The Psychological Assessment of Political Leadersrelations (i.e., keeping one's options open). Although Hermann did
not directly measure war and peace outcomes as such, we would cer-
tainly expect that in many situations these two personality charac-
teristics, by heightening an international climate of hostility, would
predispose leaders toward war. These variables are further discussed
in chapter 7 of this book.
The belief that one can control events reflects the traditional per-
sonality variable of locus of control or attributional style (see Strickland
1977). Leaders with this belief tend to avoid resource commitment
and keep their foreign policy options open, perhaps on the theory
that they maintain their own control thereby. (The locus of control
concept has been elaborated into the more general concept of attri-
butional style or explanatory style, which is discussed under the
heading cognitive style.} Hermann's list of variables includes a measure
of self-confidence that reflects both self-esteem (see Rosenberg 1979)
and self-efficacy or perceived sense of competence and control of the
environment (see White 1959; Bandura 1982).
Using techniques of evaluation assertion analysis, Holsti (1967)
observed a belief pattern ofinherent bad faith in the public statements
of John Foster Dulles about the USSR over a period of several years.
Holsti found consistent negative relationships between Dulles's per-
ceptions of Soviet strength and his view of Soviet friendship; thus
Dulles attributed friendly Soviet behavior to Soviet weakness rather
than to Soviet friendship. As a personality or cognitive construct,
inherent bad faith may be at the base of Jervis's (1976, chap. 3)
notion of the "deterrence" model of international relations and
conflict.
Operational Codes
In his classic study of the premises of Soviet thinking, Leites (1951)
introduced the concept of "operational code" to refer to the set of
axioms, postulates, and premises that appear to constitute the foun-
dation of more specific beliefs and practices. In Leites's work, opera-
tional codes were intuitively extracted from political writings. In
later years, George (1969), Holsti (1970, 1977), and Walker (1983,
1990) have refined the operational code concept, suggesting several
standard dimensions or typologies of issues around which opera-
tional codes of specific individuals could be constructed. Two classes