Incorporating Misperception into the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution

Abstract

A flexible hypergame methodology is designed and implemented for modeling misperceptions by participating decision makers (DMs) in a conflict having two or more DMs within the framework of the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution (GMCR). This comprehensive approach allows one or more of the DMs to have misunderstandings about the actual situation. Moreover, the methodology can account for misperceptions founded upon other misunderstandings such that different levels of misperception exist. This improved methodology can handle a DM's misperception about itself as well as its perceptions about its opponents. To accomplish this, the options or courses of action of each DM in a conflict are categorized according to various types of misperceptions that can occur either due to others or the particular DM. Furthermore, the union of all possible kinds of option perceptions creates the universal set of options for each DM, which in turn can be extended across all DMs in the dispute to generate the universal set of states or possible scenarios for the hypergame. The universal set of states permits the DMs to experience and view the dispute independently, yet allows an analyst to distinguish between the states that are commonly recognized by all DMs and those that are individually misperceived. Furthermore, DMs' preferences are expressed in a relative fashion by pairwise comparisons between any pair of states, thereby allowing the hypergame in graph form to accommodate both transitive and intransitive preference structures.

A general stability analysis procedure is developed to analyze a hypergame under any level of perception. Within this approach, two techniques are developed: one to analyze each DM's subjective game or hypergame and another to analyze and predict the equilibria for the overall hypergame. Moreover, to study the effects of DMs' misperceptions on the outcomes of the dispute, the overall hypergame equilibria are categorized based on the type of misperceptions into eight classes of equilibria. To test and refine the hypergame methodology as well to apply it in practice, three case studies are investigated. In particular, the 2011 conflict between North and South Sudan over South Sudanese oil exports, as well as the 1956 nationalization of the Suez Canal dispute, are investigated within the paradigm of a first-level hypergame in graph form, which is a decision situation in which at least one DM has a misperception about the conflict situation, and neither the DM who misperceives the circumstance nor any of the other DMs are aware of this misunderstanding. Additionally, a detailed case study about the hydropolitical conflict among the Eastern Nile Countries over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is investigated within the structure of a second-level hypergame in graph form, in which at least one DM is aware of another DM's misperception. Interesting strategic insights found in these case studies confirm the distinct advantages of utilizing the new hypergame methodology in graph form.