Chapter 1

Introduction to Critical Belief Analysis

Why Critical Belief Analysis?

Critical Belief Analysis (CBA) is an important addition to the security analysis toolkit. Foreign policy and security analysts (hereafter security analysts or just analysts) employ a variety of tools and techniques to describe, explain, and predict leaders’ decisions and actions. Security analysts usually use a combination of structural analytic techniques^[1] and agency analytic techniques to reach their conclusions. Structural analytic techniques assess factors related to history, ideology, politics, economics, social relationships, cultures, religions, and linguistics. Structural analyses also address the influence of domestic and international laws, regulations, rules (both formal and informal), treaties, and conventions. Security analysts usually combine their structural assessments with agency analyses, i.e., investigations of the characteristics and tendencies of individual decision-makers, primarily based on the theories, tools, and techniques of cognitive psychology. These agency analyses are where CBA excels.

Security analysts often create a psychobiography for individuals and groups of decision-makers in their studies.^[2] A psychobiography is an investigation of the experiential, cognitive, and emotional factors influencing a leader’s points of view and assumptions (i.e., their beliefs) and thus affecting their decisions and actions. Psychobiographers employ diverse techniques to assess agents’ personalities and leadership styles, as well as their cognitive, physical, mental, emotional, attitudinal, and ideological characteristics. If there is substantial information about a leader, a strategic psychobiography can delve deep into their background. However, such deep dives often take considerable time to complete. More commonly, operational and tactical analyses make do with modified psychobiographies because information on agents (decision-makers) is incomplete, and deadlines for final analyses are short. CBA can help mitigate the limitations of such incomplete strategic, operational, and tactical psychobiographies.

CBA helps security analysts deepen and refine their understanding of points of view, assumptions, and beliefs revealed by other analytic approaches.^[3] Methods for assessing the role of beliefs in threat-based and overall decision-making are poorly developed. Social science has studied “belief systems” and “belief networks,” i.e., interrelated beliefs and their ideological foundations.^[4] As a rule, foreign policy and psychology literatures conceptualize beliefs as “attributions” shaping agents’ explanations of events.^[5] These literatures fail to provide techniques to help analysts understand the structure of beliefs, grasp how beliefs affect agents’ understandings of threats and opportunities or predict agents’ responses to challenges.

CBA focuses on these hitherto overlooked issues. CBA helps analysts refine and deepen their understanding of how beliefs affect decisions and actions.^[6] Per an overused metaphor, CBA allows the analyst to “peel the onion” more deeply than previous belief-related analytic techniques. This book provides a detailed description of CBA and a user’s manual (Chapter 6) for its conduct. Security analysts who regularly conduct agency analyses should benefit most from this book.

Security analysts can use CBA to achieve two distinct sets of objectives:

First, analysts can use CBA tools and techniques to deepen their understanding of agents’ beliefs, thereby helping them more accurately:

• Describe, explain, and predict agents’ decisions and actions.
• Assess the reasonableness of those decisions and actions.
• Estimate the probability agents’ policies and actions will have the intended consequences.
• Anticipate agents’ reactions to the failures of belief-inspired policies and actions.

Second, analysts can use CBA tools and techniques for self-analysis. CBA can sensitize security analysts to factors that may bias their investigations or inflate confidence in their conclusions.

Defining Security Studies

For the purposes of this book, the field of security studies includes national security, homeland security, law enforcement, and corporate security. Figure 1.1 portrays the relationships between U.S. security actors after the September 11, 2001 (9/11) terrorist attacks.^[7] National Security is the primary responsibility of the U.S. military and intelligence community (IC). Homeland Security, also known as Public Security, sees law enforcement take the lead with military and IC support. Citizen Security is the purview of law enforcement and is responsible for protecting U.S. citizens and visitors to the United States. With an estimated 90 percent of critical U.S. infrastructure privately owned, Corporate Security has become more prominent since 9/11. While supported by Homeland Security and Citizen Security, Corporate Security is the primary responsibility of corporations and businesses. CBA is an important analytic tool in each of these security areas.

Security analysis includes two key analytic components: intelligence analysis and policy analysis. Both of these components provide support to security decision-makers. Most large organizations have a dedicated intelligence support staff tasked with delivering analytic reports on threats and opportunities to policy analysts and decision-makers. It is up to policy analysts and decision-makers to combine intelligence reports with additional information from other sources, consider political and resource constraints, develop lists of potential policy alternatives, and decide which alternatives to pursue. In smaller organizations, policy analysts may not have dedicated intelligence analysis support and, therefore, must complete intelligence threat and opportunity analyses themselves before attacking the policy side.

