The Geopolitics of Empathy

States compete and contend for many reasons, and sometimes those reasons are abundantly clear to the protagonists. But in other cases, the root causes of the disagreement are not well understood, and the level of animosity is greater than it should be. In this latter case, states know they disagree, but they are either confused or mistaken about the underlying source(s) of the problem. In these circumstances, remedying the problem will be much more difficult, and escalatory spirals are more likely.

For this reason, one of the lessons I try hardest to impart in my courses is the importance of empathy: the ability to see problems from another person’s (or country’s) perspective. To do this does not require agreeing with their view; it is about grasping how others see a situation and understanding why they are acting as they are. The reason to do this is eminently practical: It’s harder to persuade a rival to alter its behavior if you don’t understand its origins.

I was reminded of this problem when I read several obituaries for Lee Ross, a pioneering social psychologist who taught for many years at Stanford University. Ross is best known for his work on what he called the “fundamental attribution error,” which became a core concept in the field and had broad applications. In brief, fundamental attribution error is the human tendency to emphasize “dispositional” explanations of behavior over “situational” explanations. In other words, humans tend to see the behavior of others as reflections of the latter’s personality, character, desires, or basic dispositions rather than as response to the situations others are in. Yet we tend to see our own behavior as a response to the circumstances we are facing rather than as being solely a manifestation of “who we are.”

If someone lies to us, for example, we tend to assume it is because their character is flawed and they lack integrity. They lied because, well, that’s just the kind of person they are. And sometimes, this is true. But if we tell a lie, we are prone to see it as something we had to do given the situation we were in, not as evidence of our own character flaws. If someone else loses their cool and lashes out, we conclude they must be innately hotheaded or have anger management issues instead of considering whether they are overworked, dealing with three small kids in lockdown, or sleep deprived.

A corollary is the tendency to believe other people have more latitude or control over their actions than we have over ours. We think what we are able to do is heavily constrained by our circumstances but what others do is largely determined by who they are and what they want. It follows that if a problem arises between us, we tend to think they have many more options for resolving it than we do, and therefore, the burden of doing so should fall on them.

As political scientist Robert Jervis made clear in his classic book Perception and Misperception in International Politics, the insights of Ross and other social psychologists can help us understand why conflict spirals often arise and are so difficult to reverse. If both sides think their rival’s actions are internally generated and mostly voluntary while their own actions are defensive, reluctant, and largely a response to external conditions they had little control of, then finding common ground is going to be extremely difficult.

It’s a small wonder, then, that preparations for preventive war (such as the 2003 Iraq War) always involve demonizing the enemy as irredeemably evil, untrustworthy, and incapable of change or compromise. And this may not be just part of selling the war; the people doing the demonizing may believe everything they are saying. In this way, overreliance on “dispositional” explanations makes conflicts more intense, harder to resolve, and more prone to violence. Sadly, similar tendencies seem increasingly evident inside the United States as well.

This is not to say all conflicts are based on misperceptions and biases or individual traits and impulses do not play important roles in international affairs. Some conflicts of interest may have a completely rational basis—and are all the more tragic for that reason—and protagonists may be under no illusions about how they differ. A individual leader’s paranoia, ambitions, or dreams of glory may have profound effects on a state’s foreign policy, and ideological visions, domestic factors, or sheer incompetence can play important roles as well. Understanding attribution bias should not lead us to dismiss these other sources of trouble entirely.

But when we are dealing with a vexing international problem, a contentious foe, or a country whose behavior we find troubling or threatening, Ross’s core insight reminds us to stop and ask ourselves a few key questions. First, is our opponent acting as it is because its leaders really want to, or do they think the situation they are in is forcing them to do something they would rather avoid? Second, if the latter option is a genuine possibility, is it also possible that some of our actions are making the other side’s sense of necessity more acute and unintentionally reinforcing the behavior that is bothering us? Third, if so, are there any steps we could take to ameliorate those concerns, like altering the situational environment our opponent finds itself in, without jeopardizing our own interests?

Reversing an unnecessary spiral will not be possible in every case, but the United States (and others) would be much better off if it devoted more effort to exploring opportunities to resolve disputes through genuine diplomacy instead of blaming all the evils of the world on evildoers who must be eliminated for virtue to triumph. For that core insight, the field of international relations owes the late Ross a considerable intellectual debt. It would be a fitting legacy if it had more influence on the conduct of foreign policy itself.

* Stephen M. Walt, the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University and a columnist for Foreign Policy