How Concerns Over Symbolic Prestige Drive Americans’ Foreign Policy Preferences

• In Event: American Identity, Insecurity, and Its Consequences

Abstract

Do Americans’ concerns over their personal standing influence their foreign policy preferences? Are these concerns in turn influenced by Americans’ perceptions of their nation’s international prestige? Many studies have examined how concerns over national prestige factor into elite decision-making, but what role do they play in preference-formation at the level of the mass public?

Building off of existing work on group identity, symbolic politics, and the role of reputation and prestige in international relations, I theorize that an individual’s American identity leads them to internalize America’s international standing. I further theorize that heightened concern over standing and prestige lead to an increased demand for prestige-enhancing foreign policy actions, with American identity serving as the moderator that links personal concerns to national preferences. Finally, I theorize that the specific actions that individuals see as “prestige-enhancing” at the level of America’s foreign policy are driven by the specific reputations and statuses that they see as determining their own standing among their peers. I hypothesize that while some see developing a reputation as “honorable” to be the key determinant of their social standing among their peers, others see reputations as “resolute”, “generous”, or “trustworthy” to be paramount. I further hypothesize that the same reputations that individuals see as potentially enhancing their standing among their peers, they also see as enhancing the standing of groups that they identify with, particularly their nation.

I test these hypotheses with a set of survey experiments. In the first, I first examine whether shocks to perceived national prestige, in the form of realistic foreign policy scenarios, impact individuals’ own self-worth and self-esteem. I find that reading a scenario in which the United States is respected and deferred to by another nation leads to increased self-esteem, while reading a scenario in which the United States is disrespected leads to lowered self-esteem, with American identity as a key moderator. This appears to hold even after controlling for a variety of additional potential moderators, such as individuals’ Social Dominance Orientation and their pre-disposition towards self-monitoring.

I then examine whether and how heightened concern over one’s personal prestige influences demand for prestige-enhancing actions. I do this by priming concern over personal prestige using a well-validated method, and then exposing individuals to hypothetical foreign policy scenarios in which America’s reputations for resolve, honor, and humanitarianism, as well as real security concerns, are differentially at play. I then examine individuals’ support for the use of military force in defending these concerns as well as the extent to which they see international respect for America as being at stake. A pilot study already indicates that heightened concern over prestige influences demand for policy actions that would enhance America’s reputation as “honorable”, and I will soon be fielding additional studies which include the full range of prestige concerns. Again, American identity appears to be playing a central role, moderating the relationship between concern over one’s own prestige and foreign policy preferences.

This is the first study documenting the impact of “respect for America” on individual’s self-esteem or on any other aspect of individual’s well-being. Given the frequency with which this respect is increasingly invoked by elites, understanding individuals’ views of respect is more important now than ever. This experimental work is also the first study that directly connects exogenous variation in personal standing to foreign policy preferences, the first study of public concern over status/prestige that goes beyond the context of “resolve”, and the first study to distinguish between realistic security concerns and symbolic reputational concerns. All of these make this paper the first to truly examine public concerns over the symbolic side of prestige.

Author

• David Ribar, Princeton University