This article explores the gender gap in attitudes toward the use of military force in the United States. Given that the United States has been continuously engaged in war for the last 17 years, we revisit the topic and explore whether a gender gap in attitudes persists by utilizing Cooperative Congressional Election Study data for 2006–16. In addition, given the primacy of partisanship to issue attitudes, we go beyond examining the gender gap to explore the impact of partisanship on these attitudes. We find that women are less likely than men to support the use of force in most circumstances. We also find gender gaps in the Democratic and Republican parties and acknowledge the diversity among women and among men in these attitudes because of partisan identity. Finally, we identify points of cross-pressure on individuals whose gender and partisan identities pull them in different directions, namely, Republican women and Democratic men.

We investigate how emotions, threat perceptions and past violence influence foreign policy attitudes via a survey experiment in Georgia. Using a stratified sample across areas with differential exposure to the conflict and the presence of internally displaced persons, we randomly assign respondents to receive emotional primes about Russian aggression in the region. We find that exposure to violence, as well as simply being primed about past Russian aggression, both increase the perceived threat from Russia, and to a lesser extent anger towards Russia. Individuals who receive the primes are more supportive of a hardline foreign policy. In contrast, we find that exposure to violence does not have a direct effect on foreign policy attitudes, but increases hardline attitudes indirectly, through increased anger and threat. Taken together our results provide evidence that reminders of past violence have different effects than direct exposure to violence on foreign policy attitudes.

Does empirical evidence support treating “nationalism” and “patriotism” as separate concepts in China and is there a relationship between strong nationalist/patriotic attitudes and foreign policy preferences? To analyse the construction of Chinese national identity, Chinese university students (N = 1346) took part in a survey in Beijing in spring 2007. The data supported the assumption of a conceptual separation between nationalism and patriotism. CCP members and students from rural backgrounds were more nationalistic than non-members and students with urban upbringings. Moreover, nationalism had a stronger link to foreign policy preferences than patriotism, and respondents with a greater degree of nationalism were less likely to favour international cooperation and more likely to prefer protectionist policies. The associations of nationalism and patriotism with foreign policy attitudes, and the contribution of other potential explanatory factors to the relationship between nationalism, patriotism and policy attitudes were explored with linear regression models.