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The attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American has been the subject of considerable political conversation. Indeed, the characterization of and response to the attacks played a prominent role in the second Presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney last week, when Romney accused Obama of both inadequately responding to the attacks and by failing to appropriately characterize the nature of the attacks. Obama, in line with previous comments by the White House, criticized Romney for politicizing a delicate foreign policy situation.
Media coverage of the attack, and the ensuing response by the candidates, largely focused on what happened, what should have happened, and what either candidate would do in the future to prevent and/or respond to future terrorist attacks. This focus on policy, however, missed an interesting story about how people think about low-information incidents like the attack in Benghazi.
For several days, the American public was given almost no information about the attack, presumably (in part) because little information was available even to the media and politicians that reacted to the attack. Without information on which to deliberate, the human mind is still inclined to evaluate situations and form judgments about those situations. In this case, even though many of us knew little about what happened in the attack, we were still inclined to construct a mental narrative about what happened and translate that narrative into opinions toward the administration’s response.
This process of forming judgments immediately despite a lack of information reflects what psychologists have long recognized as one half of a two-part mental system. In psychologists’ terms, System 1 processes allow us to make sense of complex realities implicitly – that is, we can evaluate and judge our social (and political) reality without deliberating upon information in a conscious way. System 2 processes, which are more explicit and involve deliberative processing are also at work, but System 2 seems to operate immediately and unintentionally.
When word came that the diplomatic mission was attacked and that Americans were killed, System 1 enables us to react to that information quickly and efficiently. But it also is prone to readily impose upon ambiguous new situations schema for understanding that situation based upon our previous lived experience. For most people from the United States, hearing about an attack on Americans readily brings to mind the “terrorist attack” schema and the implications it carries (perhaps a desire for retaliation, a certain degree of fear, and greater negativity toward particular out-groups).
Undoubtedly, Obama, Romney, and their respective staffs felt this same psychological process at work when they heard of the attacks. But it appears that both camps moved from System 1 to System 2 thinking in different ways. Obama’s camp chose caution, not immediately retaliating as the “terrorist attack” schema might suggest, awaiting more information. Romney’s camp chose (during System 2 deliberations) to play into the public’s System 1 reactions and demand from the administration the reactions that our System 1 processes were all telling us should happen.
The challenge from a policy perspective for listening to our System 1 processes, is that System 1 processes can be dangerous. They happen outside of our conscious thinking, they happen immediately without time for acquisition of additional information, and are highly prone to accessibility biases, whereby only the considerations readily accessible from memory impact our judgments. In the realm of foreign policy, System 1 might lead us to choose escalation when cold calculation would lead us to choose otherwise. System 1 might lead us to choose to attack when cold calculation would lead us to choose otherwise. System 2 is also prone to biases, but it operates more slowly and more deliberately and therefore is able to factor in larger and more complex information sources.
We see the problems of acting politically based upon judgments formed from System 1 thinking in other incidents. The recently death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Ivie prompted my own System 1 to bring to mind the death a year ago of Agent Brian Terry at the hands of bandits armed with guns smuggled from the United States. That Ivie might have been similarly killed in the line of duty was my immediate reaction, and one that was apparently shared by numerous politicians who translated Ivie’s death into the broader narrative of criticisms at the Obama administration’s border control policies.
Yet, as I chose to think about the matter more – that is, I transitioned from my System 1 reactions to my System 2 deliberation – the politicization of Ivie’s death seemed familiar to the politicization of Army Ranger Pat Tillman’s death in Afghanistan in 2004. With Tillman’s death, politicians seized upon his death as part of a “soldiers’ heroism” schema that uses soldiers’ deaths to embolden broader narratives that justify armed conflict. Yet, just as in Ivie’s death, Tillman’s death was accidentally at the hands of fellow Americans (so-called “friendly fire”). In both cases, our (my) System 1 processes distracted us (me) from the reality that the deaths of Ivie and Tillman were not caused by foreign enemies against whom we should retaliate as our System 1 processes instruct, but by accidents that require slower, deliberative investigations and cautious responses.
Politicians – especially those empowered to respond to the deaths of Americans – need to be cautious about how their System 1 thinking might lead them astray. But, more importantly, politicians also need to be held accountable when they play into the public’s use of System 1 thinking. Knowing that Americans will form particular reactions to situations with ambiguous information, does not mean that those reactions should be used for political gain; politicians should lead by helping the public use System 1 effectively and, for those sufficiently interested, to have the information necessary to use System 2.
This does not mean that our System 1 reactions are always wrong. Indeed, the System 1 perception of the attacks in Benghazi as terrorist attacks was accurate – our “gut” reaction actually proved accurate. But the contrast with the deaths of Ivie and Tillman make clear that there is no guarantee that System 1 will serve us well. Politicians, therefore, need System 2 as a check on their System 1 processing. And citizens need easy cues from media and politicians that help their System 1 processing lead to correct answers but also sufficiently full information (devoid of lies, misleading statements, and avoidance of the facts) so that System 2 can work, if it has to.
