Attitudinal Signals and the Credibility of Threat: An Experimental Analysis

• In Event: Elites, Psychology, and Foreign Policy

Abstract

Can leader's attitude toward the adversary be used as a signal of the credibility of threats? Both rationalists and nonrationalists have dismissed this idea, concluding that the role of attitude is limited during the crisis bargaining either because it is not costly or because it is an index inextricably tied to historical records and cannot be faked. Against this conventional wisdom, I explore the possibility that attitudinal signals, signals of the credibility of threats and concessions which uses verbal or nonverbal expressions of the leader's attitude toward adversary as a means, exist. Attitudinal signal remains as a cognitive factor in the receiver’s mind, since the information seems to be trivial and thus not intentionally denied in her mind. The receiver’s mind then unconsciously maintain consistency between information from attitudinal signals and other information about bargaining behavior. I explicate several real-world mechanisms through which attitudinal signals influence the interpretation of other information of the adversary. Experimental evidence reveals that subjects are more likely to believe that a threat is credible when they are given negative attitudinal signals, while they are less likely to do so when given positive ones. Evidence also shows that the effect is unconscious, as the effect wanes when there is a dearth of other available information and, as a result, subjects pay more conscious attention to the attitudinal signal. This result suggests not merely that the attitudes of leaders have direct influence on the crisis bargaining but also that they can be used by strategic agents as a way of manipulation even if they are not costly. My findings also have a broader implication to the crisis bargaining literature that formerly neglected unconscious signaling mechanism needs to be further studied and that rationalist theories of crisis bargaining implicitly assumes too narrow understanding of the belief of strategic actors.

Author

• Joon Hyuk Chung, University of Wisconsin-Madison