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NATIONAL LEADERS IN INTERDEPENDENT' SITUATIONS
Cognitive and Rhetorical Styles of
American and Soviet Politicians
PHILIP E. TETLO CK
I presented the results of recent research that applies the integrative
complexity coding system to the policy statements of American and Soviet
political leaders Fetlock, 1985, 1988; Tetlock and Boettger, 1989~. This
coding system which has been used to analyze a wide range of exper-
imental and archival sources of data focuses on the cognitive structure
(not content) of people's expressed beliefs and preferences. Rhetoric with
low integrative complexity tends to place events or options into rigid,
evaluatively polarized categories (for example, the policies I prefer lead
only to good consequences; the policies I reject lead only to bad ones);
rhetoric with high integrative complexity tends to be dynamic, dialectical,
and multidimensional (for example, the speaker recognizes that policymak-
ing requires trade-offs among conflicting values, with the relative weight
assigned to each value varying as a function of a changing world).
The data reveal a number of replicable and robust relationships be-
tween the integrative complexity of political rhetoric and actual political
behavior. In the American case we have found, for example, that:
1. Political leaders make less integratively complex statements in the
quarter-year periods immediately preceding presidential elections;
2. Some presidential administrations have tended to be more in-
tegratively complex in their policy statements on the Soviet Union than
others, with the most complex periods being those of the Richard Nixon-
Henry Kissinger detente period (1972-1974) and the John F. Kennedy
administration in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis (1963~;
3. Political rhetoric tends to become more complex in those quarter-
year periods in which the United States and Soviet Union reach major
agreements on arms control or other issues;
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SOVIET AMERICAN DIALOGUE IN THE SOCL4L SCIENCES
4. Political rhetoric tends to become less complex in those quarter-
year periods in which the United States launches major military-political
interventions in other countries;
5. Conservatives in the U.S. Senate tend to make less integra-
tively complex statements than liberals and moderates (especially when
the Democrats control Congress).
In the Soviet case, we have found that:
1. The integrative complexity of Soviet rhetoric tends to rise in those
quarter-year periods that immediately precede and coincide with major
American-Soviet agreements (most recently the INF agreement of 1987~;
2. Soviet rhetoric becomes less complex In those quarter-year pe-
riods that immediately precede and coincide with Soviet military-political
interventions in other countries;
3. The integrative complexity of Soviet policy statements has risen
sharply since Mikhail Gorbachev became General Party Secretary—a trend
that has provoked divergent interpretations among American political an-
alysts;
4. Communist park leaders classified by expert Western observers
as reformers (pro-Gorbachev) have more integratively complex styles of
political speaking than do traditionalists;
5. The differences between reformers and traditionalists were observ-
able in the Konstantin Chernenko period but were much more nrono~nc*~(1
once Gorbachev became General Party Secretary.
- ~ rip
These data highlight some intriguing parallels between Soviet and
American policy rhetoric. Each side tends to make less integratively com-
plex statements in confrontational times and more integratively complex
statements in periods of relatively good relations. There is also a tendency
for political conservatives or traditionalists within each country to make
less integratively complex statements than liberals or reformers.
Nonetheless, there are interpretive problems. It is invariably possible
to construct both perceptual-cognitive and political impression-management
explanations for each of the major findings reported here. From a cognitive
perspective, one can argue that our measures of integrative complexity re-
flect, albeit imperfectly, how key decision makers within the two countries
actually perceive and interpret events. In this view, the complexity of deci-
sion makers' cognitive maps of the world plays a key causal role in shaping
their estimates of the feasibility and desirability of particular polio y options.
Integratively simple decision makers are less likely to see or to be willing
to make the kinds of complex and subtle trade-offs that domestic political
and international situations may require. These trade-offs may take diverse
forms: for example, the tension between national sovereignty and the need
for intimate international collaboration to control nuclear weapons and
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NATIONAL LEADERS IN INTERDEPENDENT SITUATIONS
55
to address critical environmental issues or the familiar tension in national
policy planning among the objectives of defense spending,' productive long-
term investment, and the demands of consumption. Although there is
no guarantee that integratively complex information processors will cope
effectively with these problems (they may perceive trade-offs where none
exists, or they may attach too much weight to one value and too little to
another), one can make a strong case that complex information processors
are likely to be more attentive to the variety of factors that influence trade-
off relationships among values 'and to be more receptive to the possibility
that old policy formulas are no longer viable.
By contrast, from the perspective of political impression management,
the integrative complexity of policy rhetoric reflects not how political leaders
think, but rather the rhetorical strategies they find useful to justify the
policies they have already decided to pursue. 'Some policies call for more
integratively complex justifications than others. Confrontational policies
can be most conveniently justified by portraying the other side in one-
dimensional, negative terms; coordinative policies require a more complex
rhetorical strategy, one that acknowledges both commonalities and conflicts
of interest between nations. Within the domestic political arena, moderate
reformist policies require more complex justification than traditionalist
or conservative policies. To argue that current social arrangements are
fundamentally sound is by definition less integratively complex than to
argue that current social arrangements are in some ways sound and in
some ways hawed. The key question is whether the ideological differences
observed reflect nothing more than differences in public rhetorical strategies
or whether they also reflect, in part, differences in how advocates of the
different viewpoints actually think.
I conclude by arguing that the scales of theoretical plausibility tip
against an extreme version of the political impression-management hy-
pothesis, which attributes all of the observed differences to "mere public
posturing." Here, previous research on the integrative complexity construct
becomes critical. The experimental research literature indicates, quite
clearly, that integratively simple tempers are more likely to nenave In con-
frontational ways in mixed-motive laboratory games and are less likely to
arrive at mutually beneficial compromise solutions in such games. There is
also a fairly extensive body of research on personality correlates of political
preferences which indicates that the cognitive-stylistic correlates of ideology
that have been observed through content analysis of leaders' statements can
also be observed among the general public and political activists using more
traditional measures of individual differences in cognitive and motivational
functioning (McClosky, 1967; Tetlock, 1981~. These convergences between
the content analytic data reported here and previous research on political
reasoning suggest (although they do not prove) that variations in integrative
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SOVIET-AMERICAN DIALOGUE IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
complexity of thought at the highest levels of government have played a
role in shaping the character and tone of the superpower relationship over
the last 43 years.
REFERENCES
McClosly, PI.
1967 Personality and attitude correlates of foreign policy orientation. In Domestic
Sources of Foreign Policy, J.M. Rosenau, ed. New York: Free Press.
Tetlock, P.E.
1981 Personality and isolationism: (content analysis of senatorial speeches. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology 41:737-743.
1985 Integrative complexity of Amencan and Soviet foreign policy rhetoric A
time-genes analysis. Joumal of Personality and Social Psychology 49:1565-1585.
1988 Monitoring the integrative complexity of American and Soviet policy state-
ments: What can be learned? Joumal of Social Issues 442:101-131.
Tetlock, P.E., and R. Boettger
1989 Cognitive style and political ideology in the Soviet Union. Political Psychol-
o,gy.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
integratively complex
