The emotional dimension of foreign policy decisionmaking: President Kennedy's deliberations on Berlin, nuclear testing, and Vietnam (Germany, John F. Kennedy)

The contemporary study of foreign policy decisionmaking is dominated by the cognitivist approach which concentrates on how decisionmakers represent, and make sense of, the world in their minds. Although cognitivists continue to offer new insights, their productivity hides a critical deficiency—failure to systematically consider the influence of emotion on perception, reasoning, and international behavior.; This study generates a model of the emotional dimension of foreign policy decisionmaking, drawing upon advances in the psychological and neuroscientific study of emotions. Emotions are conceived, in this study, as emergent products of a nonlinear appraisal process which is constituted by six interrelated elements. The first element in the emotion-appraisal process is the perception of a change in the extant situation and the allocation of attentional resources to salient features of this stimulus. The second element is the infusion of emotional stimulation through associated modules of procedural and conceptual knowledge relevant to the stimulus. The third element is the system of antecedent beliefs and motives that make the decisionmaker particularly sensitive to certain stimuli in the international arena. The fourth element is the communication of one's appraisal of the situation and associated emergent emotion. The fifth element is the anticipatory role of emotions in the context of a decisionmaker's appraisal of possible future scenarios. The sixth element is the unique response dispositions associated with discrete emotions which guide reasoning and behavior towards an effective adaptation to the emotion-eliciting stimulus.; Eight emotion-appraisal constructs are derived from this model: anger, anxiety, compassion, elation, fear, frustration, hope, and relief. These constructs advance the understanding of Kennedy's perceptions, deliberations, and decisions during, and with respect to, the Berlin crisis of 1961, nuclear testing and pursuit of a comprehensive test ban treaty, and American involvement in Vietnam. The most significant contribution this study makes to the field of foreign policy decisionmaking is the presentation of a model that facilitates the systematic observation and rigorous analysis of how these emotions influence the decisions made by world leaders, decisions with such great consequence for humankind.