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The Secrecy Heuristic: Inferring Quality from Secrecy in Foreign Policy Contexts
Author(s) -
Travers Mark,
Van Boven Leaf,
Judd Charles
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
political psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.419
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-9221
pISSN - 0162-895X
DOI - 10.1111/pops.12042
Subject(s) - secrecy , context (archaeology) , politics , quality (philosophy) , heuristic , political science , public policy , foreign policy , social psychology , psychology , public relations , computer science , law , artificial intelligence , epistemology , geography , philosophy , archaeology
Three experiments demonstrate that in the context of U.S . foreign policy decision making, people infer informational quality from secrecy. In Experiment 1, people weighed secret information more heavily than public information when making recommendations about foreign political candidates. In Experiment 2, people judged information presented in documents ostensibly produced by the D epartment of S tate and the N ational S ecurity C ouncil as being of relatively higher quality when those documents were secret rather than public. Finally, in Experiment 3, people judged a N ational S ecurity C ouncil document as being of higher quality when presented as a secret document rather than a public document and evaluated others' decisions more favorably when those decisions were based on secret information. Discussion centers on the mediators, moderators, and broader implications of this secrecy heuristic in foreign policy contexts.