Mass public decisions to go to war: A cognitive-interactionist framework

How do Americans decide whether their country should use military force abr oad? We argue they combine dispositional preferences and ideas about the ge opolitical situation. This article reports the results of a representative national survey that incorporated Jive experiments. Findings include the fo llowing: (I) Respondent dispositions, especially isolationism versus intern ationalism and assertiveness versus accommodativeness, consistently constra ined policy preferences, whereas liberalism-conservatism did net; (2) featu res of the geopolitical context-the presence of U.S. interests, relative po wer the images of the adversary's motivations and judgments about cultural status-also influenced support for military intervention; and (3) systemati c interactions emerged between dispositions and geopolitical context that s hed light on when and why ideological disagreements about the use of force are likely to be amplified and attenuated by situational factors. Our resul ts are consistent with a cognitive-interactionist perspective, in which peo ple adapt broad predispositions in relatively thoughtful ways to specific f oreign policy problems.