A Clash of Norms? How Reciprocity and International Humanitarian Law affect American Opinion on the Treatment of POWs

2018/07/31 by Jonathan A. Chu, Jonathan Chu · 25 citations
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Adversary #Affect (linguistics) #Computer science #Computer security #International humanitarian law #International law #Law #Law and economics #Political Philosophy and Ethics #Political science #Politics #Prisoners of war #Psychology #Public opinion #Reciprocal #Reciprocity (cultural anthropology) #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Social psychology #Sociology #War, Ethics, and Justification #World War II

paper · doi:10.1177/0022002718789751

published in Journal of Conflict Resolution 63(5), 1140-1164 (SAGE Publishing)

openalex publication_date 2018/07/31 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

Reciprocity is one of the oldest principles of warfare, but humanitarian norms embedded in international humanitarian law (IHL) prohibit reciprocity over various wartime acts. When it comes to the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs), how do these conflicting norms shape public opinion? One perspective is that citizens who learn about IHL acquire an unconditional aversion to abusing POWs. Alternatively, people may understand IHL as a conditional commitment that instead strengthens their approval for reciprocal conduct. Survey experiments fielded in the United States support the latter view: people’s preferences depend on the enemy’s behavior, and this “reciprocity effect” is largest among those who believe that the United States is legally committed to treating POWs humanely. Puzzlingly, prior studies do not find a reciprocity effect, but this is due to their use of a no-information experimental control group, which led to a lack of control over the subjects’ assumptions about the survey.

Citations

• When Backing Down Is the Right Decision: Partisanship, New Information, and Audience Costs
• Defending International Norms: The Role of Obligation, Material Interest, and Perception in Decision Making
• Moral Support: How Moral Values Shape Foreign Policy Attitudes
• Conditional Cooperation and Climate Change
• Autocratic Audience Costs: Regime Type and Signaling Resolve
• Unpacking the Black Box of Causality: Learning about Causal Mechanisms from Experimental and Observational Studies
• Public Opinion and the Democratic Peace
• International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

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