Worst-case mental simulations about opponents increase security spending in security dilemmas

Evidence

The next set of experiments, which was part of my dissertation research, was designed to explore the effects of these psychological variables on cooperation rates in another form of social dilemma known as a “security dilemma” (see Booth & Wheeler, 2008, for a recent review of this literature). In a security dilemma, decision makers must choose between cooperative restraint and potentially escalatory security allocations. As in our earlier studies, my research colleagues and I found that decision framing and the level of salient social categorization exert strong effects on cooperative choice in this form of the dilemma as well (Kramer, 1989; Kramer, Meyerson, & Davis, 1990). Specifically, we demonstrated how the framing of a risky security allocation decision (i.e., whether resource-use decisions were framed in terms of prospective gains versus losses) influenced decision makers’ willingness to use additional resources to enhance security (and, psychologically speaking, close looming “windows of perceived vulnerability”). We also investigated how engaging in “best-case” versus “worst-case” mental simulations regarding an opponent’s intentions and possible actions affected judgment and choice. Interestingly, we found that simply having people think about worst-case possibilities regarding their opponents’ intentions and behaviors increased their willingness to allocate additional resources to protect against or offset those imagined threats. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1955

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on security dilemmas in international relations (Booth & Wheeler) and to the psychology of threat perception driving arms races.
• SEED: Angle: how simply imagining worst-case threat scenarios — a thought exercise — measurably drives real resource allocation toward defense, an insight applicable to organizational budget politics or cybersecurity spending.