Quick on the Draw: American Negativity Bias and Costly Signals in International Relations

Seok Joon Kim

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2022, vol. 66, issue 2, 246-271

Abstract: States signal their intentions to domestic and foreign audiences but are not always believed. Why do people believe some state signals but not others? Using a survey experiment on a representative sample of the US public, this study finds that individuals have a negativity bias when assessing the credibility of state signals. They take other states’ aggressive actions as evidence of deep hostility but are skeptical of the credibility of conciliatory gestures. The experimental result shows that the mobilization of a small proportion of an army is perceived credible enough as an aggressive action, while the removal of even a large proportion is not perceived as conciliatory. The psychological mechanism found here is a strong foundation for theorizing about how individuals process information embedded in state signals and can improve our understanding of signaling.

Keywords: negativity bias; costly signal; survey experiment; signaling perception (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00220027211040104 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jocore:v:66:y:2022:i:2:p:246-271

DOI: 10.1177/00220027211040104

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Conflict Resolution from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().