Intelligence and Policy
Midterm
Definitions
Cognitive Biases:
Cognitive Biases are the expectations analysts carry with them before they even approach raw data. These biases originate in the analyst’s education, experiences, upbringings, and cultural history, including plays, literature or national songs. Cognitive biases can come in several different forms, one of which is the expectation that the world is coherent, rational, and that states will seek to maximize their material and strategic benefits. Biases can also originate in an analysts’ belief in their target’s inferiority. An example of this is the Nazi’s belief that Slavic Soviet peoples were inferior and therefore incapable of mounting an effective resistance to their invasion. Analysts can also be biased by ethnocentrism when they assume that their cultural values and …show more content…
Analysts are especially susceptible to cognitive biases because they are subconscious ideas whose influence is difficult to notice and identify. But these biases do have an impact on analysts’ judgments and conclusions. But cognitive biases are also essential to the efficient processing of large amounts of data, which enables analysts to effectively inform policymakers in a timely fashion. Cognitive biases can also guide an analyst in interpreting data that would otherwise confound people lacking these biases. For example, it would be difficult for an analyst in the 1950s to recognize the devastation caused by the 1956 secret speech Khrushchev gave, without an education in Stalinism and its underlying premises. Therefore, because cognitive biases can be both essential and harmful to sound analysis, they can never be done away
Midterm
Definitions
Cognitive Biases:
Cognitive Biases are the expectations analysts carry with them before they even approach raw data. These biases originate in the analyst’s education, experiences, upbringings, and cultural history, including plays, literature or national songs. Cognitive biases can come in several different forms, one of which is the expectation that the world is coherent, rational, and that states will seek to maximize their material and strategic benefits. Biases can also originate in an analysts’ belief in their target’s inferiority. An example of this is the Nazi’s belief that Slavic Soviet peoples were inferior and therefore incapable of mounting an effective resistance to their invasion. Analysts can also be biased by ethnocentrism when they assume that their cultural values and …show more content…
Analysts are especially susceptible to cognitive biases because they are subconscious ideas whose influence is difficult to notice and identify. But these biases do have an impact on analysts’ judgments and conclusions. But cognitive biases are also essential to the efficient processing of large amounts of data, which enables analysts to effectively inform policymakers in a timely fashion. Cognitive biases can also guide an analyst in interpreting data that would otherwise confound people lacking these biases. For example, it would be difficult for an analyst in the 1950s to recognize the devastation caused by the 1956 secret speech Khrushchev gave, without an education in Stalinism and its underlying premises. Therefore, because cognitive biases can be both essential and harmful to sound analysis, they can never be done away