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Silverman Dissertation 7-12-17 FINAL.pdf (5.3 MB)

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Perceptions and Misperceptions in War: Civilian Beliefs about Violence and their Consequences in Pakistan, Iraq, and Beyond

Silverman, Daniel M
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1499865650601666

Abstract Details

2017, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Political Science.
Why do civilians in warzones often hold wildly divergent beliefs about the "facts on the ground" in conflict -- that is, about what is happening in the fighting? While there has been a recent explosion of micro-level research on behaviors and attitudes in war, variation in factual beliefs has received little attention. Yet such beliefs are critical, as they form the basis for opinion and action -- civilians react not to what is happening, but to what they think is happening in war. In this dissertation, I build an original theory of factual beliefs in war. Indeed, I argue that such beliefs depend on (1) the information that civilians have about violence, and (2) their psychological motivation when they process it. In particular, I differentiate between "local" civilians living in areas directly affected by a given form of violence, who have superior information about it as well as a powerful motive to process it carefully, and "non-local" civilians living elsewhere in the warzone, whose beliefs are driven by motivational biases and media narratives in the dispute. I investigate these dynamics with multiple types of evidence from the contemporary armed conflicts in Pakistan and Iraq. First, I explore the factual beliefs of non-local civilians with existing survey data as well as an original national survey experiment in Pakistan. I show that these beliefs among non-locals are driven not primarily by an action's objective results, but by civilians' prior orientations and information streams in the dispute. Second, I explore the factual beliefs of civilians local to the violence using a micro-level analysis of 4,046 Coalition "condolence payments" during the heart of the Iraq War. This analysis shows that, after direct and persistent exposure to combatant behavior, local civilians "get it right" and rationally update their beliefs about events. While the project's empirical approach is primarily quantitative in nature, it is steeped in anecdotal evidence from a wide range of conflicts (historical and contemporary) that breathe life into these findings. Overall, the dissertation makes several key scholarly contributions. For conflict scholars, it introduces variation in factual beliefs as a key issue in war, and it deepens our knowledge of civilian populations -- showing that there are two distinct layers of civilians in modern armed conflicts which process new information quite differently. These findings thus help to unify rationalist and motivational models of civilian behavior, showing how they coexist at different levels of removal from the violence. For scholars of political behavior more broadly, the findings speak to the surge of research on political rumors, conspiracy theories, factual misperceptions, and "fake news" in democratic political life, extending it into new domains. Yet they also push back against these "post-truth" literatures, showing how high stakes and personal exposure pierce through propaganda and misinformation. In so doing, the dissertation illuminates both the depths -- and the limits -- of lies in war.
Christopher Gelpi (Advisor)
Richard Herrmann (Committee Member)
Jan Pierskalla (Committee Member)
Jacob Shapiro (Committee Member)
259 p.
International Relations; Political Science
Armed conflict; misperceptions; civilian populations; facts; accuracy; Pakistan; Iraq

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Silverman, D. M. (2017). Perceptions and Misperceptions in War: Civilian Beliefs about Violence and their Consequences in Pakistan, Iraq, and Beyond [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1499865650601666

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Silverman, Daniel. Perceptions and Misperceptions in War: Civilian Beliefs about Violence and their Consequences in Pakistan, Iraq, and Beyond. 2017. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1499865650601666.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Silverman, Daniel. "Perceptions and Misperceptions in War: Civilian Beliefs about Violence and their Consequences in Pakistan, Iraq, and Beyond." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1499865650601666

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1499865650601666
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.