PEACE researchers, by and large, are an optimistic breed. Perhaps in their most private thoughts, they harbor doubts about their ability to ameliorate war, this terrible mode of settling disputes, but such doubt is not evident in their work. The reasons why are clear. These men and women have a deep moral hatred of war. To commit one's life to understanding and, ultimately, ending warfare, it is necessary to maintain a shred of optimism, to preserve a modicum of hope that war will disappear, , as other evils in the past have disappeared. The titles of the journals devoted to this study reflect this essential optimism : it is not accidental, for example, that The Journal of Conflict Resolution, The Journal of Peace Studies, are not called simply The Journal of Conflict or War Studies.

It is commonplace to preface work on the study of war with some sort of wistful hope that, someday, the knowledge and insight it provides will rid the world of war. Kenneth Boulding expressed this expectation in an article written some years ago when he said that ".... one may hope it may be possible in the not-too-distant future to develop a substantial body of knowledge on the identification and control of conflict systems." In a more recent essay, Karl Deutsch and Dieter Senghor prefaced their study on identifying situations when war is on the horizon with this statement :

Any progress on this path may advance us at least a little toward the goal of Quincy Wright's work: ultimately to abolish war as a social institution, and to help men control their own fate for the better.