Fear, Uncertainty, and Folk Realism: How Ordinary Citizens Think About Power

What This Paper Asks

Joshua D. Kertzer and Kathleen M. McGraw probe whether realism—the IR theory that emphasizes power, national interest, and cautious use of force—exists as a coherent belief system among ordinary Americans and how that disposition interacts with personality, information, and emotion. The paper reframes the question from whether the public is "allergic" to realism to how people would "contract" realist thinking in the first place.

How Kertzer and McGraw Measure Folk Realism

The authors operationalize this disposition as "folk realism": a cluster of attitudes in public opinion that reflect realist commitments (e.g., prioritizing national interest and security, skepticism about idealistic intervention). They examine how these realist dispositions correlate with personality traits, broader foreign-policy orientations, and levels of political knowledge.

Laboratory Test of Uncertainty and Emotion

• A controlled laboratory experiment manipulates the amount of information subjects receive about a foreign-policy conflict to induce varying levels of uncertainty.
• The design tests two key mechanisms posited by realist theory: whether increased uncertainty pushes people toward more realist views, and whether those who already hold realist views respond differently to uncertainty and fear than idealists.

Key Findings

• The causal pathways that realism-based theories propose are not uniform across the public: many mechanisms operate differently depending on whether individuals already possess realist dispositions.
• Emotional states—particularly fear—appear to matter more than many realist accounts typically emphasize: fear interacts with prior realist orientation to shape responses to ambiguous foreign-policy scenarios.
• Correlational analyses link folk realism to certain personality traits, foreign-policy orientations, and political knowledge, suggesting that realism functions as an identifiable belief system in public opinion rather than a set of isolated policy preferences.

Implications for IR and Political Psychology

By treating realism as a public belief system and testing psychological microfoundations experimentally, the article shows that public support for realist policies depends on both preexisting dispositions and emotional context. This points toward a more psychologically nuanced account of how ordinary citizens form foreign-policy judgments and suggests that scholars should incorporate emotions like fear when theorizing about the behavioral foundations of international-relations doctrines.