Overconfidence and War: The Havoc and Glory of Positive Illusions

By Dominic D. P. Johnson. 2004

202 citations recorded by the source corpus.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/13481fea33a103cb325b17e78b8ff4e08b876358

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In Philosophy

Citations in the corpus

The Paranoid Optimist: An Integrative Evolutionary Model of Cognitive Biases (2006, background): “(For a related arguement in the domain of warfare, see Johnson, 2004.)”
Adaptive rationality: An evolutionary perspective on cognitive bias (2009, unknown): “Beyond these examples, error management logic applies in a wide array of domains relating to conflict and cooperation with others, including social exchange (Yamagishi, Tanida, Mashima, Shimoma, & Kanazawa, 2003; Yamagishi, Terai, Kiyonari, Mifune, & Kanazawa, 2007), overconfidence in war and compet”
When overconfidence is revealed to others: Testing the status-enhancement theory of overconfidence (2013, background): “For example, falsely believing one is more capable than others leads entrepreneurs to risk too much in new ventures (Camerer & Lovallo, 1999), CEOs to engage in too many acquisitions of other firms (Malmendier & Tate, 2005), and nations to initiate too many military confrontations (Johnson, 2004).”
Illusions of causality: how they bias our everyday thinking and how they could be reduced (2015, background): “…(Hamilton and Gifford, 1976; Crocker, 1981; Murphy et al., 2011), hostile driving behavior (Stephens and Ohtsuka, 2014), social intolerance and war (Johnson, 2004; Lilienfeld et al., 2009), and public health problems such as the increased popularity of alternative and complementary medicine…”
How small system dynamics models can help the public policy process (2011, background): “In addition, Johnson (2004) argues that states' positive illusions and overconfidence regarding their own capabilities is important to explaining the occurrence of wars.”
The trouble with overconfidence. (2008, unknown): “Researchers have offered overconfidence as an explanation for wars, strikes, litigation, entrepreneurial failures, and stock market bubbles (Camerer & Lovallo, 1999; Glaser & Weber, 2007; Howard, 1983; Johnson, 2004; Malmendier & Tate, 2005; Neale & Bazerman, 1985; Odean, 1999).”
The Biological and Evolutionary Logic of Human Cooperation (2005, background): “…offered a novel perspective in some work in economics (Burnham 1997; 2003; Burnham/McCabe/Smith 2000; McCabe 2003; McCabe/Smith 2001; Smith 2003) and politics (Johnson 2004; Rosen 2004) and we expect it will become centrally important to a fuller understanding of human cooperation (Wilson 1998).”
Not so Above Average After All: When People Believe They are Worse than Average and its Implications for Theories of Bias in Social Comparison (2007, unknown): “And the belief that their armies are stronger than those of others has been invoked to explain nations’ willingness to make the costly choice to go to war (Johnson, 2004).”