(Page 9 of 49) - U.S. Presidents and Foreign Policy Mistakes in the Exercise of Power: Conceptual and Empirical Perspectives authored by Walker, Stephen. and Malici, Akan.

Scholars have also researched motives as variables influencing decision-making.

Psychologists have developed a list of twenty motives or “needs” that fall into two
fundamental categories – interpersonal harmony seeking and individual assertive striving
(Winter, 2003a: 23). Applying them to the realm of politics, David Winter (2003b: 155)
has identified three key motives as a leader’s affiliation, power, and achievement
motives. The affiliation motive is defined as a concern over establishing, maintaining, or
restoring a positive affective relationship with another person or group of persons. The
power motivation is defined as a concern over establishing, maintaining, or restoring
one’s power, that is, one’s impact, control, or influence over others. The achievement
motivation is defined as a striving for excellence and accomplishment. Winter’s review
of this literature concludes that these motivations bias the decision-making process in
various ways, e.g., leaders with a high need for power are higher risk takers than leaders
with a high need for achievement and leaders with a high need for affiliation are more
peaceful while leaders with a high need for power are more war prone (Winter, 2003b).

A somewhat different focus is given by scholars engaged in personality analysis,

although the list of variables here also includes power and affiliation motives. Margaret
Hermann (1980, 1984, 2003), for example, extends the analysis to the traits of
ethnocentricity, suspiciousness, self-confidence, and cognitive complexity. She argues
(2003: 186) that, “Based on previous research linking leaders’ personal characteristics to
their political behavior, traits provide information that is relevant to assessing how
political leaders respond to the constraints in their environment, how they process
information, and what motivates them to action.” Any one personality trait can lead to
mistakes. Overconfidence, for example, can lead decision makers to “dismiss opposing
views out of hand” and to “assimilate incoming information to their existing beliefs”
(Tetlock 1998: 878). Similarly, low levels of cognitive complexity may lead leaders to
“overlook” important information.

Personality traits have also been shown to play a role in risk behavior. Individual

risk behavior is commonly associated with prospect theory (Kahneman and Tversky
1979; Tversky and Kahneman 1986, 1991, 1992; Levy 1997, 2000). The chief differences
between the personality approaches and prospect theory is that the latter focuses on the
situational context and not individual differences. Prospect theory asserts that subjects
think in terms of gains and losses and that their risk propensities vary from one “frame”
to the next. Generally, when decision situations are framed as a loss in relation to a
subjective reference point individuals tend to be risk acceptant; when they are framed as a
gain regarding the same reference point, they tend to be risk-averse.

A concern with prospect theory by personality theorists has been that it “de-

personalizes” the decision-making situation. Contrary to the prediction of prospect
theory, Kowert and Hermann (1997: 623) find that open and intuitive individuals “prefer
risk more strongly when problems were framed as gains.” In contrast to expectations
from prospect theory, they also find that individuals who are low in anxiety and self-
consciousness “preferred risky options to certain ones regardless of the frame.” To widen
the explanatory space of prospect theory, the authors suggest that scholars must consider