information processing behaviour in a crisis situation....... a simulation study

8/13/2019 Information processing behaviour in a crisis situation....... a simulation study

1/11

http://sim.sagepub.com/SIMULATION

http://sim.sagepub.com/content/13/4/177Theonline version of this article can be foundat:

DOI: 10.1177/003754976901300404

1969 13: 177SIMULATIONP.N. Rastogi

Information processing behaviour in a crisis situation....... a simulation study

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:

Society for Modeling and Simulation International (SCS)

can be found at:SIMULATIONAdditional services and information for

http://sim.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://sim.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

http://sim.sagepub.com/content/13/4/177.refs.htmlCitations:

What is This? - Oct 1, 1969Version of Record>>

at COLORADO TECH UNIV LIB on November 29, 2013sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from at COLORADO TECH UNIV LIB on November 29, 2013sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://sim.sagepub.com/content/13/4/177http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://sim.sagepub.com/content/13/4/177http://sim.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepublications.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/content/13/4/177.refs.htmlhttp://www.scs.org/http://sim.sagepub.com/content/13/4/177.full.pdfhttp://www.scs.org/http://sim.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://sim.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://sim.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://sim.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://sim.sagepub.com/content/13/4/177.refs.htmlhttp://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://sim.sagepub.com/content/13/4/177.full.pdfhttp://sim.sagepub.com/content/13/4/177.full.pdfhttp://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://sim.sagepub.com/content/13/4/177.full.pdfhttp://sim.sagepub.com/content/13/4/177.full.pdfhttp://sim.sagepub.com/content/13/4/177.refs.htmlhttp://sim.sagepub.com/content/13/4/177.refs.htmlhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://sim.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://sim.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://sim.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://sim.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://www.scs.org/http://www.scs.org/http://www.sagepublications.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/content/13/4/177http://sim.sagepub.com/


2/11177

Information processing behaviour in acrisis situation....... a simulation study

by P. N. RASTOGIIndian Institute of TechnologyKanpur, India

Indian Premier Shastri - -

PresidentAyub Than

Material received 1/31/69First review received 2/13/69Second review received 2/24/69Third review received 5/19/69Revised copy received 6/2/69

INTRODUCTION

The present work is a digital simulation study of the in-

formation-processing behaviour of Indo-Pak decision-makers during a crisis period of ten days prior to theoutbreak of war between the two countries on September1, 1965. The decision-makers are the late Indian Premier

Shastri and PresidentAyub Khan of Pakistan. The ra-tionale is to develop an artificial system utilizing a limitednumber of socio-psychological mechanisms in the contextof the available data in order to test the correspondences

with the real system. The study is patterned after an ear-lier work by Professor Pool andAlan Kessler with respectto the crisis situation preceding the outbreak of the firstWorld War.

Toward the end, we explore a way of making themodel interactive by viewing a decision-maker as a trans-ducer of Bayesian probabilities.

Background of the conflict situation and scenario.

India and Pakistan emerged as two independent na-tions after the withdrawal of British power from the

Indian subcontinent inAugust 1947. Princely states

governeddirectly by

the native rulers were

expectedto

merge with either of the two new nations. Dispute be-tween India and Pakistan developed over the northernstate of Jammu and Kashmir, which had a Hindu rulerand predominantly Muslim population.As a sequel to thebrutal attacks by the marauding Pathan tribesmen fromPakistan, the state acceded to India in October 1947.India accepted the accession, sent her armed forces toclear the invaders, and referred the matter to UNO inthe light of Pakistans involvement in the affair.A cease-fire came into existence on December 31, 1948, leaving

the vale of Kashmir, Jammu, and Ladakh areas withIndia and the northern part with Pakistan. Subsequentnegotiations over the holding of a plebiscite and final set-tlement failed repeatedly. In 1962 India suffered serious

militaryreverses under a

large-scaleChinese attack

which exposed her military weakness. Minor militaryclashes between India and Pakistan had been going on

intermittently across the ceasefire line, but new and moreserious clashes occurred early in 1965 over Kutch, a

marshy and barren area on the west coast. This affairhad barely subsided when inAugust 1965 a massive in-filtration of disguised armed personnel, estimated at be-tween 5,000 and 10,000, began from Pak-held Kashmirto the Indian side, with the ostensible objective of fo-

menting internal revolution. This state of affairs cul-minated in Indias crossing of the ceasefire line onAugust26, to seal off the entry

pointof the infiltrators. Pak re-

taliation came in the form of a massive tank attack in the

Chhamb sector of the Indian-held Kashmir onAugust31, 1965.

