Evaluation of excess confidence among national security officials

National security officials are “extremely confident”, which hinders their ability to precisely assess uncertainty, according to a new study by a professor of the Dartmouth government. When they thought that declarations had 90 % chance of being true, they were only about 60 % of the time, according to the study.

The results are published in the Texas national security examination.

About 1,900 national security officials of more than 40 NATO allies and partners were interviewed about the uncertainty of current and future states in the world and provided a total of 60,000 assessments. Officials were registered in the National War College in the United States, the Canadian Forces College, the NATO Defense College and the Norwegian Defense Intelligence School.

In the United States, Canada and Europe, once military officers reach the rank of colonel, they must obtain a master’s degree in a war school or another military institution in the context of their professional military training. The participating institutions also included a large part of civilian national security officials who work, among other things, in the foreign ministries and intelligence agencies. The study therefore focused on a group that is both unusually large and representative of senior national security officials.

The investigation contained questions on international military, political and economic affairs and asked the respondents to estimate the chances that a statement is true, such as: “In your opinion, what are the chances that NATO members spend more money for the defense than the rest of the world gathered?

Other questions involved making predictions such as: “In your opinion, what are the chances that Ukraine and Russia officially declare a cease-fire on a certain date?”

The results have shown that national security officials are too confident about the current and future state of the world – a cognitive bias that was constant in all respondents, civil and military professionals, men and women, American and non -American citizens. They share these prejudices with the general public.

“National security officials are like many of us, in the sense that we tend to think that we know more than we really know. This means that national security officials, like members of the general public, are systematically too confident,” said the author of the study Jeffrey Friedman, associate professor of government and member of the Davidson Institute for World Safety in Dartmouth. He claims that excess confidence among national security officials is similar to the prejudices he noted during similar surveys with undergraduate students, master’s students and finance professionals.

“However, the study has also shown that it is possible to considerably mitigate this bias with only two minutes of training,” said Friedman. His research revealed that briefly showing national security officials on excess confidence models led participants to the study to make judgments that considerably reduced excess confidence and favored accuracy.

The study also revealed that national security officials have a prejudice in favor of false positives, that is to say a tendency to think that false declarations are true.

This has been demonstrated by reversing the formulation of investigation issues. In a subset of surveys, half of the participants were questioned: “Did IS killed more civilians in the last decade than Boko Haram? “While the other half was questioned:” Did Boko Haram killed more civilians than the Islamic State? ” The answers given by national security officials to these two questions are systematically more than 100 %.

Friedman says that this discovery indicates that national security officials seem to have “a tendency to confirm rather than to refute the possibilities that they are asked to consider”, which could be particularly problematic for national security officials since there could be several results to consider in military scenarios, rather than one.

The study suggests a potential remedy for this excess of confidence: reminding national security officials the dangers of being too sure of their convictions.

Before a random subset of national security officials received the investigation, they received information on excess confidence and prejudices from other cohorts. Thanks to this two -minute training and this illuminated approach, these participants were clearly better in the evaluation of uncertainty.

Friedman says that the four military institutions that participated in the study deserve a lot of recognition for their participation. The work had a training effect: the first cohort came from the National War College, which was so satisfied with the session they invited Friedman to return, then other military institutions joined us following the recommendations of the former participants. “It was very rewarding to see how receptive national security officials and training were receptive, because training was then integrated into the basic program of institutions,” said Friedman.

“Any organization anxious to improve the ability of individuals to assess uncertainty in a more precise manner can implement this training,” said Friedman. “The equipment is put online and can be developed and integrated into the study programs anywhere, whether by military officials, diplomats, intelligence agents, business leaders or other.”

“By exploiting decision -making science tools, we can improve people’s judgment,” said Friedman.