Security Analysis Critical-Thinking Framework

CBA is most effective in security studies when used as part of a larger Security Analysis Critical-Thinking Framework. Figure 1.2 provides such a framework.^[8]

Figure 1.2 places the Foundation for Critical Thinking’s Elements of Thought in the order of the steps in the scientific method.^[9] Starting with Purpose and Questions and moving clockwise around the framework’s circle may appear to be rigidly linear. However, the proper use of the elements is anything but linear. Richard Paul and Linda Elder, the creators of the original Elements of Thought, argue that competent critical thinkers repeatedly reassess each element of thought as their analyses proceed.^[10] Thus, all the elements are interrelated. A skillful critical-thinking analysis requires both systematic and active inquiry. Systematic means there is a comprehensive format for conducting the analysis, such as shown in Figure 1.2 and detailed in Chapter 6 for CBA. Active means the analyst thinks about the analytic process as it proceeds. Competent analysts continually revisit and reassess each Element of Thought as their analyses proceed.

Figure 1.2 places the Context and Alternatives elements in an inner circle abutting each of the other elements.^[11] This is because Context and Alternatives directly affect every other element. For example, an analysis may have alternative Purposes and Questions, alternative Information, alternative Points of View, alternative Assumptions, and so on. Usually, the Context for each element also differs. Therefore, the Context and Alternative elements must be frequently considered as critical thinkers assess all the other elements.

Figure 1.2 also features two Information elements: “what we know” and “what we need to know.” This model contrasts the role of an initial information search in uncovering facts and theories relevant to the Questions driving the study with the search for additional information used to test alternative conceptual models and hypotheses as the study progresses. Once the analyst has completed the conceptualization of the study and identified and collected “what we need to know,” they then proceed to the Interpretation and Inferences and Implications and Consequences elements, revisiting other elements as needed, to complete their analysis. Security Analysis: A Critical-Thinking Approach^[12] provides a more detailed description of the elements of thought within the Security Analysis Critical-Thinking Framework, including the analytic techniques employed with each element. Below is a brief description of each element.

The Elements of Thought

Purpose and Questions. Every research project or analysis should begin with a broad purpose. Often expressed as questions, such purposes are usually too broad to be effectively investigated. For example, it would take years, if not decades, to study a purpose such as: “How can world peace be achieved?” The analyst must narrow the scope of the purpose to questions that can be studied with available resources within the time allotted. For example, a good research question may be: “Why did Israel and Hezbollah go to war in Lebanon in 2006?”

Information and Context. Once the research question(s) are developed, the next step is to search for existing information (data, facts, evidence) and existing studies and theories about the current problem. This search requires skill in information literacy: the analyst’s ability to find, assess, use, and document information. During the initial information search, the analyst strives to discover the structural issues and current information needed to establish the general context of the analysis. A security analyst must have well-developed information literacy skills, including those used in identifying misinformation, disinformation, and other falsehoods. The information element is usually addressed a second time (what we need to know) to generate data required to test alternative models, hypotheses, scenarios, or recommendations the analysis develops.

Points of View and Assumptions. Using material gleaned from the initial information search, analysts assess the points of view, assumptions, and beliefs shaping the functioning of opposing agents as well as the points of view, assumptions, and beliefs influencing their own thinking. Points of view and assumptions speak to the belief systems of the actors or societies under study; these include structural, historical, ideological, political, economic, social, cultural, religious, linguistic, and security factors. Knowledge of agents’ points of view and assumptions plays a crucial role in explaining and predicting their decisions and actions. CBA contributes significantly to the assessment of points of view and assumptions.

Concepts (conceptualization). The analyst then conceptualizes (models) the behavior of the agents under study. There are several classes of modeling techniques, including geospatial modeling, temporal modeling, process modeling, structural causal modeling, and agency modeling.^[13] Typically, these models identify the hypotheses, scenarios, or recommendations to be tested in the study. Figure 6.1, The Periodic Table of the Beliefs, is a tool analysts can use to help them understand how CBA models agents’ beliefs.

Alternatives. Working almost simultaneously with the conceptualization element, the analyst establishes the range of alternative hypotheses, scenarios, or recommendations to be tested in the analysis, i.e., options useful in explaining or predicting the decision-making and behavior under study or developing alternative policy recommendations. There are several techniques for generating alternative hypotheses, scenarios, and recommendations. Some hypotheses, scenarios, and recommendations flow from the information search or from modeling (i.e., the “Concepts” Element of Thought). Others flow from such techniques as synthesizing creative thinking into the critical-thinking framework.^[14] Creative-thinking techniques generate unique, useful “out-of-the-box” alternatives that must be assessed in the same way as alternatives generated by other techniques.

