In sum, while this study offers a first cut look at the data collected from the experiment
and recognizes that the data needs to be examined further, the initial results of the study suggest
that social psychological mechanisms such as cognitive biases are at the root of ethnic conflict.
This finding prompts one to seriously consider the premises of existing theoretical approaches.
The findings presented in this paper seriously call into doubt the premises of rational choice
theory and its economistic outlook on decision making. On the other hand, while the findings do
not contradict constructivism and the notion that it is ideas that drives decision making, it does
prompt one to reconsider how constructivists tell the story of how ideas shape human behavior in
that previous knowledge plays much more of role in the process than many constructivists give
currently give credence to.
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