Understanding the Impact of Emotional Stress on Crisis Decision Making

Motivational models are critical to understanding crisis decision making because leaders and their advisors are emotionally involved, intent on reducing stress, and motivated to find ways of advancing their interests while minimizing the risk of war. The principal theoretical work on the subject is Irving Janis and Leon Mann’s classic study of decision making, published in 1977. While useful, the book has a significant flaw: Janis and Mann theorize that policy maker stress during crisis is derived from decision deliberation, leading to a circular approach. This book solves the identified problem by addressing circularity between the rise of psychological stress, decision deliberation, and dysfunctional behavior with an independent measure of decision conditions using cognitive complexity. With an effective independent measure of stress, the key contribution of this volume is a reformulation of Janis and Mann’s model to render the construct more rigorous and empirically useful to the present-day study of crisis decision making. 

• political psychology
• crisis decision-making
• motivated bias
• international relations
• peace and conflict studies
• Irving Janis
• Leon Mann

“A brilliant reformulation of Janis and Mann's motivational theory of decision making and its compelling application to two critical Cold War crises. This significant contribution to political psychology should encourage others to study the role of stress and stress reduction in foreign policy decision making.” (Richard Ned Lebow, Professor of International Political Theory, King's College London, UK)

“For those of us who are interested in how emotions may influence foreign policy, Dr. Noel Sawatzky’s book is an excellent point of departure. It offers profound insights into how individual pathologies of leaders shape decision making and how crises in turn also shape individual behavior. An essential read!” (Christopher Coker, Professor of International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK) 

“Many studies of international crises focus on either strategic national goals and decision making processes, or operational political and military forces.  Integrative complexity is a mid-range approach that Dr. Noel Sawatzky successfully uses to analyze how stress affected the cognitive complexity of individual American leaders, increasing our understanding of two Cold War crises that were resolved without conflict.” (Peter Suedfeld, Dean of Graduate Studies and Professor Emeritus of Psychology, The University of British Columbia, Canada)

• King’s College of London, London, UK

  Noel Allan Sawatzky

Noel Allan Sawatzky is an Officer in the United States Navy, assigned as a Senior Intelligence Advisor with over 20 years of military service. This is his first book.

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