Recent investigations into the psychology of decision making have sparked interest among scholars seeking to understand why governments sometimes take gambles that appear theoretically unjustifiable on the basis of expected costs and benefits. Researchers have demonstrated some significant discrepancies between objective measurements of possible decision outcomes and the ways in which people already possess than it is for those who wish to gain something they do not have.
Previously, the notion that rational decision makers prefer risk-avoiding choices was considered to apply generally, epitomized by the assumption of many economists that entrepreneurs and consumers will choose a risky venture over a sure thing only when the expected measurable value of the outcome is sufficiently high to compensate the decision maker chance of losing an even larger amount, coupled with some chance—even a small one—of losing nothing.
Such observations are quite salient to scholars of international conflict and crisis. For example, governments typically are cautious in foreign policy initiatives that entail risk, especially the risk of armed conflict. But nations also often take huge gambles to retrieve what they perceive to have been taken from them by other nations. each actor in such a situation understand the other’s subjective view of what is at stake.
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