Does affective empathy capacity condition individual variation in support for military escalation? Evidence from a survey vignette

Abstract

Does individual variation in affective empathetic capacity systemically condition a person's willingness to support pre-emptive military action? In this note, I theorize that individuals who are more prone to feeling affective empathy are less likely to support conflict escalation. To evidence this theory, I conduct a survey asking individuals about their willingness to support a military attack against a non-specific rogue state that is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. The results demonstrate that the probability of an individual supporting such a strike is strongly conditioned on their affective empathetic capacity. This finding holds regardless of model specification and controlling for rational beliefs about material outcomes. Affective empathy may, therefore, have a powerful palliating effect upon the processes that contribute to conflict escalation.