The simulation study here reported covers a period often days fromAugust 22 toAugust 31, 1965. The sce-nario consists of about 200 to 225 messages per daypresented to the decision-makers. Same information wasmade available to both the decision-makers. Reconstruc-tion of the scenario posed a very big problem, as theaccount of events in the newspapers of the two countries

at COLORADO TECH UNIV LIB on November 29, 2013sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/


3/11

178

differed a great deal. In such cases, details which are con-

sistent with accounts of events in References 3 and 4 and

in Time magazine, Newsweek, the New York Times, andother external sources were used. In the simulation there

are no secret messages available to only one of the de-

cision-makers, obviously owing to lack of information

concerning confidential matters. The simulation model,however, has provision for handling secret messages.

The mechanisms ofinformation processing.In the simulation a decision-makers mind is deemed

to be composed of four conceptual segments: attention

space, pressing problems, put-aside section, and memory.Each of these segments contains messages which comefrom the environment and are arranged hierarchicallyaccording to their attention-commanding power (here-after called salience).Attention space thus consists ofthe most salient information, and memory the least sali-ent. Messages are organized around discrete information

categories termed &dquo;events,&dquo; which enable a decision-maker to order his world-view out of a random mass of

incoming information. The salience of an event is equalto the greatest salience of a message belonging to its set;salience governs the placement of a message in any of thefour mind segments.As a piece of information growsold, its salience gradually decreases and it slides down the

hierarchy of mind areas, finally to memory from whichit is in time deleted in accordance with a forgetting rate.

The following socio-psychological propositions gov-ern the dynamics of information processing:

1. Persons pay more attention to news that deals with

them.

2. Persons pay less attention to facts that contradict

their views.

3. Persons pay more attention to news from trusted,liked sources.

4. Persons pay more attention to facts that they willhave to act on or discuss because of attention byothers.

5. Persons pay more attention to facts bearing on ac-tions they are already involved in; i.e., action cre-ates commitment.

Each message is a piece of information related to someevent and having one or two actors and a relationship be-tween them. For example: Indian troops cross cease-fireline in Kashmir or China supports Pak on Kashmir. In

accordance with the above propositions, each message iscoded for its importance to each decision-maker and his

country, his attitude toward the reliability of the sourceof the message, the effect of the relationship between thetwo countries, and his perception of the importance of the

message for public opinion within his own country. Theabove set of propositions are the basis for the &dquo;saliencybias&dquo; routines for a message when it is received by adecision-maker.

An actors mind at time to is, however, not a vacuous

entity; it contains his stable backlog of experience, withwhich he views and interprets events in his environment.In the present context, this is represented by initializingan affect (psycho-attachment) matrix for each of thedecision-makers. The matrix represents the decision-makers perception of other countries on a dimension of

friendliness/unfriendliness in relation to their own coun-tries and

amongstthemselves.

Thirty-onecountries from

Asia, Africa, Europe, and NorthAmerica are repre-sented in the affect matrix. The number is based on rela-

tive frequency of interaction, and is easily expandable.Asalience matrix representing the differential importanceof each of these countries to the decision-makers countryis also initialized.

The matrices do not have to be symmetric. CountryAmay for example have a higher affect and saliency ratingtoward country B, which, however, may not fully recip-rocate. The affect and salience matrices summarize the

world-view of each decision-maker at the start of the

simulation

period. They providea baseline

againstwhich

he assesses the incoming environmental information. In-formation concerning purely internal events, however,remains unaffected.

At the end of each day in the simulation period, the

changed contents of the affect matrix represent the

changed world-view of the decision-makers as a resultof the happenings and interactions in the simulated pe-riod. The historical situation and the very limited periodunder purview here, however, lack extensive interchangebetween the decision-makers countries and other coun-

tries.

