Hit or Miss:

Sociocognitive Approach to Decisionmaking

Risk Taking and Decisionmaking: Foreign Military Intervention Decisions,Yaakov Vertzberger (Palo Alto, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1998). 658 pp.,cloth (ISBN: 0-8047-2747-3), $69.50; paper (ISBN: 0-8047-3168-3), $19.95.

Using a finite number of assumptions about cognitive capacities and moti-vation, rational choice theorists like Bruce Bueno de Mesquita have beenable to predict and, by implication, explain important aspects of

decisionmaking. Yet they have been roundly criticized by psychologists likeDaniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who point out myriad, substantial discrep-ancies between how rational people should behave and how they in fact do.Descriptive theories of decisionmaking, on the other hand, usually do not makemicrolevel assumptions that are at odds with the portrait of “rational man”painted by social and cognitive psychology. Unlike their rational choice counter-parts, proponents of the descriptive approach frequently fail to offer a theoreticalarchitecture suitable for ex ante environments. Yaakov Vertzberger’s perspica-cious and impressively researchedRisk Taking and Decisionmaking: ForeignMilitary Intervention Decisionsseeks to do both. He erects a plausible microleveltheoretical framework, synthesizes it with work on bureaucratic and cultural poli-tics, and employs the resulting product to predict and explain risk-takingbehavior and decisionmaking in the arena of foreign military interventions.

Vertzberger explicitly rejects theoretically parsimonious models of “riskjudgment and risk acceptability,” arguing instead in favor of a model that includes“a broad and complex set of factors” (p. 43). This model, which he dubs the“sociocognitive approach,” posits that risk decisions are functions of several dif-ferent sets of variables. One, located at the decisionmaker level, includes factorsthat James Barber describes elsewhere as character and style, as well as judgmen-tal heuristics such as availability and affective “variable-sets” such as mood andstress (p. 43). A second, located at the group level, includes such variables asgroup composition, for example, the distribution of power between risk-seekingand risk-averse members and decisionmaking rules that may alter the ways inwhich risks are framed strategically, and group polarization. A third, pitchedat the organizational level, includes such factors as bureaucracies’ standard

© 1999 International Studies AssociationPublished by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK.

operation procedures. A fourth includes cultural variables that may predisposemembers to take particular risks and avoid others. The final set includes the objec-tive components of risky choices, including the problem, the potential solutions,and the associated utilities. This final grouping, of course, may be considered asthe inputs to the decisionmaking process. The other sets, that together comprisethe black box that both realists and rational choice theorists tend to ignore, consti-tute possible avenues by which these inputs can be altered. They are, to usemathematical parlance, functions. For the sociocognitive approach to be true,these individual or joint functions must dramatically alter the specified inputs.

Much of the theoretical rationale for Vertzberger’s approach is drawn frompsychological experimentation and clinical observation, which indicates ratherconclusively that people process their “inputs” in curious ways. Psychologicalexperimentation demonstrates that people ignore base-rate information whenthey have vivid descriptions that run contrary to reality; that they base estimatesof probability on ease of imagination; that they insufficiently adjust from arbi-trary values in making estimates about frequency; and that they take crazy risksto recoup losses when confronted with threats to the status quo. On the otherhand, the clinical literature examines how pathological personality factors canoverride an individual’s ability to respond appropriately to the environment. Forexample, Jerrold Post argues that malignant narcissists, such as Saddam Hussein,will respond to any perceived threats to their political survival with “unrestrainedaggression.”

There are no experiments or clinical trials that reveal how the myriad factorsthat make up the sociocognitive approach combine to influence thedecisionmaking process. And even if there were, questions of external validitywould remain. To make his case, Vertzberger turns to the real world. Spe-cifically, he applies his sociocognitive approach to five extensive caseexaminations of foreign military intervention. These cases, chosen to introducevariance on some of the important dimensions of interest, include low-risk inter-ventions by the United States in Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989;moderate-risk intervention by the Soviet Union in Czechoslovakia in 1968; andhigh-risk intervention by the United States in Vietnam in 1964–1968; and byIsrael in Lebanon in 1982–1983. Using a process-tracing approach to investigatethe formation of risk assessment and risk preference in these situations,Vertzberger concludes that risk-taking behavior is influenced by the explanatory“variable-sets” that comprise the sociocognitive approach.

Vertzberger certainly succeeds in his aim to offer an argument with theempirical richness and nuance that is absent from most rational choice andneorealist explanations of state action. Left unanswered are some importantepistemological questions. First, the sociocognitive approach is not “a tight the-ory in which the causal connection of each variable with every other variable oroutcome is unequivocally established” (pp. 43–44). He likens it, instead, to a set

124 Rose McDermott and Jonathan Cowden

of “Lego blocks” that can be arranged and rearranged at will (p. 44). The advan-tage to this sort of formulation lies in its flexibility; with a given set of blocks, therelationships among which are not formulated a priori, the investigator can buildstructures ad infinitum. But infinitely malleable theories are not falsifiable: theycan account for any event imaginable, even those that seem mutually exclusive.Second, by the author’s own admission, prospect theory can explain and predictthe major findings of his empirical analysis with almost as much success, and itdoes so much more parsimoniously (p. 394). Finally, because the sociocognitiveapproach involves a vast network of variables, it is possible that the empiricaladvantages that Vertzberger’s approach seems to offer ex post facto over moreparsimonious models like prospect theory are in fact the product of capitalizationon chance. Put somewhat differently, prospect theory may generate predictionsthat are, on average, more accurate, precise, and at less cost than those of itssociocognitive competition, once new cases are selected for study. If such isthe case, then some of the “Lego blocks” in the sociocognitive approach aresuperfluous.

That said,Risk Taking and Decisionmakingoffers many important insightsabout why leaders make the decisions that they do. The book should be of inter-est to scholars who study judgment, decisionmaking, and risk taking, and tothose interested in foreign military interventions in general or the specific casesin particular. Also, it will make compelling reading for decisionmakers who wishto avoid the traps and mistakes associated with escalation in the face of sunkcosts and other suboptimal decision strategies. Policymakers might not identifythemselves as easily in the theoretical argument as intended, but intervention forimprovement is advocated. Vertzberger’s final admonition to decisionmakers isto know oneself. In his formulation, there is a lot to learn.

ReferencesJames David Barber,The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the

White House. 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1977).

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, “The Benefits of a Social Scientific Approach toStudying International Relations.” InExplaining International Affairs since1945, edited by Ngaire Woods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

David Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Choice, Values, and Frames.”AmericanPsychologist39 (1984).

Jerrold Post, “Saddam Hussein of Iraq: A Political Psychology Profile.”PoliticalPsychology12, No. 2 (1991).

—Rose McDermott and Jonathan CowdenCornell University

Reviews 125