Cognitive Biases In The 1970's

Every day we wake up we start making decisions. These decisions vary in complexity. Some are very simple, some automatically, and some decisions involved a higher degree of processing the information and reasoning. A deficit in reasoning can lead to errors in thinking that influenced the way how people make decisions in life. These errors are called cognitive biases. The term “cognitive bias” was introduced in the early 1970’s by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, which describes how heuristics or mental shortcuts lead to such errors in reasoning (Wilke & Mata, 2012, p.1). Cognitive biases develop for several reasons. Most common are the errors in memory that can affect how people remember certain events. Also, cognitive biases helps us process
As demonstrated by the intelligence failures in the last decades, understanding what happened provide means to review and analyze how the results could be different.
Intelligence Failure
In spite of the past intelligence successes, there have been many intelligence failures. According to Kruys, (2006) the following are examples of failures were was a lack of warning prior to occurrences:
--The German attack on the Soviet Union, June 1941.
--Pearl Harbour, December 1941.
--The Soviet missile in Cuba in the summer and fall of 1962.
--The October 1973 Yom Kippur War.
--The fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979.
--The Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980.
--The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
--The 1983 terrorist bombings that killed 250 US Marines and destroyed the US embassy in Beirut.
--The failure to foresee the Soviet collapse in 1989.
--The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
--The failure to foresee the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the US.
--The wrong evaluation of the presence of WMD in Iraq prior to the Coalition invasion in
During the summer of 1962 intelligence analyst received many reports about Russians been seen in Cuba. As well, they received many reports about “missiles in Cuba in the period before any missiles were actually brought there.” However, intelligence analysts discounted this information based on a previous conclusion that because some of the HUMIT evidence were false, then -“ALL HUMINT from Cuba was false” (Moore, 2007, p.5). In reality, the Soviets through a campaign of denial and deception were able to deploy more than the offensive nuclear missiles. This issue is known the “Cuban Missiles