ABSTRACT
Numerous studies deal with threat realities, and writings on perceived nuclear threats are common. Cuba, small and relatively powerless, was perceived as a great threat because of its proximity to the United States. The threat of Russian offensive missiles in Cuba would probably have been of short-term concern to President Kennedy and his advisors if Cuba had been located at the tip of Africa rather than ninety miles off the coast of Florida. The Chinese perceive the Russians as a threat, and vice versa, in part because they share a long and poorly demarcated land border. To understand the landscape of beliefs through which information is processed, some scholars, principally from the discipline of psychology, have turned to "mapping." Cognitive theorists generally agree that information filtered through an individual's belief system produces perceptions, and that individuals are guided by subjective perceptions and not by objective reality, whatever it may be.
