Conflict analysis approaches for investigating attitudes and misperceptions in the War of 1812

Formal systems engineering approaches to modeling misperceptions and attitudes are employed within the framework of the graph model for conflict resolution to systematically study the War of 1812 between the United States of America and Great Britain in order to provide enhanced insights into the causes of the war. More specifically, relational definitions for preferences, movements and stability concepts are defined for describing the attitudes and associated behavior of decision makers involved in a conflict. To capture misperceptions of decision makers in the War of 1812, attitudes are studied within the structure of a hypergame. Combining attitudes and misperceptions within the paradigm of the graph model furnishes the flexible analytical tool which demonstrates that misunderstanding of attitudes by Great Britain and the United States may have contributed to the outbreak of this nasty war. Takehiro Inohara received his B.S. (Mathematics, 1992), M.S. (Systems Science, 1994) and PhD (Systems Science, 1997), all from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan. His research interests are in the fields of game theory, conflict analysis, hypergames, drama theory, and social network theory. He is currently a reviewer of Mathematical Reviews and a contributor to the 21^st Century Centre of Excellence Project “Creation of Agent-Based Social Systems Sciences (ABSSS)”, supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, (MEXT) in Japan. In 2003, Professor Inohara received “Tokyo Tech Award for Challenging Research” from Tokyo Institute of Technology, and in 2005, “The Young Scientist’s Prize from MEXT. He is currently with Department of Value and Decision Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology. Keith W. Hipel is University Professor of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, where he is the Coordinator of the Conflict Analysis Group. His major research interests are the development of conflict resolution and time series analysis techniques from a systems design engineering perspective with applications to water resources management, hydrology, environmental engineering, infrastructure renewal and sustainable development. He received his Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD degrees in Civil Engineering, Systems Design and Civil Engineering from the University of Waterloo in 1970, 1972 and 1975, respectively. Dr. Hipel is Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC), Canadian Academy of Engineering (FCAE), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (FIEEE), International Council on Systems Engineering (FINCOSE), Engineering Institute of Canada (FEIC), and the American Water Resources Association (FAWRA). He is also a recipient of many other awards including the Norbert Wiener Award from the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC) Society, and the Canada Council Killam Research Fellowship. Sean Walker is a Master’s Candidate in the department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Mr. Walker graduated from the Department of Chemical Engineering in 2004 with a Bachelor of Applied Science from the University of Waterloo. He later became part of the Conflict Analysis Group, headed by Professor Keith W. Hipel in September of 2006. His research interests include the impact of coalitions and attitudes upon conflict resolution, development and resolution of environmental conflicts, application of the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution (GMCR), environmental engineering and sustainable development. Mr. Walker is currently a research and teaching assistant within the Systems Design Engineering Department and an active member of St. Paul’s United College at the University of Waterloo.