Why hawks win (and doves lose)

Kahneman is known for his contributions to psychology and especially to economic psychology. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics for them. However, his work has a wider application. For example, it can be useful for the study of war and peace, as the article “Why Hawks Win” shows, which he has written with Jonathan Reshon. The authors argue that hawks usually get the upper hand over doves, when political decisions must be taken, although often wrongly. In this blog, I’ll follow Kahneman’s and Reshon’s article.
Hawks are people who “tend to favour coercive action, are more willing to use military force, and are more likely to doubt the value of offering concessions”. They think that enemies will “only understand the language of force”. Doves, on the other hand, doubt the usefulness of such means and prefer dialogue. Generally, there may be good arguments for both positions, but psychology suggests that politicians – and humans in general – have “a bias in favour of hawkish beliefs and preferences”, at the cost of dovish views. This is a consequence of a general human trait: to overestimate your capabilities and possibilities. Don’t most of us think that they are better drivers than the average driver? About 80% think so. Of course, that’s not possible, but “the same optimistic bias makes politicians and generals receptive to advisors who offer highly favourable estimates of the outcomes of war”, on both sides of a conflict, and this “is likely to produce a disaster.” The authors have listed 40 human biases and all of them appeared to favour hawks. They stress that this doesn’t mean that hawkish advisors are wrong, but they are likely to be more persuasive than they deserve to be.
Below I present the main factors that lead to pro-hawkish behaviour in times of conflict, as discussed by Kahneman and Reshon.

- Vision problems. People ignore the context in which others speak and behave and ignore their constraints, even if they know them. However, they assume that the other side knows their own context and restraints and takes them into account. In an international conflict setting this means that “a policy maker or diplomat involved in a tense exchange with a foreign government is likely to observe a great deal of hostile behaviour by that country’s representatives.” The other side behaves from a deep hostility or a striving for power, they think, and they “explain away their own behaviour as a result of being ‘pushed into a corner’ by an adversary.” However, the adversary thinks the same of you. Each side sees what the other does as provocation and as more hostile than it actually is. “The effect of this failure in conflict situations can be pernicious.”
- Excessive optimism. Most people believe themselves to be smarter, more attractive, and more talented than average, and they commonly overestimate their future success. (see the “planning fallacy in my blog last week). They also think that they can control the situation, while in fact this is not so. When politicians behave that way, it can have disastrous effects, especially if politicians are in the grip of this bias in the early phases of a conflict. “A hawk’s preference for military action over diplomatic measures is often built upon the assumption that victory will come easily and swiftly.” In August 1914, when Germany invaded Belgium on its way to France – which was the start of the First World War – both Germany and France thought that the war would end before Christmas. However, the war would last for more than four years instead of for four months.
- Underappreciating the proposals by others. In negotiations, proposals of the other side are seen as less valuable than the same or equal proposals done by yourself. There is an intuition that something is worth less simply because the other side has offered it. This makes “that a concession …  offered by somebody perceived as hostile undermines the content of the proposal.” And this makes that violent solutions (like war) are chosen, when dovish solutions are still open, since “this bias is a significant stumbling block in negotiations between adversaries.”
- Loss aversion. (also mentioned in my blog last week) People have a deep aversion against cutting their losses, and prefer to go on even if there is only a very small chance to gain, instead of accepting a reasonable or actually inevitable loss. Therefore, politicians prefer to go on with a war, even if the consequences are worse for the citizens they lead.

These factors, and many more, make that the approaches proposed by hawks in international conflicts are more easily accepted than those proposed by doves. Now it is so that, according to Kahneman and Reshon, as such a hawkish position towards an adversary need not be bad. Show your teeth, I would characterize this view; or show that you are not a softy. However, too often, so the authors, a hawkish approach wins since hawkish approaches are overvalued because of an innate bias in the mind, with all its dangerous if not fatal consequences. Understanding the human biases can help preventing them.