International Conflict and the Problem of Attribution

The authors develop a social psychological model, the attributional consistency model, in order to describe the attributions individuals make to explain the activity of groups. The model is then used to suggest how policy makers determine the causes of the action taken by nations in conflict. As an empirical test of the theory, observations on the Middle East conflict made by those who were associated in one of several ways with either Israel or the Arab nations were examined. An argument detailing the value of the model in studying the dynamics of international conflict is also presented.