Keywords

Weapons, Weapons Effect, Emotions, Cognitive Appraisal Theory, Combat Psychology, Dehumanization

Subject Categories

International Relations | Military and Veterans Studies | Political Science

Abstract

Human emotional responses to weapons have long been assumed to be relatively parsimonious, comprised predominately of aggression, anxiety, and fear responses. However, most research on this weapons effect has focused on civilians – who are notably more likely to be targeted by than to employ weapons. So, there is reason to speculate that emotional responses to weapons vary more than previously believed. This is significant for three reasons. First, positive emotional responses generate more desirable combat behaviors, specifically the willingness to engage adversaries. Second, negative emotional responses catalyze an unpredictable range of behaviors, many of which are tactically and operationally undesirable. Third, the variation in these second-order behavioral responses may aggregate upward toward tactical, operational, and strategic military outcomes. This project employs a mixed methods approach to prove (1) that military personnel's emotional responses to weapons are more varied than previously thought and (2) that tactical and strategic conditions are the dominant factors driving specific emotional responses. Using a monostrand conversion mixed design, this dissertation examines how tactical and strategic conditions influenced World War II military personnel’s emotional responses to specific weapons. Tactical context – comprised of predator-prey dynamics and perceived weapon effectiveness – was a consistently powerful predictor of emotional responses to weapons. However, when states dehumanized the adversary, framing them as less-than-human, military perceptions of dehumanized adversaries overrode rational emotional responses to weapons. This increased the likelihood of military personnel experiencing fear cluster emotional responses to dehumanized adversaries and their weapons despite their individual perceptions of weapon effectiveness. The strategic implication is that states that choose to employ dehumanization conditioning to increase fire rates and aggression toward adversaries risk catalyzing increased fear responses in their own personnel – and the unpredictable range of behaviors generated by fear.

Completion Date

2026

Semester

Summer

Committee Chair

Dolan, Thomas

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Sciences

Department

School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs

Format

PDF

Document Type

Dissertation

Language

English

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