The sizes of the attentionspace, pressing problems

list,and put-aside list are the same, i.e., each of them can ac-commodate up to a maximum of 9 events. Similarly an

event-space contains a maximum of 9 messages associ-ated with that event category. This provision is in accord-ance with Millers hypothesis which states that a personcan attend to 7 2 things at a time.5Decisionmakers herecan attend up to 9 events, but the events with very highsaliencies, i.e., 0.6 and above on a scale of 0-1, count as

more than one event. Hence the actual size of the atten-

tion space on any particular day varies in accordance withthe importance of the information received on that day.

The

importanceof an event is indicated

bythe most

salient item of information belonging to its set. Thusan event category with a low placement in the attentionspace can move up to the top if a message with a veryhigh salience value comes in for processing. The finalsalience of an information item is a function of its sali-

ence for the decision-makers and their countries, its re-

liability for the decision-makers, and its importance fortheir home public opinions.A subroutine calculates thisfinal salience for each message, and this value governs its

subsequent placement in a decision-makers mind.

http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/


4/11

179

Decision-makers give greater attention to events with

higher salience, and more important events displaceevents with lesser salience down to the lower regions ofthe mind hierarchy, i.e., fromAttention Space to PressingProblems List to Put-aside List down to Memory andthence to final forgetting. The more important messageswithin an event space displace items of lesser importancein an analogous manner. The salience of an event is pro-

gressively reduced over time in an exponential manneruntil it is below a prespecified forgetting level, whereuponit is deleted from the memory and leaves the program.

Analysis of the outputThe output is in the form of the contents ofAttention

Space, Pressing Problems List, and Put-aside List foreach of the decision-makers at the end of each simulated

day.Affect matrices are likewise reproduced.Attention

Spaces of both the decision-makers at the beginning andthe end of the 10-day simulation period are given in the

appendix.The simulation deals with an acute crisis period in

which military action is already going on and the publicopinion of both the countries is highly agitated. Decision-makers have also serious internal problems such as, for

example, a difficult food situation, and the Sikh demandfor a linguistic province (i.e., Punjabi Suba), faced byShastri, and the problem of separatist tendencies in eastPakistan confrontingAyub. However, these importantproblems are relegated to a secondary place in the mindsof the actors as the crisis of Kashmir deepens.

Crisis periods are characterized by a high rate of gen-

eration and exchange of information concerning the crisissituation. This is reflected in the contents of the atten-

tion space of the decision-makers, where events concern-

ing Kashmir occupy almost the entire available space.In Shastris attention space at the end of the first day,8 out of a total of 9 events deal with Kashmir, and amongthem the top place is occupied by a category concerningenemy military activity. Other categories of informationin the same context deal with home public opinion,United Nations connection with the problem, happeningswithin the crisis area, relations with the enemy country,and military action by his own side. The only noncrisis

eventconcerns

the prevalent student unrest in India. ThePressing Problems List is occupied mostly with internalissues like economic planning and development, price-rise, black-market money, regionalism, the food situa-

tion, communist activities, and language policy.Ayubs attention space is exclusively occupied by the

information categories related to the crisis situation, butreflects a differential treatment of identical information

sets. This differention is governed by the operation ofbias mechanisms.Ayubs attention space has, moreover,only six events, owning to the higher salience accorded

by him to the first three events in his attention space.In consonance with the Miller hypothesis concerning7 2 events, we assume that events having saliencevalues higher than 0.6 on a scale of 0 to 1 count as two

events, and those having salience values of higher than0.75 as three events. This is because very importantevents claim most of the attention of an actor, relegatingother relatively less important events to the lower ranks

in the hierarchy of mind. Pressing problems forAyub in-clude economic development in eastern Pakistan, exter-nal economic aid to his country (the United States of

America had at this time suspended her aid commitmentsto Pakistan in view of the latters growing relations withRed China), ties with CENTO, relations with the United

States, and internal political events.

