Mercer, Jonathan. "Rationality and Psychology in International Politics". International Organization, Vol.59, No.1 (2005): 77-106.

Mercer, Jonathan. "Rationality and Psychology in International Politics". International Organization, Vol.59, No.1 (2005): 77-106.

• Most international relations [IR] scholarship focuses on psychology as an explanation for mistakes made by diplomats, not as a general basis for foreign policy thought. Ignoring the roots of rationality in psychology misunderstands both subjects, and leads to faulty conclusions (78-79).
• Rationality and perceptions of rationality depend on psychology. This means that solutions touted as rational can actually be non-rational from a psychological standpoint, as rational choice theories can actually reflect irrational psychological assumptions (79).
• This belief that psychology's only place in IR theory or economics is the explanation of error stems from the methodological practices of behavioralists in economics. This groups tried to replace mental phenomenon with empirical evidence for human behavior, and was so successful that psychology was relegated to explaining deviation in economics, IR, and other empiricist fields (81). 
• The essential claim of behavioralism in economics, and the resulting marginalization of psychology in other fields, is that psychology provides explanation for individual responses, but when results are important large data can replace psychology as a predictor and explanatory variables can be measured (84). 
• A history of behavioralist psychology is given from page 81 to page 87.
• The school of thought from which rational choice theory emerged began in epistemological debates from the 17th to 19th Century between the rationalists and the empiricists. The empiricists demanded that experiential evidence be provided for all claims, whereas the rationalists focused on the role of deductive logic in generating knowledge. Empiricists won debates in almost all fields, except economics -- from which rational choice theory developed (80).
• Rational judgements are those which rest on logic and inferences from the evidence, whereas irrational decisions differ from the available evidence or contain internal contradictions. Rational choices adhere to this model, whereas irrational ones deviate from it (80).
• Rational choices do not necessarily lead to beneficial outcomes. Rational behavior in the prisoner's dilemma demonstrates this, as the most rational course of action is also the least beneficial: dual defection (80). This creates a problem, since, unlike psychology, rational choice theory assumes that rational decisions are always best (81).
• Rational choices cannot be entirely rational or statistical, because they are still informed by individual and psychological perceptions of interest. Different people view pain and pleasure differently, and these preferences mean that different decisions will be rational (86).
• Rational choice theorists have tried to cope with this fact by designating types of individuals who manifest different behaviors in the same scenarios. This, however, ignores that people judge scenarios different and it is the subject, not the test, that determines whether scenarios are similar. This psychology confounds attempts to classify behaviors into typologies (91).
• Claims about the sources of cognitive error are difficult to verify, as there are a range of potential sources of error in each individual stemming from the entirety of that person's experience. Furthermore, methodological problems present themselves in determining whether mistaken beliefs were even held (88).
• The issue with understanding psychology's place as explaining deviations from a rational choice is that it means a psychological explanation requires a clear sense of rationality. This is easy to establish when beliefs can be said to contradict statistical or mathematical logic, but considering going to war as a rational decision does not produce a verifiable answer nor does it contribute positively to policy-making (89). 
• Psychology experiment on individuals who have lost their ability to emotionally reason or intuit demonstrate that mistakes are not the sole cause of emotion, but can also occur because of lack of emotion (93-94). The author further argues that emotional connections, like trust and friendliness, are important in creating the settings for more advantageous cooperation and better outcomes (94-96).
• Feelings of trust and group affiliation have an undoubted influence on the formation of security communities and alliance systems, and better acknowledging the role of emotion may further research into these aspects of politics and IR (97). It can also produce better policy outcomes, by recognizing the actual processes by which people behave and react to political events (98).