Perceptions of War and Participants in Warfare

1. Purpose and method This study replicated one done by the author ten years ago when college students were asked, by means of an adjective check-list, to ascribe adjectives to one or both sides of a military battle. The goal of the orginal study was to investigate the extent to which the respondents held stereotyped impressions of participants in battles in US history, with the United States perceived as the rational, intelligent, self-possessed participant in the battle, and the enemy perceived in terms of his brutality, irresponsibility, lustfulness, etc. This question could also be cast in the following light: when the respondents perceived a battle in US history, did they attribute 'ego' processes primarily to the troops of their own country, and 'id' processes primarily to the enemy? Psychoanalytic literature was culled to compile a list of 34 adjectives, 17 of which were customarily associated with 'id' processes and 17 primarily with 'ego' processes. An originally longer list was reduced to this length by limiting the final list to those adjectives receiving unanimous agreement from eight independent judges, all of these psychologists. The list of adjectives is given in Table 1. The original study included 146 undergraduate students as subjects. Each student was given the same list of 34 adjectives arranged alphabetically; however, different subgroups received different instructions. Some students were asked to imagine a hypothetical battle between US troops and the enemy, and then identify from the list of adjec

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• Research Communication

  Open Access•David L Cole, David Cole•Journal of Peace Research•1982

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