And to come, but it's also great to be able to join online.
So without further ado, I share my presentation with you.
And just a word in advance.
So behavioural analysis of humanitarian negotiators, we turn to them learning from cognition that there is a little bit from the title.
And the reason is that it's really still work on progress.
So everything I'm presenting today is preliminary, and we haven't totally exhausted the data yet.
So there might be questions arising, which I cannot answer because we haven't gone there yet to analyse the data.
So that's a joint research project by myself, as well as somebody from the Hebrew University,
Christopher A. from the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods and Catarina.
Look now to from the University of Hamburg. And the reason being that we have such a big research group because it's a big project.
And I'm giving you a little bit of a sense later. So I have to put this.
OK, so what's our research motivation?
And you might have seen actually, he started this research before the U.N. guidance on behavioural science came out.
But here's a quote for by the U.N. secretary general. Pro-terrorist behavioural science is a critical tool for the U.N. to progress on.
Its members can contribute to combating poverty, improving public health and safety, preventing and managing crises,
promoting gender and economic equality, tackling corruption, strengthening peacebuilding and all of the hostages.
And it should also make the public sector more efficient and including the international organisation.
So what you see here is that the U.N. by now really has been trying behavioural.
It's following the World Bank on that which had an earlier report in 2019.
The World Development Report was devoted to behavioural sciences.
But what you see is that they really believe that behavioural sciences can help international organisations in their policies and,
for that matter, the vote.
Not hitherto international law, as well as the policies, rely to a large extent and still does on the rational choice paradigm for its act.
So when we draught treaties, when we talk about compliance, it's all basically based on rational choice assumptions.
These, you know, if you look at our theory, certainly by the institutionalist,
certainly by the realists constructivist have been different, but without using cognitive sciences.
Now, psychological and experimental research challenges this rational choice paradigm.
So people are only boldly rational using biases and de-risk and make of cognitive mistakes.
Now, this research comes mainly from experiments with students in the lab or laypersons, and I'm going to come back to that.
So we used to readily assume rational choice or rational actors, and now maybe too readily assume bound, oddly rational actors.
I'm saying this, and some of you may wonder because I think I can say that come up.
Rudy and I have been have been since years pushing for international law, taking into account behavioural sciences.
And now suddenly we say, oops, maybe we should be cautious.
But you know, it should all be evidence based, and what I'm presented to you today is sort of evidence we got.
So the question is whether we can readily use behavioural sciences without regard to specific actors and specific context.
Never,
Burton in an angel unbound contribution on the limitations or limits of the behavioural approach to international law says that the biggest problem of
using behavioural insights for international law is that it's extremely difficult
to recruit actual decision makers in a way that allows for direct study.
And that is correct. So if you think about, for example. Studies on judges.
You don't get international judges,
and they're also not sufficient to prove them to have to be able to really conduct a sufficient statistical analysis we have done.
I was others with Susan, Frank and others we have done.
A study was international arbitrators where we do find indeed that they find show bias is on juries like everybody else.
They are a little bit better.
Now I got the access to the competence centre of of humanitarian negotiators and negotiations, but I need to tell you a little bit of that.
So that is a project. And now it's installed in Geneva.
It's adjunct to the ICRC, and it's basically driven by international humanitarian organisations such as the UNHCR, UNICEF, but also NGOs like me.
It's also from Pierre, is a is a frequent participant, and they also finance that centre.
And and they said, well, it would be super interesting to understand how humanitarian negotiators.
Make decisions. So basically, we got that opportunity and the access to those professionals to better understand
frontline humanitarian negotiators as agents of international law or more specifically,
Joe, and to contribute to better practises through negotiation training.
Of course, from the situation side, the the they want better, better informed training.
And when they train now, they basically rely on rational choice negotiation theory, which may be insufficient.
So what about front line humanitarian dossier? Does that basically all those negotiating for humanitarian needs on the ground?
So there is not a profession of humanitarian negotiators,
but usually all frontline humanitarians are negotiators because they constantly negotiate on something.
Maybe it was government, it was rebel groups, whatever or communities.
So, so they're constantly negotiating. And the question is then do humanitarian negotiators think differently than laypersons?
And if so, when and in which situations? And why is that important?
