Rose McDermott
Rose McDermott is the David and Mariana Fisher University Professor of International Relations at Brown University and a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received her Ph.D.(Political Science) and M.A. (Experimental Social Psychology) from Stanford University and has taught at Cornell, UCSB and Harvard. She has held fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and the Women and Public Policy Program, all at Harvard University. She has been a fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences twice. She is the author of four books, a co-editor of two additional volumes, and author of over two hundred academic articles across a wide variety of disciplines encompassing topics such as experimentation, emotion and decision making, and the biological and genetic bases of political behavior.
Author's Articles
When Our Minds Go Nuclear: Rethinking Nuclear Strategy Through the Psychology of Risk and Decision-Making
Cognitive biases can systematically distort judgments about the use of nuclear weapons, potentially undermining nuclear stability and increasing the risk of nuclear war. In survey experiments with nearly 3,000 US participants, we show how psychological…
Psychological Biases in the Era of Nuclear Weapons and AI
Rose McDermott explains how common judgment biases can undermine nuclear deterrence and strategic stability, especially under time pressure and with emerging technologies like AI, using Kahneman’s Type 1 (fast, intuitive) and Type 2 (slow, analytic) thinking…
The Influence of Psychological Factors in the Search for Strategic Stability
Many of the leaders of new nuclear powers sit atop regimes that are personalistic in nature, and thus less constrained by institutions or public opinion than more democratic regimes. Such authoritarian leaders have more freedom to allow their psychological…
Remembering Robert Jervis
In this roundtable, our contributors look back on the life and work of Robert Jervis. A towering figure in international relations, Jervis made crucial contributions to multiple academic fields as well as the U.S. government. He is remembered for his scholarly…
‘Blunt Not the Heart, Enrage It’: The Psychology of Revenge and Deterrence
Scholars and policymakers have a sophisticated view of deterrence, but still have a poor understanding of its psychological underpinnings.