The Personal Touch: Leaders’ Impressions, Costly Signaling, and Assessments of Sincerity in International Affairs1

Abstract

Hall, Todd and Keren Yarhi‐Milo. (2012) The Personal Touch: Leaders’ Impressions, Costly Signaling, and Assessments of Sincerity in International Affairs. International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/j.1468‐2478.2012.00731.x © 2012 International Studies Association What counts as evidence that the other side is sincere? Within mainstream international relations literature, scholars have focused on costly signals. We argue, however, that in the real world leaders do not simply look at costly signals, but they rely to an important extent on their personal impressions of other leaders, taking these as credible indicators of sincerity. Our approach thus builds both upon the literature on interstate communication and perceptions and upon more recent research in the field of neuroscience regarding affective information. To probe the plausibility of our theory, we focus on the indicators British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain used to evaluate Germany sincerity in the late 1930s and Ronald Reagan employed to make sincerity judgments about Soviet intentions in the late 1980s. Additionally, we briefly discuss the 1961 Vienna Summit between Kennedy and Khrushchev as an illustration of how personal impressions can also result in negative assessments of sincerity. Our findings suggest that personal impressions are an important, but up until now relatively ignored, source of evidence for leaders of their counterparts’ sincerity with significant implications for threat assessments and policy choices.

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

“…Crawford (:550) highlights the importance of emotions in affecting material decisions that revolve around interests and positions: “[t]he perception and creation of interests is an emotional process as well as one rooted in a material reality or drive for power.” Kertzer and McGraw () make a similar point on the ideational/material distinction, demonstrating that fear plays a significant role in realist theory writ large , a paradigm traditionally dominated by materialist perspectives, as well as in the minds of ordinary individuals. Their model provides significant benefits as the literature includes emotional variables in a wide swath of areas of IR, from nuclear politics (2012), weapons taboos (Dolan ), sincerity assessment (Hall and Yarhi‐Milo ; Holmes ), and generalized trust (Rathbun ), to funding for homeland security (Mueller and Stewart ). Sasley's (:688, 690) application of the affect heuristic by decision makers shows how leaders make necessary simplifications, including the tagging of stimuli with “affective label[s],” (Sasley :690), in making decisions.…”

The Behavioral Revolution and International Relations

“…However, as suggested in Bayram's contribution to this issue, 77. Byman and Pollack 2001;Colgan 2013;Croco 2011;Debs and Goemans 2010;Hall and Yarhi-Milo 2012;Horowitz, McDermott, and Stam 2005;Saunders 2009;Weeks 2012. 78.…”

“…Hafner-Burton et al 2014. For examples beyond the special issue, see Byman and Pollack 2001;Colgan 2013;Croco 2011;Debs and Goemans 2010;Hall and Yarhi-Milo 2012;Horowitz, McDermott, and Stam 2005;Saunders 2009;Weeks 2012. level heterogeneity also opens up opportunities to connect with a wider body of behavioral research in political science, including studies of public opinion. A number of contributions to this issue pursue this approach.…”

International Politics at the Brain's Edge: Social Neuroscience and a New “Via Media”

“…). Further, recent research on “mirror neurons” has demonstrated links between observation of others and intentional action (Hall and Yarhi‐Milo ; Holmes Forthcoming). This emphasis on face‐to‐face interaction has significant consequences for personal diplomacy and the role of the individual in the international system.…”