Because we could have gone back and I could have written an easy manual negotiation manual for the humanitarian negotiators,
just basically using all the insides, which we have from experiments, but again, mainly the students and tell them, well,
think about that, think about that and try to to to show them where they might be making mistakes.
And we from the very beginning thought that, well, maybe they are different.
They are very maybe some of you do know them. They're very impressive people.
I have to say, but very normal people as well.
And the question is and they negotiate sometimes in really, really difficult situations.
So sometimes is a gun at the head. So, so how does that impact their decision making?
And what does that imply if they are different for the external validity of behavioural experiments used by the UN more generally,
and just more specifically, because the U.N. hitherto largely relies on if you look at who's behind, there is a condiment or something.
They used the experiments of everyday actors or everyday subjects, so students.
So what did we do? We originally wanted to go to the workshops, and this decision holds workshops all over the world,
usually usually in the crisis situations, credit crisis spots.
But due to COVID, we couldn't do it and they didn't do their workshops anymore.
They did them online. So we did a vignette study using Qualtrics.
We had 119 humanitarian negotiators with an average of 4.7 years of experience.
We also tested 57 students of Hebrew and Hamburg universities was illegal international relations background,
and we tested 150 for laypersons by April.
Now we put a series of questions and some of them are actually framed.
We call them friends, so they have vignettes in the humanitarian context of a typical situation they would be facing.
And then we asked the same question in an abstract way.
So A and B and C so untrained and we put all those questions to those subjects.
So what our research questions. So first, are humanitarian negotiators equally subject to cognitive biases as laypeople?
So the question of expertise, does expertise make a difference?
Or and research question, too, was whether that bias is depend on the context of decision making,
so whether they are deciding differently in the neutral or in the humanitarian context.
So those were the frame versus pantry experiments when we tested for biases which are well proven, often used in all the policy.
Advice or used by national nudge units.
So they're very subtle bias. The first one is the hindsight bias,
so humanitarian negotiators perceived post-event as having been more predictable than they
actually were their policies to when faced with a concrete humanitarian negotiation.
Humanitarian negotiators are influenced by irrelevant numeric anchors when taking decisions.
So anchoring bias they processed three humanitarian negotiators resolve disputes based on representative views rather than deliberative reason.
The so-called base rate,
error and hypothesis for humanitarians are prone to overoptimism when raising the prospect of the mission's so-called overoptimism bias.
So we tested all of this.
So in other words, we expect humanitarian negotiators to be so susceptible to cognitive biases, but to respond differently to laypeople,
sometimes at least, and we expect them to respond differently in humanitarian contexts or in frame situations in contrast to more abstract vignettes.
And here are our results. So first, the hidden side bias, so the hidden side bias.
Basically, we should focus on the. So.
The hindsight bias basically tells you it's like it's a little bit like I knew it all along, so what it what it does,
what it says is basically that people perceive past events as more predictable than they actually were.
That matters and has been tested, for example, with judges when they adjudicate on tort law or in the context of police violence.
Stuff like that. OK, now here's the frame when yet we have imagined humanitarian negotiator H,
whose team is coordinating a medical aid in an area where kidnapping is a frequent occurrence.
Most intense instances of kidnapping are financially motivated and thus involves demands for ransom.
Kidnapping groups have also targeted humanitarian workers. We get daily needs medical supplies that the team is able and willing to deliver.
We have delivered such aid to villages in the region 10 times in the past.
In one case, the team member was kidnapped but released on ransom a few days later.
Should age send a team member eight to the village age decides to send a team member, so that's a neutral question.
And then we vary between the groups, right?
So one group got each decides to send a to team member aid to the village of Ein Counters
kidnappers on the way after the organisation has paid a substantial amount of money.
A week later, he returns to the team. Do you think each decision was appropriate?
And then the second variation is each decides to send a team member to the village every chance without encountering problems.
So that's a positive scenario. Scenario. Do you think each decision was appropriate and we always have put?
H instead of how would you decide?
Because we want to create personal distance to the question, because when in 2019 I we conducted on the annual conference call.
Before COVID, we conducted a workshop and we tested was few people.
It's very, very, very well known Asian disease problem issue.
And we totally didn't get the results which we were expecting.
And when we afterwards talked to them, it seems that they wouldn't do something if they feel it contradicts contradicts.
So that's actually the second study we are conducting. So we thought, but we know that they do.
