Psychodynamic Processes and Framing Effects in Foreign Policy Decision-Making: Woodrow Wilson's Operational Code

Abstract

Operational code analysis has focused most immediately upon cognitive predispositions and their influence upon political decision-making. It is also possible to analyze the motivational imagery displayed in an individual's rhetoric and draw inferences about the linkages among needs, beliefs, and political decisions. In this paper Wilson's decisions during the ratification debate over the Versailles Treaty are interpreted within the context offered by the motivational elements in his operational code. The results are compared to similar analyses of Wilson's decisions to intervene in the Mexican Revolution and enter World War I. These comparisons contribute to a better understanding of how motivations formed the foundations of Wilson's operational code and framed his foreign policy decisions.

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