Perspective-Taking and Security Dilemma Thinking: Experimental Evidence from China and the United States

abstract: One of the central challenges in China-US relations is the risk of a security dilemma between China and the United States, as each side carries out actions for what it perceives to be defensively motivated reasons, failing to realize how they are perceived by the other side. Yet how susceptible to the psychological biases that undergird the security dilemma are the Chinese and American publics? Can these biases' deleterious effects be mitigated? The authors explore the microfoundations of the security dilemma, fielding parallel dyadic cross-national survey experiments in China and the United States. We find microlevel evidence consistent with the logic of the security dilemma in publics in both countries. We also find that international relations (ir) scholars have overstated the palliative effects of perspective-taking, which can backfire in the face of perceived threats to actors' identities and goals. The authors' findings have important implications for the study of public opinion in China-US relations and perspective-taking in ir.