• Allison Abbe – “Understanding the Adversary: Strategic Empathy and Perspective Taking in National Security”

  • Jul 5 2023
  • Length: 8 mins
  • Podcast

Allison Abbe – “Understanding the Adversary: Strategic Empathy and Perspective Taking in National Security”

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  • National security practitioners need to understand the motives, mindsets, and intentions of adversaries to anticipate and respond to their actions effectively. Although some authors have argued empathy helps build an understanding of the adversary, research points to its cognitive component of perspective taking as the more appropriate skill for national security practitioners to have. In this podcast, Dr. Allison  Abbe synthesizes previous research on the development and application of perspective taking in analysis and decision making and recommends four ways strategists and practitioners can enhance their ability to gain insight into adversaries. Read the article here. E-mail usarmy.carlisle.awc.mbx.parameters@army.mil to give feedback on this podcast or the genesis article. Keywords: perspective taking, strategic empathy, political psychology, military education, cognitive bias Episode Transcript: Understanding the Adversary: Strategic Empathy and Perspective Taking in National Security Stephanie Crider (Host)  You're listening to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production focused on national security affairs. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.   I'm talking with Dr. Allison Abbe today, author of “Understanding the Adversary: Strategic Empathy and Perspective Taking in National Security,” which was published in the Summer 2023 issue of Parameters. Abbe is a professor of organizational studies at the US Army War College. Her research focuses on the development of leadership and intercultural skills in national security personnel.  Welcome to Decisive Point, Dr. Abbe.  Dr. Allison Abbe  Thanks for having me.  Host  Your article synthesizes research on perspective taking in analysis and decision making and recommends four ways strategists and practitioners can enhance their ability to gain insight into adversaries. Will you please explain perspective taking in the context of strategic empathy?  Abbe  Sure. So, strategic empathy has been talked about in terms of understanding adversaries and competitors and being able to better anticipate their actions. And in psychology, the topic of empathy has been more in the context of helping relationships between clinicians and patients, or clinicians and clients in the context of mental health. And so, there's a rich literature on empathy but in a slightly different context than in the national security arena.   In psychology, empathy is talked about in terms of empathic concern for the other person or party, motivation to engage in empathy, and then perspective taking. So those three components are not as equally applicable in the national security arena as they might be in a one-on-one relationship—an interpersonal relationship like in a romantic relationship or a patient-practitioner medical kind of context. So, focusing on perspective taking allows us to pull just the really relevant skills about empathy that can be applied in the national security context and focus more on how it is people can go about understanding the cognitive perspective of someone else without taking on the emotions of another party or really wanting to help the other party. You can maintain your own interests while understanding the perspective of the adversary, or even a partner.  Host  How can leaders and strategists develop perspective taking as a skill?  Abbe  So, perspective taking as a basic ability develops in childhood. We know from the developmental psychology literature that we're capable of it as small children. But it's a very cognitively demanding skill, and so people don't automatically engage in it. Your default is to use your own perspective, and then you only take on someone else's perspective with additional cognitive effort. And so,
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