Can you have it both ways? Attribution and plausible deniability in unclaimed coercion

IF 2.5 Q1 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Costantino Pischedda, Andrew Cheon, Sara B. Moller
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

States and non-state actors conduct unclaimed coercive attacks, inflicting costs on adversaries to signal resolve to prevail in a dispute while refraining from claiming or denying responsibility. Analysts argue that targets often know who is responsible, which enables coercive communication, and that the lack of claims of responsibility grants coercers plausible deniability in the eyes of third parties. The puzzle of different audiences holding different beliefs about who is behind an unclaimed attack, even when they may have the same information, has been neglected. We address this puzzle by theorising that targets and third parties tend to reach different conclusions due to distinct emotional reactions: targets are more likely to experience anger, which induces certainty and a desire to blame someone, as well as heuristic and biased information processing, prompting confident attribution despite the limited evidence. A vignette-based experiment depicting a terrorist attack lends empirical plausibility to our argument.
能否两全其美?无人认领的胁迫行为中的归属问题和似是而非的推诿问题
国家和非国家行为体进行无声称的胁迫性攻击,使对手付出代价,以表明在争端中获胜的决心,同时避免声称或否认责任。分析人士认为,目标往往知道谁该负责,这使得胁迫性沟通成为可能,而不声称责任则使胁迫者在第三方眼中具有可信的推诿性。不同的受众对谁是无人认领的袭击的幕后黑手持有不同的看法,即使他们可能拥有相同的信息,但这一难题一直被忽视。为了解决这个难题,我们提出了一个理论,即目标受众和第三方往往会因为不同的情绪反应而得出不同的结论:目标受众更容易产生愤怒情绪,这种情绪会诱发确定性和指责他人的欲望,同时也会诱发启发式和有偏见的信息处理,促使他们在证据有限的情况下仍然自信地归咎于他人。一个以恐怖袭击为背景的实验为我们的论点提供了经验上的合理性。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
3.40
自引率
13.60%
发文量
30
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