SSP Wednesday seminar with speaker Sharon Weiner, American University

Deterrence assumes that decision makers can rationally assess the costs and benefits of their actions.  Yet the literatures on foreign policy decision making and behavioral economics both argue that people frequently use heuristics, past experience, and emotion to insert significant irrationality into their decision making.  This is especially true in situations of extreme uncertainty and stress, both of which are likely to characterize any decision about nuclear use.  Additionally, critics of U.S. nuclear strategy have long argued that ICBMs are especially dangerous because their vulnerability will lead to launch on warning, thus increasing the chances a nuclear exchange will result from misperceptions or misunderstandings.

She will present and ask for feedback on the design of a research project that uses a Virtual Reality experience as the basis for controlled observations and a set of experiments to better understand the decision making behavior that is likely in a nuclear crisis involving ICBMs.