The Medical Implications of Nuclear War (1986) / Chapter Skim
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26 The Impact of Crisis-Induced Stress on Decision Making
26 The Impact of Crisis-Induced Stress on Decision Making
Pages 529-552
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From page 529... ...
Concern over the danger of nuclear war has mounted in recent years in response to developments in military technology and changes in force postures. Increased missile accuracies, the deployment and forward basing of highly accurate strategic systems that reduce available warning time, and developments in warning and alert systems raise the possibility of socalled decapitation strikes against vulnerable political and military com 529
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One of these threats to effective crisis management the possibly harmful effects that psychological stress experienced by policymakers during a tense crisis might have on the performance of critical decision-making tasks is the subject of this paper.t * This question was the subject of the 8th Conference on New Approaches to Arms Control held by the International Institute of Strategic Studies in England on April 9-11, 1984.
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1096~. Although the possibility that major psychiatric impairment in an official may not be detected or controlled in time to prevent a policy disaster or the additional possibility that crisis-induced stress may suddenly activate latent mental illness are matters for legitimate concern, they will not be the focus of this article.
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We must be at least equally concerned with the consequences for others, for the psychological coping mechanisms a decision maker employs to maintain his own equilibrium may be dysfunctional for the group or polity on whose behalf he has acted. At the same time, we need to recognize that even successful political leaders who have functioned effectively in the past sometimes do suffer breakdowns under the pressure of crisis-induced stress (see below)
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* Defensive operations, in other words, may give the severely stressed individual time to regroup his ego resources and provide him with the immediate tactical ego support that enables him in due course to employ more constructive ego capacities of information seeking, reality appraisal, role rehearsal, planning, and so on.
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If it increases beyond a certain magnitude and duration, however, stress can begin to markedly impair the ability of decision makers and their staffs to make realistic assessments of the situation and to exercise good judgment in dealing with it (Holsti, 19721. The relationship can be depicted as shown in Figure 2.
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An alternative to seeking physiological and behavioral indicators of acute stress in the individual, however, may be considered. Thus, one may seek to identify the consequences of acute stress experienced by the individual or group as they manifest themselves in the phenomenology of the decision-making process.
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. The second approach focuses directly on the possibly adverse consequences of acute stress experienced by the individual or the group for the performance of cognitive tasks required for effective information processing.
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It is also possible for the workings of one subsystem to block, or compensate for, the impediments to information processing generated by another subsystem. The distinctive dynamic processes associated with each subsystem and the ways in which they can adversely or favorably affect information-processing tasks are described elsewhere (George, 1974; Holsti and George, 1975; George, 19801.
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subordinates to the top decision maker can aggravate this danger of the premature closure of information processing. In addition to these modes of defensive avoidance, which provide psychological assistance to enable a policymaker to come to a decision, there
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The result may well be to cut himself off from the possibility of benefiting from a broader or in-depth analysis of the problem that advisers or the organization can provide." IMPACT OF CRISIS-INDUCED STRESS ON FOREIGN POLICY DECISION MAKING Several characteristics of international crises can arouse acute anxiety and other strong emotional feelings, such as fear, shame, anger, and aggressiveness. First, by its very nature an international crisis poses a major threat to national interests that top-level decision makers are responsible for safeguarding.
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A limitation of these studies stems from the difficulty of obtaining a direct measure of the magnitude of stress experienced by individual policymakers; as a result, the investigator cannot easily differentiate moderate stress from acute stress. Earlier, pioneering research on the stress-inducing effects of international crises was done by Robert North and associates at Stanford University.
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. In all the cases cited here, the dysfunctional effects of stress on the policymaker were highly visible and could be easily recognized by others, thus providing opportunities for timely intervention and compensatory action.
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It is useful to distinguish two behavioral patterns that produce conformity which in turn may create an impediment to the quality of information processing. The first is the familiar pattern of group pressure on individual members who raise nettlesome, disturbing questions that undermine the confidence of the group that it is on the right track, thereby challenging the emerging consensus.
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From page 543... ...
Though it may seem farfetched to apply the analogy of a combat group to a small political decision-making group, it is well-known that chief executives often rely on primary group ties with one or more close associates or friends as a means of coping with the stresses of decision making. From membership in the small intimate group, the individual may secure some of the psychological support esteem, respect, reassurance, affection needed to sustain him in his efforts to cope with the cognitive complexity, the uncertainty and risks, and the criticism from outsiders that are inevitably a part of political decision making.
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Janis deliberately challenges the conventional wisdom that group cohesion always favors performance of group tasks. Though recognizing the usefulness of strong group cohesion, he warns that it can have an adverse impact on the group's performance: "The more amiability and esprit de corps among members of an executive group, the greater the danger that independent critical thinking will be replaced by groupthink." The very fact that a group of decision makers enjoys strong cohesion may lead to an erosion of critical intellectual capacities when they resort to concurrence seeking in a stressful decision-making environment.
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IMPACT OF STRESS ON ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR* Many of those who have examined decision making from an organizational perspective note that stressful situations often provide the motivation and means for reducing information pathologies and rigidities associated with the normal bureaucratic behavior familiar in complex organizations characterized by hierarchy, specialization, and centralization.
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The challenging task is not merely to find useful measures for stress reduction and for avoiding possibly damaging effects of acute stress on policymaking but to find ways of introducing them into the policymaking system. It is useful to begin by recognizing that many factors other than stress can and do affect the quality of foreign policy decisions.
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From page 547... ...
Process theory, on the other hand, deals with the question of how to structure and manage the policymaking process to increase the likelihood of producing quality decisions. The availability of even good substantive theory cannot by itself ensure quality decisions-information must still be acquired and processed to achieve a valid, incisive diagnosis of the situation; relevant policy options must be identified and properly analyzed so that substantive theory can be employed to sharpen the judgment that enters into the choice of a course of action.
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that are available to an executive for coping with the complexity of the cognitive tasks of policymaking carter with them the danger that he will resort to one of these strategies prematurely, thereby cutting short or misusing the organizational search and evaluation activities that should precede choice of policy. The difficulty an executive experiences in dealing with cognitive complexity and other stresses of policymaking also makes him more vulnerable to certain types of small group dynamics that emerge within his circle of advisers.
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From page 549... ...
Finally, it should be noted that the required capabilities and preparations for crisis management cover a broad gamut, extending all the way from knowledge of the political and operational requirements for crisis management to the ability of top-level civilian leaders to direct and control, as necessary, the actions of tactical military units in the field without engaging in harmful micromanagement of military operations. A great deal of essential knowledge and relevant experience bearing on these matters should have been gained from managing past crises.
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For helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, I am indebted to Ole Holsti, Irving Janis, Steven Kull, and Richard Ned Lebow. REFERENCES Brecher, M., with B
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1975. Towards a More Soundly Based Foreign Policy: Making Better Use of Information, Appendix D
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1977. Integrative complexity of communications in international crises.
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