The psychology of support for war and militarism

Why do we–not the politicians or the generals, but ordinary people–so often and so willingly support war, in the west and elsewhere?

In search of an answer to that question, my latest book On the Warpath explores topics such as the personal appeal of war and wartime, the role of nationalism and other values in defence 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.

While a focus on the public’s attitude to war has been surprisingly neglected in psychology, my book combines psychology’s few direct contributions on the subject with psychological theories to answer the book’s key question. These theories 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.

The book concludes by presenting an integration in the form of a Model of War Support, I hope making a contribution towards understanding one of the great issues facing us all, and opening up a relatively new area of psychology.