The sharply deteriorating Kashmir situation displacesall other event categories from the decision-makers at-

tention spaces. Even serious internal problems like foodriots and the threat of self-immolation by the Sikh leaderFateh Singh over the Punjabi Suba issue are not attract-

ing Shastris foremost attention, though they are highon his Pressing Problems List. Toward the end of thesimulated period, onAugust 31, 1965, Shastris attention

space discloses only four events. Pak military action in-

volving a heavy tank attack on the Jammu front tops thelist, followed by Indias own military action, a continu-

ing review of relations with the enemy country, and aconcern with the pressures of public opinion at home.His Pressing Problems List is headed by the happeningsin Kashmir. This heavy tank attack marks the eruptionof a full-scale war between the two countries.

Ayubs attention space at this juncture also discloses

only four events. However, for him Indias occupationof the strategic Hajipir pass and capture of 7 militaryposts in the Pak-held area are the most important infor-mation items, followed by his own massive militaryresponse. He follows these by a review of Indo-Pak rela-

tions, wherein the information piece concerning Indiasintention to retain captured territory occupies first place.Next, he devotes attention to happenings within the Kash-mir. Here, a news item relating to a visit by a Kashmirminister (Indian) to areas formerly under Pak occupa-tion is deemed most salient. This item is followed byanother, i.e., a realization that the failure of Pak-insti-

gated revolt isnow

final.A comparison of the contents of the affect matricesfor the two decision-makers reveals few changes. Thisis primarily because of the short time period and a rela-tive lack of transactions pertaining to a crisis situationwith external countries. The USA, USSR and UK con-fine themselves to expressions of concern and the urgingof restraint on the parts of both sides. Affect changesbetween the two countries themselves are, however, dra-

matic, and mark the deterioration of relations to the pointof explosion.

http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/


5/11

180

Decision-makers as the transducers of BayesianprobabilitiesInformation processing is logically meaningful in thecontext of decision-making. Decisions of an actor serveas an informational input to the attention space of theother interacting actor, who then responds by makinghis own decisions; and so the interaction process cyclesback and forth. Decision-making is, however, an open-

ended process governed by the singularities of constraintspresent in an actors situation and his assessment and

appraisal of various alternative actions. The range of

possible courses of action in a situation is potentiallyfinite.A relative balancing of costs and benefits of themain alternatives in the context of subjectively appraisedprobabilities of various outcomes enables a decision-maker to chart his course in response to the situational

pressures. The latter are reflected in the contents of his

attention space and the imbalance of high negative valuesin the affect matrix. These premises lead to a view ofman as a transducer of Bayesian probabilities.*Assign-

ment of probabilities to various possible outcomes for adecision-makers courses of action is a matter of empiri-cal research and experienced judgment. Bayesian decision

theory then leads to an algorithm suitable for man-machine gaming.

The conditional probability of an event D, given an-other H, is

where P(D n H) is the probability of the joint occurrenceof two events regarded as one event and P(H) is greaterthan zero.

For example, let P(H), the probability that the Pak

army is superior and better armed than the Indian army,be 0.8. Let P ( D n H ) , the joint probability that the Pak

army can cut off Indias access to Kashmir through quickvictory and also that the Pak army is superior and betterarmed than Indian army be 0.5.According to equation1, P(D/H) or the probability that the Pak army cancut off Indias access to Kashmir through quick victory,given that the Pak army is superior and better armed thanIndian army, is 0.5 = 0.625. * * In this way, conditional

0.8

*&dquo;Men are effective transducers for probabilities; that is, mencan examine relevant information, base probabilistic judgmentson it, and communicate those judgments in such a way that quan-tities of the form P(D/H) can be recovered. The resulting num-bers are appropriate guides to action.&dquo;6

* *There is some evidence to support such a viewpoint on the partof Pakistan. Commenting on Sino-Indian War of 1962,Ayubstates: &dquo;The basic reason for the collapse of the Indians was thattheir military thinking had not advanced with the times and theyfought the war on the 1939 pattern.... The Indians failedbecause of poor leadership and inadequate training. The Indianslacked skill and experience, and their method of fighting wasinferior to that of the Chinese.&dquo;7

.

probabilities in different relevant contexts can be evalu-ated for the actors and serve as inputs for their decision-

making.In the present crisis situation, when military action is

already going on, three options are open to decision-makers :

(i) Large-scale military action ( a 1 )(ii) Limited military action continued on the present

scale (a2)(iii) No military action (a3).

