INTEGRATIVE COMPLEXITY IN REASONING ABOUT THE PERSIAN-GULF-WAR AND THE ACCOUNTABILITY TO SKEPTICAL AUDIENCE HYPOTHESIS

Given earlier polling reports, it was predicted that (a) a majority of Canadian subjects would support the U.S. military intervention in the Persian Gulf crisis and (b) following Tetlock's (1983) accountability -to-skeptical-audience hypothesis, these subjects would display lower levels of integrative complexity in reasoning about the causes of the Gulf War than subjects who indicated opposition to the U.S. action. As expected, a significantly greater proportion of subjects (70%) indica ted support for the U.S. action, and these subjects did in fact have s ignificantly lower integrative complexity levels than subjects who ind icated opposition to the U.S. action. Relations between attitudes towa rd U.S. military involvement, confidence in attributions about the pri mary cause of the war, and internality-externality of attributions abo ut either Saddam Hussein, George Bush, Iraq, or the U.S. were also exp lored. Implications for theory and for future research are discussed.