Handbook of intelligence studies / edited by

ADDING VALUE TO THE INTELLIGENCE PRODUCT
A number of other scholars have highlighted the use of empathy as a specific device that
intelligence analysts can use to understand the actions of others within cultures that have
different social or religious mores. Gordon McCormick – a professor at the Naval Postgraduate
School – has argued that intelligence analysts should “develop cultural empathy” for an
adversary in order to “forecast enemy behavior with greater accuracy than has been the case
historically.” 32 In addition, Columbia University professor Robert Jervis has said that lack of
empathy
is perhaps (one of) the two most important kinds of intelligence errors [because] states are unable
to put themselves in the other’s shoes and instead assume that the other’s behavior is driven by
unusual – and frequently malign – internal characteristics. ... Empathy requires entering into the
other’s perceived world, and this is rarely easy. 33
Cultivating empathy is particularly difficult for intelligence analysts, who tend to be more
scholarly than not, spending most of their day behind their computers reading and writing
about what goes on overseas. Intelligence analysis is usually a highly intellectual exercise
predicated on applying knowledge gained through area studies education – preferably
including time spent immersed in that culture – and foreign language training to understand
both the adversary and the situational context. Most of this kind of knowledge can be consciously
acquired, aggregated, learned, and taught, but intellect alone will not be able to
allow an analyst to put himself in the head of the other and understand the cultural and
emotional context that contributes to his or her decisionmaking process. Part of the reason
is because, as Robert Jervis has pointed out, intelligence analysts are not decisionmakers,
and as a result “may not understand the pressures on those who have to act in the name of their
states.” 34
It is the rare analyst that gets to experience first-hand the color and dynamism of foreign
cultures or the drama and chaos of international crises. As many authors have observed, intelligence
analysts tend to be intellectual and introverted. As a result, while the emphasis on the
intellect may lead to greater knowledge, it does not provide a mechanism for understanding the
mindset of a foreign leader, or the kinds of emotional decisionmaking process that can lead a
person to risk his or her life in pursuit of an ideal like justice, or a group of people to risk their
lives to oppose an occupying force. Their distance from the action provides them with greater
objectivity but it is precisely this objectivity that also hinders understanding the emotional
component of the decisionmaking process.
As William Burris has observed, intelligence “analysts and managers [tend] to play down or
ignore the importance of affections – that fertile ground of humanness where the greed,
irrationality, passion and lust of power that threaten our national security are often rooted.” 35
Yet it is exactly those emotions that are crucial for the United States government to understand
if it is to forecast a popular uprising or intractable guerilla conflict.
The kind of raw intelligence necessary to understand the motivations of an adversary
is frequently fragmentary. In the absence of complete understanding, the analyst must still
use some framework to interpret and forecast the actions of the adversary. Frequently this
will entail some application of a rational-actor assumption or mirror-imaging, but assumptions
derived from stereotypes or prejudices about the adversary can also enter into the
analysis. Empathy can provide a corrective to these kinds of analytic distortions by providing
another way to understand the intangibles that can affect an adversary’s decisionmaking
process.
According to Ralph White:
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