Interpretation and Inference. When alternative hypotheses, scenarios, or policy recommendations have been generated, the next step is to test each to determine the best alternatives to answer the questions or solve the problems guiding the analysis. There are several qualitative, comparative, and quantitative techniques for testing and evaluating alternative hypotheses, scenarios, and policy recommendations.^[15] Analytic findings (best answers or solutions) emerge from this element. Security Analysis: A Critical Thinking Approach provides several useful qualitative techniques.^[16] There are specific comparative analysis techniques (e.g., Truth Tables and Fuzzy Sets), but most comparative analyses use both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Most quantitative analyses require the analyst to have a background in statistics or advanced mathematics.

Implications and Consequences. The findings of the analysis must then be evaluated for their implications and consequences. If the findings or solutions are adopted, decision-makers must understand the likely outcomes. Implications flow from the thoughts generated by the analysis. Consequences flow from the implementation of analysts’ suggested recommendations. Security Analysis: A Critical-Thinking Approach includes a number of analytic techniques for assessing implications and consequences.^[17]

Critical Belief Analysis as Part of Critical Thinking

CBA is a crucial component of any critical-thinking security studies project assessing the agency aspects of individual or group decision-making. It provides a systematic model for describing, explaining, and predicting agents’ actions through a deeper understanding of their points of view, their assumptions, and the webs of belief supporting those points of view and assumptions. Properly conducted, a CBA will also sensitize the analyst to the points of view, assumptions, and webs of belief shaping their own conclusions.

The tools and techniques of CBA may also contribute to other elements of the Security Analysis Critical-Thinking Framework. CBA can contribute to conceptualizing the study by helping analysts generate alternative hypotheses, scenarios, and recommendations. Figure 6.1, The Periodic Table of the Beliefs, provides a conceptual model for use in any agency analysis. CBA can also help analysts interpret their findings and generate inferences. Additionally, CBA can offer insights into the implications and consequences of various alternatives, scenarios, and recommendations. Overall, CBA makes analysts aware of crucial matters they might otherwise overlook in a critical-thinking analysis.

NOTES

1. Not to be confused with Richards J. Heuer Jr. and Randolph H. Pherson’s, Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage/CQ Press, 2015), which provides a number of both structural and agency analytic tools.↑

2. Michael W. Collier, Security Analysis: A Critical Thinking Approach. (Richmond, KY: Eastern Kentucky University Libraries, Encompass Digital Archive, 2023), free download at http://encompass.eku.edu/ekuopen/6/ (accessed June 1, 2023).↑

3. For a deeper understanding of Critical Belief Analysis, see Barnet D. Feingold’s “Barney’s Place, A new look at beliefs,” http://barneysplace.net/site/ (accessed December 19, 2020). ↑

4. See J.L. Uso-Domenech and J. Nescolande-Selva, “What are Belief Systems?,” Foundations of Science Vol 21, No. 1 (2016), https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10699-015-9409-z.pdf (accessed August 23, 2021).↑

5. Valerie M. Hudson, Foreign Policy Analysis, Classic and Contemporary Theory, 2^nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 55-57.↑

6. See Barnet D. Feingold's "Barney's Place, A new look at beliefs," http.//barneysplace.net/site/ (accessed December 19, 2020)." ↑

7. Modified from A. Douglas Kincaid and Eduardo A. Gamarra, “Disorderly Democracy: Redefining Public Security in Latin America,” in Latin America in the World Economy, ed. Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz and William C. Smith (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996), 211-228↑

8. Collier, chap 2. This framework was modified from material in Richard Paul and Linda Elder, Critical Thinking, Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life, 2^nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NY: Pearson Education, Inc., 2014), and Gerald M. Nosich, Learning to Think Things Through, A Guide to Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2011).↑

9. The Foundation for Critical Thinking, https://www.criticalthinking.org/ (accessed July 31, 2022).↑

10. Paul and Elder, 96-97.↑

11. Nosich added Context and Alternatives to the original Elements of Thought developed by Paul and Elder. Assessing Context and Alternatives is crucial to security analyses. ↑

12. Collier. ↑

13. Ibid, chap 7.↑

14. Ibid, chap 8.↑

15. Ibid, chap 9.↑

16. Ibid. ↑

17. Ibid, chap 10.↑