Leaders in international relations often exhibit fatalism, or the belief that events are guided by forces beyond their control. In some cases, fatalism may reflect reality, or be rhetoric to boost support. But there is also an important psychological explanation: fatalism can help leaders avoid responsibility for costly outcomes and protect their self-image. Fatalism is more likely: (1) in regard to bad outcomes versus good outcomes; (2) when war is seen as imminent versus far-off; and (3) in nondemocratic regimes versus democratic regimes. The concept of fatalism is central to philosophy, religion, medicine, sociology, and psychology, but has been neglected by scholars in international relations. Fatalism may be an important cause of war, especially when combined with a perceived window of opportunity. This research contributes to democratic peace theory by helping explain the lack of war between representative regimes. If elected leaders are less prone to extreme fatalism about war, democracies may have more room to maneuver in a crisis. I use case studies of the origins of World War I and World War II to probe the argument.

A major puzzle in international relations is why states privilege negative over positive information. States tend to inflate threats, exhibit loss aversion, and learn more from failures than from successes. Rationalist accounts fail to explain this phenomenon, because systematically overweighting bad over good may in fact undermine state interests. New research in psychology, however, offers an explanation. The “negativity bias” has emerged as a fundamental principle of the human mind, in which people's response to positive and negative information is asymmetric. Negative factors have greater effects than positive factors across a wide range of psychological phenomena, including cognition, motivation, emotion, information processing, decision-making, learning, and memory. Put simply, bad is stronger than good. Scholars have long pointed to the role of positive biases, such as overconfidence, in causing war, but negative biases are actually more pervasive and may represent a core explanation for patterns of conflict. Positive and negative dispositions apply in different contexts. People privilege negative information about the external environment and other actors, but positive information about themselves. The coexistence of biases can increase the potential for conflict. Decisionmakers simultaneously exaggerate the severity of threats and exhibit overconfidence about their capacity to deal with them. Overall, the negativity bias is a potent force in human judgment and decisionmaking, with important implications for international relations theory and practice.

A major paradox in international relations is the widespread fear and anxiety that underlies the security dilemma in times of peace and the prevalence of overconfidence or “false optimism” on the eve of war. A new theory of the causes of war—the Rubicon theory of war—can account for this paradox and explain important historical puzzles. The “Rubicon model of action phases,” which was developed in experimental psychology, describes a significant shift in people's susceptibility to psychological biases before and after making a decision. Prior to making decisions, people tend to maintain a “deliberative” mind-set, weighing the costs, benefits, and risks of different options in a relatively impartial manner. By contrast, after making a decision, people tend to switch into an “implemental” mind-set that triggers a set of powerful psychological biases, including closed-mindedness, biased information processing, cognitive dissonance, self-serving evaluations, the illusion of control, and optimism. Together, these biases lead to significant overconfidence. The Rubicon theory of war applies this model to the realm of international conflict, where implemental mind-sets can narrow the range of bargaining options, promote overambitious war plans, and elevate the probability of war.