Who writes history? Obviously, it is historians. The histories they write describe the major players, the leaders who shaped their times. And the events that they shaped, or that shaped them. Often, the accounts describe major battles along with dates and locations. So there are some standard scripts for relating the story.
Other professionals sometimes write their accounts of history: political scientists, economists, policy analysts, and other related specialists.
History Through the Lens of Cognitive Psychology
Maybe there is room for one more entry: cognitive psychologists. What kind of history could psychologists write?
A decision-centered history. Not ignoring the dates and locations and events, but not highlighting them, either. Our history would highlight the important decisions—not just what the decisions were, but also how they were made and what the consequences were. We might speculate about the decision processes for individuals, teams, organizations, and governments. The judgments and deliberations, the different factors that influenced the decisions.
Here is what that might look like: I recently wrote a book on the origins of World War I with my colleague, Ruth Judson (Judson and Klein, 2024). Our intended audience was children 9 to 15 years old, so we had a challenging constraint: not to drown our readers with details, but to present enough details to make the account compelling. As we prepared one outline after another, we settled on a decision-centered strategy. We couldn’t revisit every decision. Instead, we settled on three primary decisions, and that became the heart of our book.
One decision was the British choice to enter the war on the side of the French instead of staying neutral. The French were counting on the British coming to their aid once they went to war with Germany. On the other hand, the Germans were counting on the British staying out of the pending conflict—after all, the British and French had a long history of conflicts and wars. Within Great Britain, some influential politicians urged a pro-French policy, and others urged an anti-war policy. How did Britain decide to enter the conflict?
A second decision was the German tactic to attack France, not directly west, but through Belgium, even though Belgium had announced its neutrality. This German tactic helped draw Britain into the fight. Why were the Germans so foolish? Part of the answer is that Germany knew that it could easily overpower Belgium, and expected Belgium to roll over and let their forces through without any declaration of war. That way, Britain would not have any excuse to join the war on the side of the French.
And that was the third decision: Would Belgium give up without a fight, or would they put up a useless resistance to the German advance?
By making these decisions the centerpiece of the book, we converted an account of dates, events, and leaders into an account of the three fateful choices. We used that account to make sense of the rest of the story.
A Compelling Alternative Approach for Historical Accounts
We certainly were not the first to focus on decisions. One of the leading examples is Allison (1971) Essence of Decision, about the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the confrontation between the USA and the USSR. However, this approach is not typical, and I am suggesting that it can be a useful and compelling alternative to the standard accounts of events.
Perhaps a decision-centered approach to history might apply to a variety of topics and audiences. At the very least, it represents an alternative perspective on the telling of history.