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Re-examining Our Perceptions on Vietnam
| Perceptions on Vietnam |
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| lessons bearing on the Vietnam problem which may be drawn from such psychological research.* He comments on the results of Crutchfield's experiments: |
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| | [The evidence] suggests that there is often a real change of attitude. Apparently, after being told that everyone else agreed with a certain attitude item, many of the subjects really changed their minds. |
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| Why Early Perceptions Persist | |
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| White goes on to identify some basic psychological factors which in his view probably helped shape and prolong the early perceptions of America's leaders with respect to Vietnam: |
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| | 1. "The virile self-image"-the view that, to ensure that one's image as a patriotic defender of freedom would be preserved, a person must not appear to be faltering on anticommunism; |
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| | 2. "Perceptual lag"-for example, for many persons the quite realistic view of the menace of Communism in Stalin's day was not modified in step with subsequent shifts of political alignments, leaders' intentions, and operating styles in Europe and Asia; |
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| | 3. "Cognitive dissonance"-when actions are out of line with ideas, decision-makers tend to align the ideas with the on-going line of action (for example, in 1967 when Defense Secretary McNamara proposed a fundamental shift of policy objectives in Vietnam based on a re-examination of the premises of existing policy, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sharply disagreed and urged that McNamara's paper "not be forwarded to the President" because it implied such a sharp divergence from long-standing policy).** |
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| | 4. "Selective inattention"-a tendency, once an attitude or course of action is firmly adopted, "to retain thoughts that are in harmony with it and to discard others." |
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| In Whites view, the psychological significance of all these tendencies lies "in the nearly total absence of evidence-oriented discussion" of the assumptions behind prior policy decisions. The lack of analyses of such assumptions was a major factor in Secretary McNamara's order of 17 June 1967 for the Pentagon's study of the Vietnam War.*** |
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| Since the late 1960s, a host of "revisionist" scholars have published articles and books, pressing either or both of the arguments that: the American leadership's shift in the late 1940s to a hostile stance toward Vietnam's revolutionaries gave a definite bias to the thrust of the United States' involvement in Southeast Asia from the mid-1950s; and "demonstrable" distortions in American popular and official perceptions of the potential roles of Communism in North and South Vietnam, and of non-Communist forces in South Vietnam, were a prime cause |
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| *Nobody Wanted War: Misperception to Vietnam and Other Wars (Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1968) pp. 210-215; "Selective Inattention' in Psychology Today (Nov. 1971, pp. 47, 80 ). |
| * *The Pentagon Papers ... as Published by the New York Times (Bantam Books, 1971), p. 538. The Joint Chiefs' paper of 31 May argued that the "drastic changes" of policy advocated by the Secretary "would undermine and no longer provide a complete rationale for our presence in South Vietnam or much of our efforts over the past two years." |
| * * *Among those who had earlier called attention to this critical need were Under Secretary of State George W. Ball and Assistant Secretary of Defense John T. McNaughton (ibid., pp. 449, 510, 534). McNaughton had advised, ". . . the philosophy of the war should be fought out now so everyone will not be proceeding on their own major premises and getting us in deeper and deeper." |
Posted: May 08, 2007 08:38 AM
Last Updated: May 08, 2007 08:38 AM
Last Reviewed: May 08, 2007 08:38 AM
