The October War: Changes in Cognitive Orientation toward the Middle East Conflict

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Abstract
In this paper we will examine adjustments that foreign policy officials make in their thinking to accommodate new information. In 1971–1972 and again in 1974–1975 a sample of American foreign policy officials was interviewed about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Cognitive maps constructed from the interviews were used to simulate reactions of the policy officials to the October 1973 war. A comparison of simulations based on the pre-war and the post-war maps shows that there was almost no restructuring of beliefs. The conflict reinforced the views of some officials, while it led others to perceive certain concepts as having a negative rather than a positive effect on their values.

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