Scholars of public opinion and foreign policy recognize that the general public is poorly informed about international affairs, but they disagree about whether and how this fact affects the policies that it will support. Some argue that the lack of information has little effect, at least in the aggregate, while others hold that political information mediates attention to elite cues. We investigate a third line of argument in which political information has a direct effect on the policy options individuals support. Low levels of political information give rise to a pattern of complacency toward likely international threats in times of relative peace and a contrasting tendency to support violent and aggressive policy options during war or acute crises. We test this argument using survey data from two relevant historical settings: the American entry into World War II and the response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
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