Associated with each course of action are three pos-sible outcomes:

(i) Objectives are attained (


6/11

181

Figure 1 - Message input flow for a decision maker on a decision day(third approximation)

http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/


7/11182182

This procedure represents a possible way of under-

standing the present actors decisions to escalate andcounter-escalate the conflict rapidly. This type of experi-mental man-machine gaming can explore many possiblevariants of a decision-making situation in an interactiveenvironment.

Conclusion

Studies like thepresent

one are useful both in a theoretical

and in a practical sense. Theoretically, they exemplifythe potentialities of a new methodological approach, i.e.,computer simulation to explore the logical sequences ofa set of hypotheses. The dynamic course of an artificial

system in the time dimension helps an investigatorachieve the practical goals of foresight and prediction.This, of course, depends on the adequacy of problemrepresentation and the validity of the premises underlyingthe simulation model. Experiments concerning decision-making processes can make it possible to examine vari-ous alternatives for managing a conflict and predictingits outcome before a crisis situation becomes

explosive.ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Work reported in this paper was made possible by a visit-

ing post-doctoral fellowship at MIT. The writer is deeplygrateful to Professor Ithiel de Sola Pool for his construc-tive criticisms and suggestions. Simulation was carriedout on CTSS system of Project MAC at MIT. Mr. Ray-mond Sommer served as the programming assistant.

REFERENCES

1 POOL I S KESSLERA

"The Kaiser, the Tsar and the computer"American Behavioral Scientist vol 8 no 9 May 1965

pp 31-38

2 POOL I S KESSLERA

"Crisiscom: a computer simulation of humaninformation processing during a crisis"IEEE Transactions on

SystemsScience

and Cyberneticsvol SSC-1 no 1 November 1965 pp 52-58

3 LEISSA C BLOOMFIELD L P

"The Kashmir conflict: 1947-1957"

Control of local conflict vol 3 Center for InternationalStudies Massachusetts Institute of Technology CambridgeMassachusetts June 1967 pp 205-346

4 DASGUPTA J B

Jammu and Kashmir

Martinus Nijhoff The Hague forthcoming5 MILLER G

"The magical number seven plus or minus two:some limits on our capacity for processing information"

Psychological Review vol 63 1963 pp 81-976 EDWARDS W PHILLIPS L

"Man as transducer for probabilities in Bayesiancommand and control systems"Human judgment and optimalityShelly M & Bryan G, editors Wiley New York 1964 p 377

7 KAHN MOHAMMEDAYUB

Friends not masters: a political autobiographyOxford University Press New York 1967

APPENDIX 1

Table 111. :wx : >, ~ ~&dquo; ~

A partial listing of the initial (I) and final (F) affect matrix values of Shastri

http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/


8/11

183

APPENDIX 2

The attention spaces of the decision-makers at the end of day 1



9/11

184 at COLORADO TECH UNIV LIB on November 29, 2013sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from


10/11

185at COLORADO TECH UNIV LIB on November 29, 2013sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/http://sim.sagepub.com/


11/11

186

A sample of messages presented to the decision makers on Day TWO

Explanation of coding

1 st No.-Number of the eventi.e. 7 is the event number for Indias Food Problem

2nd No.-Effect of the message between the two countrieson a scale of -1to+1

3rd No.-Salience of the message for country One

4th No.-Salience of the message for country Two

5th No.-Salience of the message for decision maker One, i.e.,Ayub

6th No.-Salience of the message for decision maker Two, i.e., Shastri

7th No.-Salience of the message for the public opinion of Pakistan

8th No.-Salience of the message for the public opinion of India[Salience scale ranges from 0-1]]

9th No.-Ayubs attitude toward the reliability of the sourceof the message

10th No.-Shastris attitude toward the reliability of thesource of the message [Reliability scale from 0-1]

11 th No.- 0 - nonsecret message1 - secret message

12th No.-Country No. (31 is for India) -

13th No.-Country No. (32 is for Pakistan)


information processing behaviour in a crisis situation....... a simulation study

Documents