Cognitive Management in an Enduring National Rivalry: The Case of India and Pakistan

Political Psychology, Vol. 30, No. 6, Pg. 937-951.

Peter Suedfeld, Rajiv Jhangiani  

Using integrative complexity scoring, the current study addresses how communications by leaders of India and Pakistan have revealed their information processing and decision-making strategies. The hostility between India and Pakistan started with the official creation of the two states and has lasted through more than a half-century. It has been marked by four full-scale wars and almost constant ethnopolitical, terrorist, and guerrilla violence. It is one of the most enduring and bloody binational rivalries of recent decades. Shared aspects of history and culture make the comparisons relatively free of confounding factors. In common with previous findings, complexity scores have shown reliable associations with impending war and with continued peace (or low-intensity conflict).

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