Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Empathy Gap Bias and Strategy

There are many instances in the history of warfare of a seemingly inferior opponent beating a provably superior opponent who has superior numbers or superior technology that can be brought to bear.  Yet somehow, inferior opponents come out on top due to a several reasons among them more resolve-to-win, willingness to sacrifice, patience to wait out the other guy, etc.  One aspect somewhat covered in papers on strategy and psychology is termed the “empathy gap.”
 

From Wikipedia page on the subject:  “Further conclusion can be made about empathy gap and power: the weaker party often doesn’t realize that being in a weaker party can actually give them more power to strategically think and make decisions, leading to better outcomes. The weaker party has no idea what they are capable of doing. They convince themselves that being more powerful is often more advantageous. Whereas the powerful party lacks strategy and leads to a poor outcome."
 

So translation, the one with superior forces often has the luxury of using brute force methods to get the win whereas the weaker party almost always has to think strategically better in order just  to survive.  Being forced to think strategically often then translates into eventual victory for the seemingly inferior force. 



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