We know that they do not adhere to the principles of age all the time.
They just wouldn't talk about it and certainly not the ICRC people, because the ICRC keeps everything secret.
OK, so, so so we tried to create this sort of personal distance.
Now, this is the results, negotiators are more cautious under both scenarios, but also show him side bias.
OK, so what you see here, those are the student, this the student population.
I left out the lay people now, this student population here and this is the negotiators.
And what you see that this was the negative scenario. They go even less so.
They do also show the hand side bias, but generally they're much more cautious.
Then they people, which is in a way, a good sign.
Now then, if this is basically the same scenario, which just abstract, OK, in 10 past ten past decisions D has decided to do a one case was a failure,
so decided in favour of a and then you have again the positive and negative.
OK. And this is what we find here. So here the difference between humanitarians and students disappears.
So that basically indicates to us that the hindsight bias is context dependent.
So humanitarian negotiators, OK? Let me turn to anchor.
Anchoring is also a very well proven bias where you have and you can have legal anchoring,
but you can also hear being focussed on the more better tools a numerical quantitative anchoring which is well-established in untrained situations.
So, for example, which was the first study done by Kahneman first,
Kahneman got the Nobel prise, the Nobel prise for all of the studies, the wheel of Fortune.
So what they did is they manipulated the wheel of fortune and had to stop at 10 and at sixty five.
And then after that, they asked participants to to to name the percentage of African countries in the United Nations.
And you know, the wheel of fortune obviously doesn't have anything to do with the number of African countries in the United Nations.
That's a study from 1974.
And still, what what they found is that the answers were very close to the anchor, so those who got a 10 would be saying something like around 10.
You know, it could be 12 15. There is those who got the sixty five.
I had much higher numbers. Another one is the age of Gandhi's death, where they were asked whether.
They had anchors of nine and 140 and again here countries that actually was at 78.
But here again, they found an influence on on the on the edge, which was stated by the respondents, which should be unconnected and so irrelevant.
So, so so they asked actually whether he had died at nine or at one hundred thirty four days.
So both are irrelevant anchors in the sense of it must be clear that Gandhi has not died either.
Mine was 140, but still it matters mattered on on on what age they then institute.
So what, what, what? What was the vignette? You're about to go on the mission delivering medical supplies to a camp for
displaced person people that is experiencing an outbreak of a new Ebola like virus?
It is unclear, and we did that before COVID.
It is unclear how many of the about 10000 people in the camp are infected, but health must be administered immediately.
Thus, you can only work with the supplies that had you have access to a sizeable amount of a drug that has been
used to treat patients infected by other variants of the Ebola virus and then over dinner with the team.
Your colleague talks about a very difficult humanitarian mission she participated in on a different continent.
So totally different situation, right? Rare.
And then again, you had the treatment.
Either they got a thousand people were saved or 10000 people were saved because food and clean drinking water was delivered on time.
And then you ask how many of the people in the camp can be saved? So in absolute numbers, and here are the results.
I hope you can see that on your screen.
So what we see here is the negotiators and they, the high anchor indeed made a difference, but it's not statistically significant.
The students, we didn't really find any effect. That was just laypersons oncolytic.
We did find a nice, differentiated effect.
OK, so it seems that the humanitarian context seems to deep biased anchoring, but still for anchoring from the presence.
It's still visible. So the students are something in between, right, because they have a little higher background.
But again, you know, the numbers are not so high of the students.
So, so, so take. This was a note of caution. When does it matter?
So we had here only the print vignette, no unframed comparison, which in a way is a pity, but, you know, exposed to all this matter.
So we didn't find any significant anchoring effect in humanitarian negotiators or students, but in layperson's.
So it could be that the humanitarian context might matter and needs further research because they're anchoring effect.
Really, if you if you if you talk to experimentalists, if there's one effect which is always there anchoring, it always works.
But here at the end, we are not sure why we could be really so be attributed to the context.
Next one base rate neglect. So that's another very well known bias and actually probably the basis of all sorts of prejudice.
So the base rate fallacy is basically that when you when you would be totally rational,
when calculating probabilities to use base rates as an obvious approach for estimations where no other information is provided.
So the classical entrance tests, for example, to universities or to, I don't know, McKinsey likes to do something like that.
