Personal Values and Attitudes Toward War

Psychological determinants of generalized militaristic attitudes and attitudes toward specific wars were analyzed on the basis of 2 waves of a large German survey on attitudes after September 11, 2001 (Ns = 1,548 and 540). Personal values—as defined by the theory of basic human values by Schwartz (1992)— as well as ideological attitudes, threat of terrorism, and concern for human costs as mediators, were taken into account. Militaristic attitudes were consistently related to high priority of self-enhancement (power, achievement) and conservation (security, conformity) values and low priority of self-transcendence values (universalism, benevolence). Path analyses showed that the effects of conservation values were predominantly mediated by right-wing authoritarianism and threat of terrorism, and the effects of self-enhancement and self-transcendence values were predominantly mediated by social dominance orientation and (lack of) concern for human costs. These results suggest that there are 2 different psyc...