - there is growing support for models of international politics grounded in the actual capacities of real-world decisionmake…
Disaggregating Noncompliance
Why do states make disingenuous treaty commitments? Under what conditions will countries refrain from entering cooperative agreements with which they do not expect to comply? This article addresses these questions by analyzing how states that are pursuing nuclear weapons treat the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The authors develop a distinction between two types of noncooperative behavior. The first is cheating while part of the NPT (pred…
Loss Aversion and Foreign Policy Resolve
This article draws upon recent findings from the field of neuroscience to explore how loss aversion affects foreign policy resolve. We theorize that U.S. policy makers are more resolute in pursuing preventive policies that seek to avoid losses than they are in pursuing promotive policies that seek to acquire new gains. To test our theory, we conduct the first large‐n analysis of foreign policy hypotheses derived from the neuroscience of loss aver…
The Political Psychology of Israeli Prime Ministers
Why do some foreign policy hawks evolve into doves? This is the central question motivating Yael S. Aronoff's examination of six Israeli prime ministers. While scholars have spent considerable energy focusing on why leaders opt for conflict, we know less about why hard-liners undergo a transformation that leads them to pursue negotiations in good faith. To address this question, Aronoff constructs a typology of decision making that combines relev…
David versus Goliath
Confronting a more powerful rival can be a risky proposition. This paper integrates prospect theory into the growing Neoclassical Realist (NCR) literature to identify the conditions under which decision makers are most likely to accept foreign policy risks. I argue that decision makers governing regimes with low levels of political counterframing are more likely to settle into a dominant loss frame when their external security environment erodes.…
Measuring social trust and trusting the measure
Decades of rigorous quantitative scholarship have generated a wealth of knowledge regarding the causes and consequences of crossnational variations in social trust. However, while some social science disciplines have made significant contributions to this conversation, others have largely failed to do so. The field of international relations, for example, has lagged behind in producing aggregate-level scholarship on social trust. This is surprisi…
Behavioral Economics and Nuclear Weapons
Behavioral Economics and Nuclear Weapons
Recent discoveries in psychology and neuroscience have improved our understanding of why our decision making processes fail to match standard social science assumptions about rationality. As researchers such as Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and Richard Thaler have shown, people often depart in systematic ways from the predictions of the rational actor model of classic economic thought because of the influence of emotions, cognitive biases, an av…
Referenda as commitment devices – an experimental approach
This research note evaluates the claim that referenda can serve as useful commitment devices in international negotiations. More specifically, we relied on individual-level survey data to test the claim that governments can successfully “tie their hands” to policy choices by calling referenda on political issues. Our empirical analysis relied on original survey data collected in April 2019 in Belize. In so doing, we took advantage of an unusual p…
Why language matters
Despite the obvious the risks involved in deterrence bargaining, we know surprisingly little about how the public evaluates risk during a crisis. A limited deterrence scholarship considers domestic preferences and tends to assume that the public’s risk tolerance remains stable throughout a deterrence episode. Yet, robust findings in cognitive psychology suggest that people’s risk tolerance can shift dramatically based on how the potential outcome…
Analyzing Mass Attitudes Toward the International Court of Justice
This paper analyzes public attitudes about the International Court of Justice (ICJ). We explore two questions: (1) Why are some people in favor of submitting their country's disputes to the ICJ while others are opposed? (2) How can we explain variations in public support for compliance with a costly ICJ ruling? We argue that individual-level attitudes about both issues are driven by different psychological dynamics. While we expect that cost–bene…
Defense treaties increase domestic support for military action and casualty tolerance
Do security guarantees affect people's willingness to spend their country's “blood and treasure” in a military crisis? Recent research finds that international legal commitments reshape domestic policy preferences. However, the focus of that scholarship is traditionally on issues such as human rights that define a society's normative obligations. In this study, we deploy two original survey experiments in the United States describing a potential …
Is There a Public–Military Gap in the United States? Evaluating Foundational Foreign Policy Beliefs
The presumed “gap” in fundamental foreign policy beliefs between what Huntington (1957) described as “liberal society” and the “conservative military mind” lies at the core of research on civil–military relations. However, we still know surprisingly little about the precise nature of differences between the two groups’ core foreign policy orientations. This study presents the first empirically grounded evaluation of the public–military gap. We de…
Conditional Assistance
In this paper, we explore how concerns about entrapment influence mass attitudes about armed support for an alliance partner. We focus on two separate dimensions of entrapment: allied crisis instigation and the risk of direct entanglement in a nuclear conflict. Our empirical analysis is based on US experimental survey data, collected in 2021. Our data analysis reveals two main findings. First, people are less likely to endorse military action in …
Does Military Experience Really Matter? An Empirical Examination of Decision Framing and Deterrence Decision-Making
While it is widely understood that risk tolerance shapes conflict behavior, research in cognitive psychology has long demonstrated that reframing otherwise identical objective conditions can significantly alter people’s risk perception. Nonetheless, the potential impact of reframing during immediate deterrence has received little empirical scrutiny. In this study, we focus our attention on a comparison of the lay public and experienced military o…
Deserving Special Treatment? The Effect of Psychological Entitlement on Support for International Law
Previous studies in Psychology have identified Psychological Entitlement (PE) as an important variable that affects a wide variety of attitudes and behaviors in humans. PE is an individual-level character trait that describes a tendency to expect unwarranted and unearned rewards. In this paper, we build on existing research in Psychology and we investigate the effect of PE on foreign policy attitudes. Theoretically, we expect that those who score…
The causes and consequences of public misperceptions about the origins of the Russo-Ukrainian war
In this paper, we examine (1) how effective Russia’s propaganda is at legitimizing its military operation in Ukraine, (2) how effectively U.S. political elites can ‘fact-check’ the conflict justifications provided by the Russian government, and (3) how exposure to false claims influences public support for various U.S. responses. Our data analysis is based on two survey experiments. Survey 1 took place on February 24, 2022 (i.e., immediately afte…
Political science (18 works) · Law (16 works) · Economics (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Psychology (10 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Positive economics (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works)