On the Warpath

Abstract

This book poses the question, why do we—not the politicians or the generals but the ordinary people, the general public—so often and so willingly support war, in the West and elsewhere? In search of an answer to that question, this book explores topics including the oft-expressed personal appeal of war and wartime, the role of nationalism and other values in defense of which wars are fought, war as a male enterprise, images of the enemy, militarism and society, the role of propaganda, and the moral dilemma posed by war. A focus on the public’s attitude to war has been surprisingly neglected in psychology. The book combines psychology’s relatively few direct contributions on the subject with psychological theories which the author considers to be leading candidates for answering the book’s key question. They include social identity, interpersonal contact, moral disengagement, system justification, relational models, and spiral conflict theories, plus concepts such as the authoritarian personality, social dominance orientation, and cognitive complexity versus simplicity. They are considered alongside the many insights of a psychological kind offered by international relations experts, historians, war correspondents, military veterans, and other writers. The book concludes by presenting an integration in the form of a model of war support which it is hoped will contribute to an understanding of one of the great issues facing humanity and at the same time help to open up a relatively new area of psychology.