SUPERORDINATE IDENTITIES: NATIONAL IDENTITY, EMOTIONS, AND WARTIME PUBLIC OPINION

Abstract

Although wartime public opinion has explored the various ways casualties influence wartime attitudes, international relations scholars have not yet paid sufficient attention to the influence of national identity and the effect of emotions on influencing and changing political attitudes. Understanding the relationship between identity saliency and emotions furthers the field by expanding influence and information studies and the of framing effects that may otherwise be ignored. I propose a theory focused on the relationship between identity saliency and emotional states in determining public attitudes in conflict situations. I argue that individual-level attitudes are informed by the identity held salient at that point in time which is influenced by the situational context as well as an individual’s emotional state. However, while I am speaking of individually primed emotional states, the focus is on collective emotions as related to their collective identities and how in general a member of the same group would react. I propose a model of wartime attitude formation expanding behind the logic that attitudes are informed by generalized values that determine specific foreign policy preferences (Peffley & Hurwitz 1993 and Hurwitz & Peffley 1987), these specific policy preferences are informed in addition by the situational and strategic context at hand (Herrmann, Tetlock, & Visser 1999) and that specific values are previously informed by our social identity categorizations (Trepte & Loy 2017, Billig & Tajfel 1973, Tajfel, Billig, Bundy 1971, Hornsey 2008). I extend this conversation by focusing on the impact of emotions on foreign policy attitudes across a spectrum of emotions, and the impact emotions have on national identity saliency.