The Cognitive Dynamics of Swedish Security Elites: Beliefs about Swedish National Security and How They Change
| Author | Thomas G. Hart |
| DOI | 10.1177/001083677601100204 |
| Published date | 01 June 1976 |
| Date | 01 June 1976 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The
Cognitive
Dynamics
of
Swedish
Security
Elites:
Beliefs
about
Swedish
National
Security
and
How
They
Change
THOMAS
G.
HART
Swedish
Institute
of
International
Affairs,
Stockholm.
Hart,
T.
G.
The
Cognitive
Dynamics
of
Swedish
Security
Elites:
Beliefs
about
Swedish
National
Security
and
How
They
Change.
Cooperation
and
Conflict,
XI,
1976,
201-219.
This
article
is
based
on
a
full-length
study
of
the
cognitive
behavior
of
highly-influential
elites
who
deal
professionally
with
the
analysis
of
international
politics
with
respect
to
Swedish
national
security.
It
attempts
to
relate
findings
in
the
field
of
cognitive
psychology
to
the
actual
behavior
of
Swedish
observers
in
the
examination
and
inter-
pretation
of
international
events.
Especial
emphasis
is
given
to
processes
of
concep-
tualization,
threat
perceptions
and
changes
in
beliefs
that
have
occurred.
The
deriva-
tion
of
’cognitive
archetypes’
is
discussed
and
these
are
related
to
the
relative
openness
vs.
constraint
exhibited
by
elites
in
accommodating
new
information
about
the
interna-
tional
environment.
Thomas
G.
Hart,
Swedish
Institute
of
International
Affairs,
Stockholm.
’Elite
attitudes’
are
the
affective
or
nor-
mative
conclusions
drawn
by
influential
persons
concerning
some
portion
of
real-
ity
encompassed
by
sets
of
beliefs
about
that
reality.
This
article
will
deal
primar-
ily
with
the
cognitive
behavior
of
a
num-
ber
of
very
highly-placed
members
of
the
Swedish
establishment
as
revealed
in
lengthy
interviews
conducted
by
the
au-
thor.
The
analysis
presented
here
con-
centrates
on
the
dynamic
or
changing
aspects
of
respondents’
belief
systems
rather
more
than
on
attitudes
and
beliefs
per
se.
Its
purpose
is
thus
to
shed
light
on
how,
in
these
cases,
beliefs
charac-
teristically
change
and
on
the
contraints
that
perhaps
lie
in
the
way
of
policy
and
attitude
reformulation.
The
term
’cognitive
behavior’
is
delib-
erately
broad
and
is
used
here
to
refer
to
all
changing
aspects
of
belief
systems.
In
the
study
on
which
this
article
is
based,’
especial
interest
was
directed
to
the
ways
in
which
professional
observers
of
international
affairs
in
Sweden
build
and
alter
the
concepts
they
use,
to
the
Co-Co -
1
rules
they
follow
or
seem
to
follow
in
deciding
on
the
best
strategies
to
use
in
the
search
for
new
information,
to
how
and
why
they
have
altered
former
beliefs,
and,
in
general,
to
the
question
of
con-
straint
vs.
openness
in
their
cognitions
of
Sweden’s
external
environment.
The
theoretical
underpinnings
on
which
this
study
rests
consist
of
concepts
and
ideas
taken
from
the
growing
literature
on
cognitive
psychology
and
its
applica-
tion
to
political
research.2
Thus,
the
labo-
ratory
findings
of
Bruner et
al.
have
been
useful
in
the
investigation
of
concept-
building
behavior
by
alerting
us
to
such
commonplace
predispositions
as
the
re-
luctance
shown
by
average
human
beings
to
employ
disjunctive
concepts3
or
to
study
negative
exemplars
of
phenomena
in
order
to
gain
understanding
of
them.4
4
Studying
the
structure
of
belief
systems,
Abelson,
among
many
others,
has
called
attention
to
the
importance
of
balance
and
consistency .5
And
studying
the
sta-
-
bility
of
belief
systems,
i.e.
their
resist-
ance
to
unsettling
feedback
and
precip-
202
itous
change,
other
scholars
have
drawn
attention
to
the
phenomenon
of
post-
decisional
cognitive
dissonance,6
to
the
probable
sequence
of
changes
in
belief
systems,7
and
to
various
techniques
peo-
ple
use
in
seeking
alternative
explanations
of
reality
in
an
effort
to
avoid
changing
basic
beliefs.8
Obviously,
not
all
of
these
theoretical
leads
can
be
followed
in
an
article
of
this
size,
nor
have
all
been
applied
in
the
full
study
on
which
it
is
based.
