If Saddam is Hitler then who is George Bush? Analogical mapping between systems of social roles.

Abstract

The analogy between World War II and the 1991 Persian Gulf crisis led people to construct a coherent system of roles for the participants in the Gulf crisis. The Analogical Constraint Mapping Engine (ACME), a model of analogical mapping by constraint satisfaction (Holyoak & Thagard, 1989), makes predictions about the types of correspondences people are likely to draw between the people and countries in these analogs. Both a survey (Experiment 1) and an experimental study (Experiment 2) revealed clear evidence that people have a strong tendency to generate mappings that honor certain basic coherence constraints. In Experiment 3, with science-fiction materials, further evidence for the generality of these constraints was obtained. Computer simulations of Experiments 2 and 3 using ACME yielded mappings similar to those generated by Ss. General models of analogical reasoning may have implications for everyday understanding of complex systems of social roles. The importance of analogical reasoning in everyday life was dramatically illustrated in the context of events surrounding the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Indeed, from published reports of decision making by Western leaders, it would not be a great exaggeration to say that the United States went to war over an analogy. The prelude to the war engendered widespread use of analogy as a tool of argument and persuasion. As has been typical in all debates about American military intervention since the 1970s (Gilovich, 1981), two antithetical positions were advanced, each based on a historical analogy. Hawks insisted that Saddam Hussein was an emerging Hitler, who had to be stopped before he swallowed other countries, developed new weapons, and became yet more dangerous to Western interests; doves warned that the Persian Gulf was a trap like Vietnam, conjuring images of an unpopular and drawn-out war in which the United States did not belong. President George Bush was able to convince most of the American public, as well as members of Congress and leaders of other Western nations, that the World War II analogy was sound. The pragmatic impact of this analogical transfer was war. The intense public interest in the analogies to the Gulf situation afforded a unique research opportunity for a naturalistic