Bad World
The Negativity Bias in International Politics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11262046 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Dominic D P Johnson, Dominic Johnson (0000-0002-2801-8945, Johnson & Johnson (United States), corresponding author), Dominic Tierney (0000-0003-2090-5918, American Institute of Biological Sciences) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 96-140 |
| Publication date | 2019-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Security (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0162-2889 • E-ISSN: 1531-4804 |
| Publisher | MIT Press - Journals (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1162/isec_a_00336 |
| OpenAlex | W2914694336 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 24 |
| References cited | 117 |
A major puzzle in international relations is why states privilege negative over positive information. States tend to inflate threats, exhibit loss aversion, and learn more from failures than from successes. Rationalist accounts fail to explain this phenomenon, because systematically overweighting bad over good may in fact undermine state interests. New research in psychology, however, offers an explanation. The “negativity bias” has emerged as a fundamental principle of the human mind, in which people's response to positive and negative information is asymmetric. Negative factors have greater effects than positive factors across a wide range of psychological phenomena, including cognition, motivation, emotion, information processing, decision-making, learning, and memory. Put simply, bad is stronger than good. Scholars have long pointed to the role of positive biases, such as overconfidence, in causing war, but negative biases are actually more pervasive and may represent a core explanation for patterns of conflict. Positive and negative dispositions apply in different contexts. People privilege negative information about the external environment and other actors, but positive information about themselves. The coexistence of biases can increase the potential for conflict. Decisionmakers simultaneously exaggerate the severity of threats and exhibit overconfidence about their capacity to deal with them. Overall, the negativity bias is a potent force in human judgment and decisionmaking, with important implications for international relations theory and practice
Cognition · Cognitive bias · Cognitive psychology · Confirmation bias · Economics · Epistemology · International relations · Motivated reasoning · Negativity bias · Overconfidence effect · Phenomenon · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Privilege (computing · Economic Sanctions and International Relations · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology
Theory of Irrational Politics
Visceral Politics and Its Impact on US Foreign Policy Decision-Making
Public opinion and international organizations
Relationship between (under)confidence and prospect theory in risky decisions
Cancer screening as a double-edged sword
The “digital personalization effect” (DPE)
The search suggestion effect (SSE)
Understanding the public participation among disadvantaged citizens
Trapped in a Vicious Cycle of Political Negativity and Incivility on Social Media? Yes, but Only Before Elections
The Peril of Peaking Powers
Historical Analogies and Public Support for Foreign Policy Action
Bad versus good enough
Science and religion around the world
We Show What Is Concealed”
The asymmetry of war support
Hooked on a Feeling
Doom and Gloom, From Structure to Human Minds
Quick on the Draw
Us and Them
Breaking the Myth of Cyber Doom
Not So Dangerous? Nationalism and Foreign Policy Preference
See No Evil, Speak No Evil? Morality, Evolutionary Psychology, and the Nature of International Relations
Diplomacy by committee
The democratic embargo
The irony of Vietnam
Research in Organizational Behavior
The Rise of the Anglo-German antagonism, 1860-1914
The sources of military doctrine
Germany's Aims in the First World War
The Pity of War
Conflict unending
Natural Security
Analogies at War
The Paranoid Optimist
Flashbulb memories
Differences in negativity bias underlie variations in political ideology
How unrealistic optimism is maintained in the face of reality
Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and Contagion
Essence of Decision
"Lessons" of the past
Strangers to Ourselves
American Foreign Policy and The Politics of Fear
Avoiding Losses/Taking Risks
Causes of War
The Diffusion of Military Power
Perception and Misperception in International Politics
Perspectives on Structural Realism
The Security Dilemma
Social Theory of International Politics
The Origins of Alliances
The nonuse of intelligence
Peace at What Price
An Improbable War
The Arming of Europe and the Making of the First World War
German Anglophobia and the Great War, 1914-1918
A Concise History of Germany
Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War
Anticipating Total War
The Wehrmacht. The German Army in World War II 1939-1945
Pearl Harbor in Reverse” Moral Analogies in the Cuban Missile Crisis
Fear in International Politics
Political leanings vary with facial expression processing and psychosocial functioning
I See Dead People”
Deterrence and Perception
Grounds for War
Threat Inflation and the Failure of the Marketplace of Ideas
How Smart and Tough are Democracies? Reassessing Theories of Democratic Victory in War
Breaking Out of the Security Dilemma
Better Now Than Later
The New History of World War I and What It Means for International Relations Theory
Two Cheers for Bargaining Theory
The Rubicon Theory of War
Assessing Capabilities in International Politics
Better (or worse) for some than others
The Origins of the Second World War
Applications of Prospect Theory to Political Science
Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600-1914
From the “Red Juggernaut” to Iraqi WMD
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
Attention and weight in person perception
Finding the face in the crowd
Air Power
Lessons of the Past
The totalitarian ego
The correspondence bias
U.S. Soviet Policy and the Electoral Connection
Cooperation under the Security Dilemma
The Perception of Power
On the Evolutionary Origin of Prospect Theory Preferences
Risky but Rational
Loss Aversion and the Domestic Context of Military Intervention
Political Implications of Loss Aversion
Prospect Theory in Political Science
The Feeling of Rationality
The belief system and national images
A Cross-Cultural Exploration of the Reference Dependence of Crucial Group Decisions under Risk
Prospect Theory and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Learning and foreign policy
Rationalist explanations for war
Prospect Theory and Political Science
Negative information weighs more heavily on the brain
On the confirmability and disconfirmability of trait concepts
Automatic vigilance
Biased evaluation and persistence in gambling
Lottery winners and accident victims
The Strategist's Curse
The Security Dilemma
Bad is Stronger than Good
Availability
From Pearl Harbor to Vietnam
Anomalies
Saddam's Delusions
A Revolution in Warfare
Political conservatism as motivated social cognition
Asymmetrical effects of positive and negative events
War by Timetable? The Railway Race Before 1914
The Entourage of Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1888-1918
The spoiler effect
Uncertainty, Shifting Power, and Appeasement
| Unique citing works | 24 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 24 |