Beliefs That Shape Decisions

Chapter 4 of The Psychology of Foreign Policy ponders whether beliefs matter. Conventional wisdom holds that decision-making depends more on people’s beliefs about the reality than on the external reality as such. The chapter scrutinizes the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon, how it affects decision-making, and the methodologies related to how these issues can be studied and used as explanatory causal factors in the study of foreign policy decision-making. The chapter looks at such research fields as belief systems, studies of ideologies, images, cognitive maps, and operational codes. A number of prominent foreign policy applications are reviewed, and the respective theoretical and methodological challenges discussed. These include the notion that while information about beliefs can be relatively easily gathered from public sources such as speeches and other discourse, unlike in most psychological approaches, foreign policy decision-makers may hide their real motives and thoughts regarding an action and use popular ideologies as a smokescreen for both domestic and foreign audiences.