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       Chapter 1

       A Cognitive Mapping Approach to Political Violence

      Cognitive maps identify the reasoning processes by which human beings decide to engage in certain behavior. Representing a large range of factors, they capture the complex “subjective reality” that motivates people to behave in certain ways (Renshon 2008: 822). In political science, cognitive mapping has been a valuable approach to explore policy decisions. However, applications have been widely abandoned because cognitive maps are highly complex: typically, they contain reasoning processes that consist of more than a dozen beliefs and connections between beliefs.

      This abandonment is unfortunate because cognitive mapping has at least two major advantages. First, it overcomes the gap between human behavior and the structures in which humans act. This is achieved by modeling human behavior as decisions that are motivated by beliefs about various types of internal factors (for example, feelings of fear) or external factors (for example, conditions of poverty). Second, as indicated by increasing applications of cognitive mapping in other disciplines, such as computer science, engineering, economics, and medicine, the approach allows systematic investigation of the mechanisms underlying human behavior. Specifically, these mechanisms are modeled as direct and indirect connections between beliefs and decisions for actions (chains of beliefs).

      As noted in the Introduction, to cope with the complexity of cognitive maps, this book presents a computational model formalizing cognitive maps into directed acyclical graphs (DAGs). This formalization is based on Pearl’s theory of causality (2000). It provides new possibilities not only for the application of cognitive mapping but also for the study of counterfactuals. Specifically, the model enables the researcher to (1) systematically identify beliefs that motivate, or fail to motivate, decisions to engage in certain behavior; (2) systematically trace chains of beliefs that encourage certain decisions; and (3) explore counterfactuals, which show what would have prevented people from deciding to engage in certain behavior.

      To study counterfactuals, the model intervenes on the belief systems of political actors and examines their behavior in alternative worlds following from this intervention. This allows us to explore alternative worlds in which the individuals would not have decided to take up arms (Chapter 6). Intervening on the actors’ beliefs about the world rather than on the world itself, this analysis bridges the gap between actors and political structures. This presents a new approach to the study of counterfactuals (cf. Fearon 1991; Sylvan and Majeski 1998; Tetlock and Belkin 1996), and is to my knowledge the first application of cognitive mapping to the study of counterfactuals.

      This chapter is dedicated to introducing the cognitive mapping approach, the formalization of cognitive maps into DAGs, and its application to the study of counterfactuals. The first section introduces the cognitive mapping approach, and presents the main components of cognitive maps: beliefs, belief connections or inferences, and decisions for actions. The second section presents the formalization of cognitive maps, following Pearl’s theory of causality, and its application to counterfactuals via external interventions.

       Cognitive Mapping

      According to Axelrod (1976: 8–9), the roots of cognitive mapping lie in at least four fields: (1) psycho-logic, (2) causal inferences, (3) graph theory, and (4) evaluative assertion analysis.¹ While several researchers working in these fields have been political scientists, the first rigorous application of cognitive mapping to studies of political science was presented by Robert Axelrod in 1976 in Structure of Decision. It had the practical goal of helping policy-makers reach better decisions.

      Cognitive maps are illustrations of belief systems. They consist of three major components, which I present in this chapter: (1) beliefs, (2) belief connections or inferences, and (3) decisions for actions. Specifically, cognitive maps visualize beliefs and decisions as text in circles, and belief connections as arrows. Beliefs are located in circles that also have arrows pointing away from them.² Decisions are located in circles that only have arrows pointing toward them.³ The following figure shows an excerpt from a cognitive map that I constructed for this research.

      As I show below, cognitive maps allow the researcher to systematically trace chains of beliefs that are antecedent to decisions. These chains represent the complex microlevel mechanisms underlying human behavior, drawing on inside categories provided by the actors themselves. They are complex representations of the subjective realities that motivate people to engage in certain behavior, rather than representations of an external selection of certain factors and not others. Cognitive mapping thus contributes to methods that are based on external categories assigned by the researcher, and which focus more on the direct relations between particular variables and behavior, rather than on the complex microlevel mechanisms underlying this behavior.

      As mentioned in the Introduction, cognitive mapping also offers to synthesize and put into perspective the literature on particular behaviors. Specifically, the belief systems represented by cognitive maps consist of beliefs about various types of factors, which are usually addressed by different theories. For example, related to violence, one can hold beliefs about religious norms like God forbids killing of innocent people (cf. cultural-psychological theories of violence); about economic conditions like poverty (cf. environmental-psychological theories of violence); or about interacting with violent groups like meeting members of al-Qaeda (cf. group theories of violence). In applying cognitive mapping, I first construct cognitive maps from interviews with violent individuals (Chapter 4). Second, I analyze the maps to identify chains of beliefs that are antecedent to decisions to engage in political violence (Chapter 5). Third, I intervene on the cognitive maps to model counterfactuals and explore alternative worlds in which the individuals would not have decided to take up arms (Chapter 6).

      This application involves various methods. Specifically, my construction of cognitive maps draws on the textual analysis of my interviews and applies Spradley’s theme analysis to abstract the individuals’ beliefs into comparable categories. The analysis of the cognitive maps and the counterfactual analysis draw on a computational model developed for this study. The model formalizes cognitive maps into DAGs, a formalization presented in the second part of this chapter.

      Numerous studies, mostly in the field of foreign policy, have applied the cognitive mapping approach. Some examples are Alastair Iain Johnston’s analysis of Chinese strategic culture (1995), Matthew Bonham, Victor Sergeev, and Pavel Parshin’s examination of international negotiations (1997), Jonathan Klein’s and Dale Cooper’s analysis of military officers (1982), or Tuomas Tapio’s doctoral thesis about cooperation in foreign economic policy (2003). But most political scientists have nevertheless abandoned cognitive mapping because of the maps’ complexity.