They would ask you, so how many you know, McDonald's are in the world, for example,
so you don't have you need to have some assumption about base rates and then you try to do to go from there.
But mostly, people make evaluations based on surface similarities rather than base rates or statistical realities.
And the tendency to ignore base rates and prefer and so so they have the tendency to ignore base
rates and prefer in the of information over general information when the former is available.
And what I what you have here is like the statute. So so you have Steve who's shy and then you ask people, is a salesperson or is Steve the librarian?
And then you immediately would say, Well, it must be, you know, you associate shyness more with a librarian than it was a salesperson.
Right? It's like your prisoners impression, which is probably true because maybe like the librarians, you know, almost.
But if you look at the base rates of the number of people who are actually they say it's people and who are librarians,
then you should say, Well, it's it. That's the salesperson, OK?
And I always did this with my students and I had I was a bit mean.
So I put a pick of the person with glasses and dispute and and said, Well, Mark likes to listen to Mozart.
And then what is more probable is that the literature professor or a truck driver.
And, you know, usually they would always go for the literature professor, even though, of course,
that much fewer literature professors than truck drivers, even though that might be changing.
OK, now if truck driving gets more gets more attractive because they must go up with the salary.
That was a joke now. So, so the classical based rate test is is the following.
This has been tested was more or less the same numbers on other issues and charts because judges.
So it's all about the base rate, and we kind of adapted it to the humanitarian context.
So your organisation has teamed up with the producer of the track that helps
individuals in the early stages of the virus infection to lead to a longer,
meaningful life. The producer has given you permission to use the drug on recipients in least developed countries and
just made it your responsibility to guarantee that the drug is not sold in developed countries.
The organisation has found ways to offer surplus guarantee, but must now decide which communities to serve.
The total amount of the drug is only sufficient to serve a small fraction of the population.
We want to find the community by the administration of the drug would be most effective.
Assume you have the following information of a population of twenty thousand ten are expected to be infected.
You have been able to conduct tests on the entire community. The test shows positive in 90 percent of infected people.
The test also shows positive one of a million, while also one in thousands of uninfected people.
Your team leader asks you whether the drug should go to this community as an input for her decision.
She wants you to quantify the probability that the individual who a positive test actually is infected.
What's your estimate? So that was their task, and the correct answer is thirty one point one.
OK, so this are those are the results. So the base rate neglect here,
so refined like so so we have the students and the negotiators in the first two one and this is for the layperson strike neutral and trained.
So so we need to redo the graphs a little bit, but didn't have time for that now.
But you you can see the results, so you can see that the the humanitarian negotiators were better in the base,
right neglect, but they were not better. There were actually worse in the neutral frame.
So we did the base rate issue not only in the frame, but also in unframed on neutral context.
And that is that is interesting because it seems again that context matters.
And then or maybe they're just thinking more slowly when they feel they in their own context, in the Italian context.
And here you see the layperson's came. So for all three groups, the humanitarian context matters.
They were all better in the humanitarian context than in the neutral context.
And humanitarians are much more likely to avoid base rate neglect in the humanitarian context, but they have worse.
Interestingly, in comparison to students and delayed persons in the non-French neutral experience.
So again, that shows that the context really matters. And overoptimism, that's an interesting one, because, again, overoptimism.
Everybody is overoptimistic, and it's often explained as an evolutionary trait, because otherwise,
why would you get married or if you ask people when they get married, whether they would get divorced and they would say no.
But of course, like depending on the country, you have 30 percent of the population getting divorced or if you have four start-ups and start-ups,
they all think their business will survive, even though we know that. I don't know 70 percent that goes bust after a year or two.
Right. So overoptimism might be a very good, evolutionarily speaking, a very good trait.
So you compare, but we also know that, you know,
eighty five percent of the population think that they are over average drivers, which is a logical impossibility.
And we found the same thing, for example, with judges and arbitrators.
Say you would like the arbitrators more a bit more modest than the U.S. American judges, but more or less,
you know, it's like something between 80 and 90 percent of them think that they're better than the average judge.
So it's important most people think, you know, you see it every day.
I won't catch COVID or I will not die of cancer, or even though we know that half of the population at one point in their lives has cancer.
So, so and so there are a lot of of those issues where, you know, what's our it?
And we wanted to see whether they are overoptimistic considering themselves because of this phenomenon and all others are but not me.
