Quick on the Draw: American Negativity Bias and Costly Signals in International Relations

• DOI: 10.1177/00220027211040104
• Published date: 01 February 2022
• Author: Seok Joon Kim
• Date: 01 February 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

2022, Vol. 66(2) 246 –271

Quick on the Draw:

American Negativity Bias

and Costly Signals in

International Relations

Seok Joon Kim

1

Abstract

States signal their intentions to domestic and foreign audiences but are not always

believed. Why do people believe some state signals but not others? Using a survey

experiment on a representative sample of the US public, this study finds that indi-

viduals have a negativity bias when assessing the credibility of state signals. They take

other states’ aggressive actions as evidence of deep hostility but are skeptical of the

credibility of conciliatory gestures. The experimental result shows that the mobili-

zation of a small proportion of an army is perceived credible enough as an aggressive

action, while the removal of even a large proportion is not perceived as conciliatory.

The psychological mechanism found here is a strong foundation for theorizing about

how individuals process information embedded in state signals and can improve our

understanding of signaling.

Keywords

negativity bias, costly signal, survey experiment, signaling perception

States signal their intentions to both domestic and foreign audiences. When North

Korea conducted several intercontinental missile tests in 2017—thereby signaling its

attainment of a nuclear deterrence to its own population as well as the international

Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS), Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Corresponding Author:

Seok Joon Kim, Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS), Korea University, 145, Anam-ro,

Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Emails: sjkim.ir@gmail.com; skim41@korea.ac.kr

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DOI: 10.1177/00220027211040104

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Kim 247

community—the ratio of America ns perceiving North Korea as a ser ious threat

soared to 85 percent, and 50 percent of those polled favored taking military action

against the country.

1

However, outside of dramatic events such as missile testing,

people do not always believe a state’s signals. For example, Americans were divided

over the Soviet Union’s intentions near the end of the Cold War despite the Soviet

Union’s highly conciliatory gestures.

2

Similarly, Northeast Asians have never

entirely abandoned their suspicion towards Japan after World War II, despite the

country’s severe restrictions on the use of force in its pacifist constitution.

3

Why do people believe some state signals but not others? More broadly, how do

people infer other states’ intentions and make foreign policy decisions when it is not

certain whether the other is an enemy? The logic of costly signals in the international

relations (IR) literature explains when and how rational actors update their prior

beliefs and make decisions. According to this logic, rational act ors update their

beliefs about a state’s intentions when the state takes actions incurring a high cost

that a state hiding its true intentions cannot bear. This type of costly action arguably

contributed to the mollification of the British and French’s fear about their historical

rival’s (i.e., Germany) reunification in the late 1980s.

Recently, IR scholars have started paying closer attention to the microfounda-

tions of the logic of costly signals since Jervis (1970) and others developed the

concept of signals as a means of states con veying their intentions (Quek 2016 ;

Kertzer 2016; Kertzer, Renshon, and Yarhi-Milo 2021; Yarhi-Milo, Kertzer, and

Renshon 2018). They have tested whether individuals actually infer state intentions

according to the logic of costly signals, but most have focused on testing how

hostile-type signals (e.g., signals of resolve) in crisis bargaining are perceived, and

less on how benign-type signals, (e.g., signals of reassurance) or both concurrently,

are perceived with few exceptions (Kim 2016; Albuyeh and Paradis 2018).

This study examines how individuals perceive state intentions and shape foreign

policy preferences when state intentions are not clear. This study finds that costly

signals are perceived as credible only under certain conditions, showing that the

logic of costly signals in IR works differently conditional on signal types. Benign

and hostile state signals with equal strength have different impacts on individuals’

inferences and their foreign policy preferences. This paper argues that people have a

negativity bias in perceiving state intentions and making foreign policy decisions:

“(t)he psychological phenomenon that people tend to attach greater weight to neg-

ative information than to equally extreme and equally likely positive information in

a variety of information-processing tasks” (Aragones 1997, 189). In this IR context,

Americans tend to pay more attention to a state’s hostile actions than its peaceful

ones and thus weigh negative information more heavily than positive information in

assessing the credibility of state actions. This study also finds evidence showing

some properties of negativity bias including negative potency, negative differentia-

tion, and greater steepness of the negativity gradient. This study furthermore finds

that, contrary to what was expected, a motivational mechanism is not supported as

the causal logic for the negativity bias in signaling perception.

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