Believing This and Alieving That: Theorizing Affect and Intuitions in International Politics

Abstract

Rationalist models of decision making typically follow the general form of desire + belief = action. But determining an actor's beliefs and desires often proves challenging. One set of theories turns to psychology—and in particular emotions—to uncover how emotions help to shape and strengthen beliefs. Some of this work establishes a fit between emotions and the rationalist paradigm. It holds that emotions account for more than irrational behaviors; they also serve as a source of rational belief. Feeling, it claims, is believing. I argue that if actors belive in the reasonability of their feelings, then this move is warranted. But a range of behavior defies this logic. Instead, I suggest that actors often find themselves torn between contradictory affective intuitions, on the one hand, and rational beliefs, on the other. In consequence, they hold rational beliefs, but their resulting behavior qualifies as irrational. I apply existing work on the distinction between belief and alief to make sense of this phenomenon. I illustrate my claims through a rereading of the security dilemma—where irrational intuitions, in conjunction with rational beliefs, fuel conflict.

Identidade, ideias e normas na construção dos interesses em política externa: o caso português

“…19 O nosso problema não é o de discutir as várias lógicas de ação: lógica argumentativa; lógica consequencial; lógica apropriada; lógica dos hábitos; lógica das práticas; lógica emocional; lógica intuitiva, etc. (March e Olsen, 1998;Pouliot, 2008;Hutchison e Bleiker, 2014;Holmes, 2015). O nosso argumento é que os decisores não decidem de uma forma linear e mecanicamente racional.…”

Theorizing emotions in world politics

“…Marcus Holmes (2013) has recently applied such a dual axis in a compelling manner. They distinguish, for instance, between cognitive and affective, as well as between latent and emergent approaches.…”

“…Rather than forming a pre-existing background, emotions here are seen as 'emergent properties' of an interactive body-mind system (Coan 2010, 278), which itself has been constituted over time through socially and cultural conditioned forms of perception and experience (see also Holmes 2013). Latent models assume emotions are always already present.…”

“…Yet, at the same time we recognize the importance of numerous phenomenological distinctions, such as between emotions, feeling, and affect; and there are yet other terms too, including passions (Crawford 2000(Crawford , 2014 and alief (Holmes 2013) to describe very specific aspects of emotions. Most international relations scholars use the term emotion loosely, as a broad umbrella term to denote a range of different phenomena.…”

Diplomacy after Policymaking: Theorizing Hyper-Empowered Individuals

“…Yarhi‐Milo's () Knowing the Adversary: Leaders, Intelligence, and Assessment of Intentions in International Relations demonstrates that policymakers often make decisions about the intentions of states not just by looking at structural factors, but instead by relying on preexisting beliefs and personal impressions. I (Holmes , ) have similarly suggested that there are neuroscientific reasons for diplomats to trust the intuitions and beliefs that they derive of the intentions of others through face‐to‐face diplomacy. Substantively, this renaissance of diplomacy studies has been applied to a wide range of subjects, from current EU politics (Adler‐Nissen ), to the formation of forum talk in the Concert of Europe (Mitzen ), to resolving hostilities between enemies (Wheeler ), to the day‐to‐day practices of diplomats (Pouliot ; Neumann ; Bjola and Holmes ; Sandre ), and to the existence of discrete diplomatic cultures and traditions (Sharp ; Constantinou ).…”