(iPoster) The Moral Lens of War: How Intent Shapes Public Responses to Civilian Casualties

• In Event: Poster Sessions: IR Theory; Experiments; Presidents and Executive Politics; & Political Cognition, Crisis, and Conflict Attitudes
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Political Cognition, Crisis, and Conflict Attitudes

Abstract

How do democratic citizens react to innocent civilian casualties in war? Numerous studies have exhibited strong casualty aversion among democratic publics, showing that civilian deaths can critically shape public approval of the use of force, and of incumbent leaders in democratic societies. Yet substantial evidence from democratic foreign policy suggests that citizens may display surprisingly low sensitivity to foreign civilian deaths, implying that casualty aversion is often limited to losses among one’s own people rather than to the loss of human life per se. This utility-based explanation—where benefits such as military success or economic gains override normative concerns—raises an important unresolved question: does utility-based reasoning always overwhelm moral and normative considerations? Under what circumstances does morality influence people’s policy choices, and how?

In this paper, I show that citizens’ interpretations of a military unit’s intention to harm civilians are a crucial factor in determining whether public support declines. First, using observational data on all U.S. foreign military interventions and contemporaneous public opinion polls, I examine the relationship between foreign civilian casualties and domestic support for war. Next, drawing on original survey experiments with the American public, I demonstrate that perceived intention significantly shapes public approval, even after controlling for the objective magnitude of civilian deaths. These findings help explain the relative insensitivity of democratic citizens to foreign civilian losses. Democratic citizens often infer minimal intent by their military to target civilians, interpreting civilian harm as accidental collateral damage rather than deliberate strategic targeting. Moreover, morality does not function as a uniform or selective constraint in public foreign policy preferences; instead, it operates as a subjective lens that can produce divergent judgments even in response to similar state-led harm against civilians. Qualitative text analysis of the contextual narratives surrounding U.S. military interventions supports this conclusion.

Author

• Yehzee Ryoo, University of Wisconsin, Madison