Evaluation of Cross-Cultural Models for Psychological Operations: Test of a Decision Modeling Approach

Specific research objectives were to identify sample psychological operations (PSYOP) objectives likely to be sought in traditional wartime operations and from operations other than war; for two sample objectives, to identify cultural and situational factors that would influence a likelihood that a target audience (TA) would respond as desired; to determine if a policy-capturing methodology would result in a policy model that could assess the probability of a TA responding as desired under varying conditions; and to examine the degree that relationship of factors and TA response is consistent across cultures and situations. Comparisons of relative influence of factors across/within cultures showed moderate but inconsistent agreement between subjects/cultures. In general, decision analysis procedures proved to be easily implemented. From these results, there is strong indication that relevant influencing factors can be pre-identified for specific PSYOP objectives. However, additional research over a larger number of objectives/cultures is required to see if these results are generalized to different types of operations and target audiences.