The belief system as a cognitive map in the study of foreign policy

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the belief system is studied in foreign policy. The belief system entered the field of foreign policy and international relations using the achievements of psychology in the 1960 s. The link between psychology and foreign policy led to the most important feature of the belief system, the coherence of beliefs or cognitive consistency. The assumption of cognitive consistency theory is that human beings understand the world by relying on their key beliefs and are trying to maintain the coherence of their beliefs. And this key issue has made the review of the belief system of foreign policy decision makers one of the priorities of research, especially at the micro level of foreign policy decision making. So the question was, by what mechanism or methodological mechanisms could the system of beliefs and opinions of foreign policy decision makers be studied? It seems that the belief system can be consider as a cognitive map based on three layers of beliefs, including worldviews, ideologies, and foreign policy doctrines.