2025-07-02 カリフォルニア大学バークレー校(UCB)
<関連情報>
- https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/07/02/when-warnings-never-cease-can-we-still-trust-our-instincts/
- https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/building-from-the-brain-advancing-the-study-of-threat-perception-in-international-relations/3E0CB1BDB40D10AE9CA793100E066501
脳から構築する: 国際関係における脅威認識研究の進展 Building from the Brain: Advancing the Study of Threat Perception in International Relations
Marika Landau-Wells
International Organization Published:20 December 2024
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818324000328
Abstract
“Threat perception” is frequently invoked as a causal variable in theories of international relations and foreign policy decision making. Yet haphazard conceptualization and untested psychological assumptions leave its effects poorly understood. In this article, I propose a unified solution to these two related problems: taking the brain into account. I first show that this approach solves the conceptualization problem by generating two distinct concepts that generalize across existing theories, align with plain language, and are associated with specific brain-level processes: threat-as-danger perception (subjectively apprehending danger from any source) and threat-as-signal perception (detecting a statement of the intention to harm). Because both types of perception occur in the brain, large-scale neuroimaging data capturing these processes offer a way to empirically test some of the psychological assumptions embedded in IR theories. I conduct two such tests using assumptions from the literatures on conflict decision making (“harms are costs”) and on coercion (“intentions are inscrutable”). Based on an original analysis of fifteen coordinate-based meta-analyses comprising 500+ studies and 11,000+ subjects, I conclude that these assumptions are inconsistent with the cumulative evidence about how the brain responds to threats of either kind. Further, I show that brain-level data illuminate aspects of threat perception’s impact on behavior that have not yet been integrated into IR theory. Advancing the study of threat perception thus requires a microfoundational approach that builds from what we know about the brain.
