New insights into how observers judge resolve unite capability, stake, signal and past action factors.
Democracies vs Autocracies Our conjoint experiment reveals a surprising bias: democratic capabilities appear less credible than autocratic ones in high-stakes scenarios.
Citizen Perception Ordinary people rely on intuitive cues, not full rational deliberation when assessing resolve. Their judgments align surprisingly with elite interpretations of costly signals.
Research Method** We employ conjoint experiments to uncover nuanced resolve perceptions that other methods miss. This allows us to test theoretical propositions empirically.
