Reframing International Security Issues through Behavioral DecisionMaking Psychology: A NormativeAnalytical Framework

This study systematically examines how behavioral decision-making psychology can be positioned as a foundational framework for resolving international security issues. The rational actor assumption underlying traditional security theories posits that decision-makers process all available information comprehensively to determine the choice that will maximize utility. However, accumulated evidence demonstrates that this idealized model loses its validity, particularly in security contexts characterized by high uncertainty and time pressure. The study evaluates how behavioral mechanisms such as bounded rationality, cognitive shortcuts, loss aversion, framing effects, and groupthink shape security decisions using conceptual comparison and analytical synthesis methods. The research findings show that cognitive biases follow predictable patterns in security decisions, rather than being random, and that these patterns are reproduced through institutional processes. The study reveals that leadership psychology, advisory networks, and bureaucratic filters function as intermediary mechanisms in the transfer of psychological findings developed at the individual level to the state level. At the normative level, the capacity of behavioral awareness to reduce the likelihood of error in security policies through structured analysis techniques, critical assessment teams, and decision support mechanisms is discussed. The article contributes to intra-disciplinary theoretical pluralism by positioning the behavioral approach not as an alternative to structural theories, but as a perspective that complements and enriches them. Ultimately, the study argues that security decisions should be explained not only by material power balances and structural conditions but also by the cognitive architecture of decisionmakers, proposing a unique normative-analytical framework for international security literature.