the route by which I came to write Perception and Misperception was not straightforward. I did not start out to become a political psychologist, but rather approached the field as a critic of one aspect of it for reasons that go back much earlier. From my childhood, I was interested in international politics, or at least the international politics of the period, which was the Cold War. The central question was how to avoid the twin dangers of nuclear war and Soviet encroachment on American security and values. (Of course whether or not...