Think Ahead: Cost Discounting and External Validity in Foreign Policy Survey Experiments. Issue 2 (19th November 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Huddleston, R. Joseph
• Is Part Of: Journal of experimental political science. Volume 6:Issue 2(2019)
• Page Start: 108
• Page End: 119
• Publication Date: 2018-11-19
• Subjects: Audience cost theory, -- survey experiments, -- external validity, -- construal level theory, -- international security, -- military intervention, -- foreign policy, -- public opinion; Political science -- Periodicals; Political science -- Research -- Periodicals; Political science -- Methodology -- Periodicals; 320.0724
• DOI: 10.1017/XPS.2018.22
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2052-2630

Abstract

Abstract: This paper considers the implications of construal level theory in the context of survey experiments probing foreign policy opinion formation. Psychology research demonstrates that people discount the long-term consequences of decisions, thinking about distal or hypothetical events more abstractly than immediate scenarios. I argue that this tendency introduces a bias into survey experiments on foreign policy opinion. Respondents reasoning about an impending military engagement are likelier to consider its costs than are those reasoning in the abstract hypothetical environment. I provide evidence of this bias by replicating a common audience costs experimental design and introducing a prompt to consider casualties. I find that priming respondents to articulate their expectations about casualties in a foreign intervention reduces support and dampens the experimental effect, thereby cutting the estimated absolute audience cost substantially. This result suggests a gap between how survey respondents approach hypothetical and real situations of military intervention.