OK, so you're working for an organisation and in the state undergoing civil war was a mounting humanitarian crisis organisation and
as part of the condition of 10 governmental and non-governmental aid agencies active in humanitarian activity in the region,
the governor of the province, where aid is to be delivered to the civilian population,
has confirmed access to the coalition aid groups to the affected groups.
You are preparing delivery of humanitarian aid.
When you are informed that the central government has revoked the visas for all humanitarian agencies was mandates to all regions of the state.
The central government has issued a press release according to which man is some civil
unrest in parts of the country and therefore foreign humanitarian aid is not necessary.
You have a country that was before Ethiopia. We did not like that.
This is so so all that typical situations, you will find them all the time.
You have a contact to the Ministry of Interior and at the private meeting request clarifications,
the ministry assures you that there has been an error and the results will not be resolved.
No formal assurance has been provided, however.
What is the likelihood for your team to retain their visas and continue the humanitarian missions, and we ask them to give them too much information?
And then we also ask them what is the likelihood for humanitarian workers or other
agencies in the coalition to attend Evanson and again give the longevity for some?
And this is what we find interestingly.
You know, they all more or less the range through at 50, which is a classical focal point here.
You find in the dotted line, you have the students, so they're a little bit more optimistic.
So they exhibited the optimism bias first and you share this really don't OK?
The layperson also don't. So so so this is interesting because as I told you before,
overoptimism is so well proven and the only people who are not overoptimistic are those clinically depressed.
And it seems that at least the humanitarians seem not to have overall optimism if you talk to them,
if you go and I've been to some of those places and those workshops before COVID, they are under a lot of strain for sure.
I'm not saying they're depressed, but they're under a lot of strength.
So, but also since we also tested the students and the layperson, somehow context seems to matter.
To conclude, so you really are in negotiations, shares similar cognitive biases.
Lay people, but we cannot equate it.
So with regard to some biases and in the frontline context, they're more cautious vis-a-vis anchoring and essentially overoptimism.
Insights on grounded rationality we find can thus not easily be transposed
from laypeople and context free Williams to professionals and their context.
So our takeaway from that is that the UN needs to proceed with caution in applying behavioural economics
and cognitive psychological insights because the experiments from the lab cannot be so easily transposed.
I mean, external validity has always been an issue discussed in experimental economics, but there are few comparisons as laypeople.
And then there are studies to show professionals showing as well.
Others say that professionals show with less, but we need much more research on them.
But.
This sort, even though it's like nitty gritty, we are just talking about frontline humanitarian negotiators, we are just talking about for biases.
This is the sort of research I believe we need if you want to give evidence based policy advice,
which helps us because this research helps us to understand how actors decide when applying international law generally that we need more research.
Sure. And and I ajello more specifically now, humanitarians are not the only person HL, but there is, of course, more to do.
We hope to do a study was the UN Office of Counterterrorism. So they, they they are also trying to.
But of course, you, for example, would say it's not.
It's basically impossible to do experiments with terrorists or doing experiments in counterterrorism.
And we are doing a second follow up study, which is which I'm not reporting here, also because the humanitarians on application of international law.
So the interpretation of of HL, but I'm not reporting because it's still ongoing.
OK, so I stop here. That was it from my side, and I'm much looking forward to any questions.
Thank you, Anna, for this really informative and also intriguing presentation, and please join me to give a true round of applause to Anna Baker.
Yes. And now we move to the discussion part.
And. And thank you, Natasha Co-convenor.
To remind you that you can just use a restaurant function at the bottom of the tap interaction tap or just tap.
I have a question in the chat. Let me check whether I made some of the comments or questions.
OK. Natasha, please. Thanks.
Thanks, Jason. Thank you so much. And this is absolutely fascinating.
I'm afraid this is very different territory for what I'm used to, so I apologise in advance.
If my question is, is this is a silly one because behavioural economics are completely new to me.
But I totally understand why you do it, and it sounds very important and fascinating.
But one thing I wondered is kind of the the aim of this or that or the the outcome in terms of and is that
the point of or is part of the points of the behavioural analysis to inform the shaping of legal norms?
Or is it more about policy advice and how to how to train people on the ground or a bit of a mix of or something that I have completely overlooked?
I'm just curious about that. Thank you. Thanks, Natasha.
