Enhancing Credibility

Abstract

Assuming that the decision-makers for a party intending to begin an accommodative sequence have selected a conciliatory initiative which has succeeded in engaging the attention of the decision-makers in their adversary, further success will depend upon the gesture’s capacity to elicit from the target’s decision-makers a positive (and generally shared) evaluation that the signal ‘accurately represents what the sender will do in the future’ (Jervis 1970, p.24 emphasis added), that it is perceived as being genuinely ‘conciliatory’, and that it indicates genuinely changed priorities and commitments. I have argued directly in Chapter 6 and indirectly in Chapter 7 that this involves a gesture achieving a high level of ‘credibility’ and that this is more likely to be attained if it is, at least, significant, costly, contains elements of risk for those undertaking it, is uncoerced, and also difficult to reverse.

‘Of great importance for our picture of the social environment is the attribution of events to causal sources. It makes a real difference, for example, whether a person discovers that the stick that struck him fell from a rotting tree, or was hurled by an enemy.’

Fritz Heider The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations 195