We remember the past in order not to repeat it, but does remembrance of war in fact shape support for military or diplomatic approaches to international conflict? In seven samples from five countries (collected online, total N = 2,493), we examined support for military and diplomatic approaches to conflict during war commemorations (e.g., Veterans Day). During war commemorations in the United States, support for diplomacy increased, whereas support for military approaches did not change. We found similar results in the United Kingdom and Australia on Remembrance Day, but not in Germany, or France, nor in Australia on Anzac Day. Furthermore, support for diplomacy was predicted by concern about loss of ingroup military lives during war, independently of concern about harm to outgroup civilians. These studies expand our understanding of how collective memories of war may be leveraged to promote diplomatic approaches to contemporary geopolitical conflict.
ArielyG. (2017). Remembrance Day influence on national sentiments and hostility towards out-groups: Evidence from a panel study in Israel. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(14), 2596–2614.
2.
BatesD.MaechlerM.BolkerB.WalkerS. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), 1–48. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01
3.
BaumM. A.PotterP. B. (2008). The relationships between mass media, public opinion, and foreign policy: Toward a theoretical synthesis. Annual Review of Political Science, 11, 39–65.
4.
BeanC. E. W. (1924). The official history of Australia in the war of 1914-1918 (5th ed., Vol. 2). University of Queensland Press.
BizumicB.StubagerR.MellonS.Van der LindenN.IyerR.JonesB. M. (2013). On the (in)compatibility of attitudes toward peace and war. Political Psychology, 34(5), 673–693.
8.
BrewerM. B. (1999). The psychology of prejudice: Ingroup love or outgroup hate?Journal of Social Issues, 55, 429–444.
9.
BrownleeJ. (2020). Cognitive shortcuts and public support for intervention. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 64, 261–289. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002719854210
10.
ChatardA.SelimbegovićL.N’Dri KonanP.ArndtJ.PyszczynskiT.Lorenzi-CioldiF.Van der LindenM. (2011). Terror management in times of war: Mortality salience effects on self-esteem and governmental and army support. Journal of Peace Research, 48(2), 225–234.
11.
CadotC. (2014). Wars afterwards: The repression of the great war in European collective memory. In WellingsB.SumartojoS. (Eds.), Remembering the great war: Memory, nation, commemoration (pp. 259–272). Peter Lang.
12.
CohrsJ. C.MoschnerB.MaesJ.KielmannS. (2005). Personal values and attitudes toward war. Peace and Conflict, 11(3), 293–312.
FaulF.ErdfelderE.LangA. G.BuchnerA. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39(2), 175–191.
HalevyN.BornsteinG.SagivL. (2008). “In-group love” and “out-group hate” as motives for individual participation in intergroup conflict: A new game paradigm. Psychological Science, 19(4), 405–411.
17.
Harris Poll. (2019, June). National poll conducted by the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University. https://harvardharrispoll.com/
18.
HaythornthwaiteP. (1991). Gallipoli 1915: Frontal assault on Turkey. Osprey Press.
HolstiO. R. (1992). Public opinion and American foreign policy. The University of Michigan Press.
21.
JoiremanJ.DuellB. (2007). Self-transcendent values moderate the impact of mortality salience on support for charities. Personality and Individual Differences, 43(4), 779–789. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2007.02.003
22.
JonasE.MartensA.Niesta KayserD.FritscheI.SullivanD.GreenbergJ. (2008). Focus theory of normative conduct and terror-management theory: The interactive impact of mortality salience and norm salience on social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(6), 1239–1251. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013593
23.
JonasE.SullivanD.GreenbergJ. (2013). Generosity, greed, norms, and death–Differential effects of mortality salience on charitable behavior. Journal of Economic Psychology, 35, 47–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2012.12.005
LeidnerB.GingesJ. (2017). What you ask is what you get: Citizens’ support for military action, but not diplomacy, depends on question framing. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 17(1), 184–204. https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12133
26.
LiM.LeidnerB.EuhH.ChoiH. S. (2016). The contagion of interstate violence: Reminders of historical interstate (but not intrastate) violence increase support for future violence against unrelated third-party states. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(8), 1003–1024. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167216649609
27.
LynnB. M. (2014). Shared sense of purpose and well-being among veterans and non-veterans [Doctoral dissertation]. North Carolina State University.
28.
McClearyD. F.WilliamsR. L. (2009). Sociopolitical and personality correlates of militarism in democratic societies. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 15(2), 161–187.
29.
OpotowS. (1990). Moral exclusion and injustice: An introduction. Journal of Social Issues, 46(1), 1–20.
30.
PaezD.LiuJ. H. (2011). Collective memory of conflicts. In Bar-TalD. (Ed.), Intergroup conflicts and their resolution: A social psychological perspective (pp. 105–124). Psychology Press.
31.
PrattoF.GlasfordD. E. (2008). Ethnocentrism and the value of a human life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(6), 1411–1428. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0012636
RoccasS.KlarY.LiviatanI. (2006). The paradox of group-based guilt: Modes of national identification, conflict vehemence, and reactions to the in-group’s moral violations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(4), 698–711.
34.
StibbeM. (2014). Remembering, commemorating and (re)fighting the Great War in Germany from 1919 to the present day. In SumartojoS.WellingsB. (Eds.), Nation, memory and great war commemoration: Mobilizing the past in Europe, Australia and New Zealand (pp. 205–222). Peter Lang.
VailK. E.IIIArndtJ.MotylM.PyszczynskiT. (2012). The aftermath of destruction: Images of destroyed buildings increase support for war, dogmatism, and death thought accessibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(5), 1069–1081.
38.
VailK. E.IIIMotylM. (2010). Support for diplomacy: Peacemaking and militarism as a unidimensional correlate of social, environmental, and political attitudes. Peace and Conflict, 16(1), 29–57.
39.
Van der LindenN.LeysC.KleinO.BouchatP. (2017). Are attitudes toward peace and war the two sides of the same coin? Evidence to the contrary from a French validation of the Attitudes Toward Peace and War Scale. PloS One, 12(9), e0184001.
40.
WatkinsH. M.BastianB. (2019). Lest we forget: The effect of war commemorations on regret, positive moral emotions, and support for war. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(8), 1084–1091. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619829067
41.
WatkinsH. M.GoodwinG. P. (2020). A fundamental asymmetry in judgments of soldiers at war. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(3), 419–444.
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
