| Why do states over- or under-react to crisis stimuli by choosing escalatory strategies that can increase the potential for war or accommodative strategies that may subject them to domination and exploitation by their opponents? Previous efforts to answer this question have tended to focus on structural factors such as power asymmetries, the level of threat, or the age and intensity of the inter-state rivalry. One under-examined explanation for the adoption of extreme and risky crisis-management strategies is the decision-making unit's character. Social psychologists have identified several phenomena that affect the collective decision-making process. One of these is the group polarization effect, which can lead a group to make more extreme and riskier decisions than would be made by the individual members who comprise the group.; This dissertation is a multi-methodological and interdisciplinary examination of the effect of group polarization on crisis decision-making. It incorporates a logistical regression analysis of a data set of crises and detailed case studies of specific decision-making episodes including content analysis of recorded group discussion. After finding a positive relationship between group size and extreme crisis response in the statistical analysis, three large groups are examined---only two of which opted for extreme responses. The cases examined include the Munich, Cuban Missile, and Suez Canal crises. Characteristics associated with group attitude polarization are found to prevail in the groups that decided upon escalatory or accommodative crisis-management strategies. Conversely, where moderate choices were made, the group processes were found to lack some of the characteristics indicative of polarization and instead appeared to depolarize. |
