Thank You for Whose Service? Diversity and Gratitude Towards Military Personnel

• In Event: Ideational Factors in Civil-Military Relations

Abstract

"Thank you for your service" has been called a sign of good civil-military relations, a shallow expression to assuage guilt, and an annoying cliche, but we still know very little about what it really represents. Significant recent research has sought to understand at the macro level what it means for society to “trust” or “have confidence in” the military; we seek to approach the issue at the micro level. To what extent do Americans feel gratitude, trust, or a sense of obligation for perceived sacrifice when they encounter a service-member or veteran? We also attempt to disaggregate the military side of the issue. Do citizens respond to all veterans equally, or do some get more gratitude than others? We use a vignette-style survey experiment to explore whether there are partisan or other demographic/ideological traits common to those who feel gratitude and admiration for service-members, and whether the race and/or gender of the service-member affects those feelings of gratitude and admiration.

Authors

• Meredith Kleykamp, University of Maryland

• Lindsay P. Cohn, Naval War College

• Sarah E. Croco, University of Maryland, College Park