So if you allow me to share another PowerPoint read, I have a nice graph where you see how we can.
Is that OK for you? Thank you.
OK. Sea and open pretty.
So that was a presentation. It's called a roadmap and some stop signs.
But using behavioural insights in international law, so it can be many things like like, you can use it in as Queensland to.
So what you see here is like. So so what you see here is basically so you have behavioural science interventions, and this is the targeted actor.
So you can from an internationally, you can target the national level so you can say you give advice or give guidelines that can
be different normative forms of law or whatever in order to nudge consumers or business.
So this was a presentation in the context of sustainable development, and this is, of course, something.
But, you know, look at the W.H.O., right? So you would, for example, drop the age old guidelines on plain packaging, tobacco plain packaging.
They would be ultimately targeting consumers.
But of course, the first step they target the states, which then transform on the national international level.
You can use it in in in the process of negotiations like, for example, we do have some studies on whether it matters,
whether you have positive or negative lists when you negotiate, for example, trade or the service agreement.
We also have insights on and that's on the substantive level of the treaty on the the that default rules matter.
So there has been this fantastic study by Gene Galbraith that whether you reduce the
jurisdiction of the ICJ or any other international court as an opt in or opt out.
So if it's in the treaty and you need to make a reservation, it's about how many more states stay in.
Whereas if you have an additional protocol like, for example, in the human rights treaties, then much less states get it.
And so, so it shouldn't matter from a rational perspective because you would assume
while the state knows whether it wants to have to accept jurisdiction or not,
but it matters. And, you know, reservations are very reservations and objections to reservations are super interesting topic on that, right?
So for example, I would say, especially in human rights studies, we would need to design it differently.
So, so so it can be used either in the process of negotiation.
And again, here also, diplomats are trained in rational choice negotiation theory, and we would say, well,
this is probably insufficient and there has been so many writings on on impediments to negotiation success.
If you totally stay in a in a rational choice framework,
so so it might matter for diplomats and negotiators to use behavioural insights, but also for the treaty text.
And then, of course, it can be used in international organisations.
That's the last sentence of the quote of Anthony Pettis,
which I had put in order to ameliorate the internal workings of the international organisations.
But also, and that's more the CC Agenda Project help their own people to deep bias in their book Pay or help them to be able.
And that's also the aim of the situation with this sort of training is that to see behavioural biases and duress in their
counter practise in order to be able to use them and have a better negotiation result from a humanitarian perspective.
OK, and then international organisations. And that's what I had said when they used there.
Yeah, and they can use it in between themselves as well.
So there are many, many, many possibilities.
I hope that answers your question. It does this, you know, that most of that you can all do this conceptually.
You can all use all those biases and jurists, which we have, which we know about and apply them like this, like, you know, I can do this as my best.
And we could have gone to seise the agenda, as I said,
let's give them a training handbook and say, well, you know, those are all the biases they exist.
Those are likely to come up in humanitarian negotiations. Train your people on them.
Or we can say, well,
maybe that is because there is we know there is a problem with external validity of those experiments because they are mainly conducted
for students because we can so easily conduct experiments with students and be it's so difficult to get the real persons to do.
Does that answer it? It does. Thank you so much, and I'm glad to see you in a way that it has so many potential applications because
it sounds like it's something will be really useful to a lot of different contexts. I had just one more question if you don't mind, Chris.
Thank you. And you don't mind to add. Thank you very much.
It was about the process for how you come up with the vignette because they seem very carefully constructed as a kind of,
you know, the good test test cases test example.
I just wondered if you are drawing on experiences, particular experiences,
how you how you pick, how you, how you frame those, those vignettes in those questions.
I know I know some of them are deliberately abstractly framed and deliberately framed using humanitarian issues.
But sometimes I think it can be quite tricky to know how to also come up with the wording.
They see that they must be have to be very carefully monitored.
So I just wondered about I was curious about the process that you go through when you're writing those.
Yeah, and that's actually the most time intensive.
So, so, you know, a study like this, we started in 2018, right, and finished this year, and that's only the first study.
Well, some of it was also due to COVID and stuff like that.
But yes, designing the vignette is the most difficult part.
And you know, it starts with it's something on vaccination expiry or something like that.
And then we talk to medical doctors and then all this is medically wrong. And so like a.