Donald Trump’s threatened Armageddon and civilisational erasure was averted last week – for now. Iran’s economy is badly damaged but much of its infrastructure is intact and it is in control of much of the world’s oil, fertiliser and key chemical supplies.
From impoverished and sanction-crippled supplicant to gatekeeper of the world economy, Iran has proven more resilient than anyone – or the US administration – anticipated.
By contrast Trump’s options look limited and there is little domestic support for his war.
I turned to my discipline, psychology, to try to work out how the US entered into such an ill-conceived war. Fundamental psychological errors can help to explain how the US has been brought to this dangerous moment.
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The control illusion
Humans tend to overestimate how much they control outcomes that, objectively, they don’t have much control over. The gambling industry thrives on this psychological quirk. Some of us succumb to this illusion more than others and power-holders are much more susceptible to it.
Former UK prime minister Tony Blair used to complain about the “rubber levers” of power which he believed he should be able to pull to create the outcomes he wanted. Blair had a far higher illusion of control than other world leaders, which made him join with then US president George W Bush in the disastrous Iraq invasion of 2003.
When you believe that you have control, but then find out you have not, this leads to frustration and anger. This explains Trump’s foul-mouthed social media rants: “open the f***in’ Strait, you crazy b****rds.”
The fundamental attribution error
US and Chinese high school students watch a cartoon fish tank, where one fish is distinguished from the others by its blue colour. Sometimes the blue fish swims with the group, occasionally it collides with them and at other times they scatter and separate.
When researchers asked the teenagers about events in the tank, particularly focused on the blue fish, the explanations diverged remarkably: the American students concentrated on internal factors in the blue fish – its abilities, desires and intentions – while the Chinese teenagers interpreted what was happening in terms of factors that were external to the blue fish, such as the thoughts and feelings of the other fish, or the general situation in the tank.
This is an example of cultural differences in a human cognitive bias called the “fundamental attribution error”, where we – particularly in westernised, Americanised cultures – overestimate internal dispositions of people and underestimate situational and context factors.
I imagine it, in terms of the US, as a John Wayne effect – the myth of the all-American hero solving the problem by grit and ruthless action. Think bunker-busting bombs in the 12-day war on Iran in 2025. Remember the precision of the abduction of Nicholás Maduro from his fortress-palace in Venezuela. Consider the remarkable movie-script operation to extract the downed US aviator from hostile territory last week. No wonder Donald Trump and his war cabinet feel like John Wayne. But Wayne didn’t do strategy. He shot his way through complexity in a cloak of moral rectitude because he was the hero agent.
I have a mental image of Trump, Pete Hegseth and the war cabinet peering into the fish tank, watching the fish and exclaiming – get the blue one, General – they’ll fold in three days!
[ The real Donald Trump is the Trump of the foul-mouthed, late-night rantOpens in new window ]
Group intelligence loss
Groups have collective IQs independent from individual IQs of their members.
Research from Carnegie Mellon University showed that group intelligence depends on two main factors: first, how equally distributed the talking-time for each group member is during problem-solving discussions; second, the average ability of each group member to read other people’s facial emotional expressions. (A third factor – the proportion of women in the group – was entirely accounted for by women’s greater average ability to read other people’s emotional expressions.)
Watch any Trump cabinet meeting and you will see one person talking and talking – and the rest sitting. Doubtless, there are some smart people there but they cannot apply their intelligence to think strategically because their brains are not networked together due to the dominance of one man.
The superiority illusion
When he was defending Trump’s actions in Iran earlier last month, vice-president JD Vance explained that there was now a “smart president” in the Oval Office, unlike in the past when “we’ve had dumb presidents”.
The 5th century BC Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “know the enemy and know yourself”. If you believe everyone else is dumb and that you are – in Trump’s words “a stable genius” – then there is little incentive to know your enemy. If they are so dumb, then you can do anything to them without having to think about how they might respond. And who needs to spend time self-monitoring their actions and decisions when they know they are smarter than anyone else?
The overconfidence of hubris distorts personalities to make people lose empathy, judgment, risk-awareness and self-awareness.
The God illusion
Julius Caesar had himself declared a demigod and erected statues to himself throughout the Roman Empire while he was still alive. In 2016, Vladimir Putin unveiled a 51ft (15.5m) statue to a medieval predecessor – Holy Great Prince Vladimir, Equal of the Apostles, and Christianiser of Russia – beside the Kremlin.
Trump said, in the wake of the failed assassination attempt on his life, he was “saved by God to make America great again”. In the middle of a press conference about tariffs on China, he suddenly looked up at the sky and said: “I am the Chosen One.” Pete Hegseth quoted the Bible – “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle” – as he got the “holy war” he seems to have been striving for.
It is the fate of the tyrant to believe he is – if not a god himself – then at least an instrument of one. Why? Because he can wield huge power unfettered by petty rules, objections or moral qualms. When asked by the New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Trump answered: “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” He is the law and that makes him feel God-like. And he has a cabinet of disciples imbued with his holy mission.
Of all the psychological errors that have led the world to this dangerous place, this is the one we should be most scared of.