In
that
study
in-depth
interviews
were
conducted
with
about
70
highly-placed
respondents
from
what
may
be
called
the
Swedish
security
policy
establishment;
these
were
persons
from
four
professional
groups
who
determine,
execute,
study
or
examine
Swedish
policy -
political
decision-makers
both
inside
and
outside
of
the
Govern-
ment,
top
military
and
civil
servants
in
agencies
responsible
for
Swedish
security
and
foreign
policy,
academic
scholars
in
the
Swedish
universities
and
research
institutes,
and
leading
editors
and
jour-
nalists.9
Emphasized
was
the
manner
in
which
respondents
typically
approach
the
prob-
lems
of
acquiring
and
interpreting
infor-
mation
about
what
is
happening
in
the
international
environment
as
this
may
bear
on
national
security.
This
involved
making
an
enumeration
of
the
variables
they
customarily
employ,
identifying
no-
tions
of
causality,
and
describing
the
attributes
of
central
concepts.
It
also
required
a
description
of
the
particular
logic
that
binds
these
elements
into
a
coherent
whole,
as
well
as
a
description
of
the
manner
in
which
new
observations
and
new
decisions
become
incorporated
into
the
existing
corpus
of
beliefs,
rein-
forcing
or
modifying
previous
elements.lo
In
order
to
concentrate
on
the
dynamic
or
change-related
aspects
of
respondents’
belief
systems,
the
cognitive
elements
mentioned
above
were
examined
as
fac-
tors
in
two
types
of
processes,
viz.
a
con-
cept-formation
process
which
explains
the
derivation
of
existing
beliefs,
and
a
data-control
process
which
explains
the
belief
system’s
stability
when
subjected
to
new
input.
In
other
words,
the
first
process
determines
what
elites
believe
and
how
they
have
arrived
at
their
beliefs,
and
the
second
determines
what
in their
thinking
typically
induces
them
to
cling
to
their
beliefs
or,
alternately,
to
change
them.
Here
we
shall
focus
attention
on
the
second
of
these
processes,
examining
the
behavior
of
Swedish
elites
in
this
survey
with
respect
to
changes
in
their
belief
systems.
To
do
this,
we
shall
begin
by
summarizing
briefly
a
series
of
questions
and
responses
dealing
with
specific
beliefs
and
attitudes,
such
as
threat
perceptions,
policy
support,
views
on
whether
Sweden
ought
to
pursue
an
’active’
world
role,
etc.
These
comments
form
the
backdrop
for
a
section
dealing
with
efforts
to
discern
the
structure
and
characteristics
of
respondents’
belief
systems,
followed
by
another
section
dealing
with
how
respondents
explain
what
they
themselves
regard
as
important
reinterpretations
of
beliefs
about
international
politics -
if
and
when
they
are
aware
of
having
made
any
such
reinterpretations.
A
fourth
section
of
the
article
is
de-
voted
to
the
derivation
and
distributions
of
apparent
broad
similarities
of
cogni-
tive
behavior
discovered,
which
I
term
’cognitive
archetypes’.
These
can
be
re-
lated
to
certain
pronounced
beliefs,
such
as
a-typical
threat
perceptions.
By
way
of
conclusion,
these
findings
are
com-
bined
in
an
attempt
to
make
some
guard-
ed
generalizations
about
cognitive
con-
straint
in
at
least
this
sample
of
Swedish
elites.
I.
BASIC
BELIEFS
ABOUT
NATION-
AL
SECURITY:
CONCEPTS
AND
POLICY
PRESCRIPTIONS
The
first
step
was
to
establish
what
respondents
actually
conceive
of
when
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