All Against All: How Beliefs about Human Nature Shape Foreign Policy Opinions

Abstract

Although the American public's increasingly cynical views about human nature have drawn considerable attention from scholars, existing research says little about how interpersonal trust shapes mass foreign policy opinions. This study analyzes survey data to test the claim that citizens use their beliefs about human nature to reason about international affairs.The results indicate that cynical citizens are more likely than trusting citizens to endorse the principle of isolationism and to oppose cooperative forms of intervention in other nations' problems. Citizens' use of interpersonal trust as an information shortcut helps them to make inferences regarding a topic about which they typically know little, but such inferences are not necessarily realistic ones.

Trust in International Organizations: An Empirical Investigation Focusing on the United Nations

“…A person with a strong trust in others and therefore human nature may believe that the key players at the UN have good intentions and will not try to take advantage of their position. On the other hand, a person who is cynical about others and human nature in general may also distrust the leading figures of the UN believing that they act selfishly and do not pursue citizens' preferences (see also Brewer and Steenbergen 2002). Thus, we can develop our second core hypothesis: Core hypothesis 2 A higher level of generalized trust increases ceteris paribus trust in the UN.…”

“…Foreign policy decisions and evaluations are complex. Brewer and Steenbergen (2002) argue that individuals will turn to their beliefs about human nature when they need to make foreign policy judgments: "Just as social circumstances force people to make judgments about the trustworthiness of others, the task of making foreign policy judgments should compel citizens to make judgments about the trustworthiness of international actors ... In lieu of specific knowledge, then, they may translate their general trust (or distrust) in the people around them into specific trust (or distrust) in international actors" (pp.…”

Justifiability of Littering: An Empirical Investigation

“…An additional discrepancy is that several differences among the explanatory factors can be observed between the surveys. Diener and Suh, 2000;Brewer and Steenbergen, 2002;Uslaner, 2004;Brewer et al, 2004;andChang andChu, 2006 andTorgler, 2007). In this paper, we use survey data to investigate the correlation between the justifiability of littering and the participation in environmental organizations.…”

Environmental and Pro-Social Norms: Evidence on Littering

“…For example, research dealing with social capital, corruption, happiness and tax compliance explores the causes of attitudes, using other attitudinal variables as independent factors (cf. Diener and Suh, 2000;Brewer and Steenbergen, 2002;Uslaner, 2004;Brewer et al, 2004;Chang and Chu, 2006;. In this paper, we investigate the correlation between perceived compliance and environmental morale in a multivariate analysis, controlling for other factors in order to better isolate the relationship.…”