‘Psychology has been relatively silent on the question of war support’

You've written lots of books Jim, but we may know you best for looking at the psychology of addiction issues. What inspired you to write about public support of war?

It is true that I come to the field of war studies without any established background in the subject. But war was something I had been thinking about, reading about, and promising myself I would write about, for many years. As a psychologist, I wanted to know how it is that we seem to embrace and support war so often. I was born in London during the Second World War.  

My father was in the forces, but he hardly spoke of his experiences during the war, and I never asked him. However, I did grow up to develop a horror of war and an instinct for pacifism; a failure to understand how people could deliberately kill and maim others of their own kind. As a rather studious teenager, I was appalled but intrigued by the rows of books about wars and weapons of war in libraries and bookshops. 

It was then that I began to form the idea that many people might rather like war, and be attracted to the means of making war by giving their support to the leaders who executed it on their behalf.

It was only much later, having retired, that I had time to draft the book I had wanted to write for so long. As it happened, the Covid crisis enabled me to make faster progress than would otherwise have been possible.

Does the book feel particularly relevant now with the current, horrific worldwide events in Gaza and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war?

It certainly does! It is even more relevant to understanding how relationships between political entities – which may be nations but can be religious groups, factions within countries, longstanding separatist groups – escalate from rivalry to conflict, to enmity, and hence to the contemplation of war. In the cases of the wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East, all the factors that promote support for war are now present in extreme form. 

It may be possible to prevent further escalation but the opportunities to prevent war are long gone. Rivalry between China and the West is another matter. All the factors that I have concluded act to justify supporting potential war, and hence serve to set us on the path to war, can be seen in embryo in that relationship. We have the capacity to act sensibly and make war with China unsupportable, or at least unlikely. As, indeed, Ukraine and Russia and their allies, and Hamas and Israel and their allies, could have done in years past.

I learnt some amazing stats reading the book, such as that there have been 250 major wars since WWII, taking over 50 million lives, and that the biggest killer in war is disease. When you began your research, what new facts did you uncover? What shocked you the most?

It wasn't so much those sorts of facts that shocked me, although they are indeed shocking, but rather the multiple sources of support for war, many of which mascquerade as benign. I am thinking, for example, of the roles played by military-style games, increasingly realistic and used in recruitment and serious war-gaming; the extent of propaganda – something 'they' do while 'we' deal in real facts; the controversial role of war memorials – do they promote peace or war?; the arguments we are hearing all the time in favour of upping our commitment to militarisation in the name of 'defence.' I examine the roles all these sources of support play in the book.

You begin by stating if we are going to examine the public's support for war (despite your clear belief that war doesn't make the world safer) we must look at the view that war isn't always a bad thing. Did you ever find yourself swayed?

No, if anything, the opposite. A surprising source of support for war is academics, serious and well-meaning though they may be, who present arguments that could be used to temper the horrified antagonism to the thought of war which we should be feeling. The two I tried to deal with in an early chapter were Margaret MacMillan, often to be heard on BBC radio, and psychologist Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature. 

The former talks about the various technological, cultural, and other benefits which can follow from war, and the latter argues that humankind has become much more peaceful over the centuries. Both make strong cases but neither offers the unequivocal condemnation of war which I believe we need.

In the chapter which examines the personal attraction of war you quote Anthony Stevens, 'Women do not make war; men do'. Is there an argument to say we would have a more peaceful world if more women were in charge?

Whether war is a gender issue, a 'man's game', an example if you like of 'toxic masculinity', is just one of the absorbing questions that arose for me while grappling with the psychological question of when and why we support war. There are hawks and doves among both women and men of course, but when samples including both sexes are asked about war, it is usually men who are the more hawkish and women the more dove-like. 

So, yes, I do think women in charge would make the world more peaceful. The trouble is that women in politics today, and especially in any aspect related to things militaristic, are competing in a man's world. Meanwhile, a concept of maleness that values power and dominance remain largely unreformed. Changing our conceptions of what makes for a 'real man' is a long-term project!

You look at how cognitive bias is needed if we are to support war – 'the need for a monster'. So in order for us to support our country going to war, we need to mentally over-simplify a complex situation, giving our enemy an evil nature from which we need to defend ourselves?

Yes. I drew on a variety of psychological theories, including interpersonal contact, social identity, moral disengagement, and terror management theories, to reach one of my central conclusions, that war is always a 'thought war'. As war looms, we demonise the enemy, engage in cognitively simplified, biased thinking about history and all the other issues involved, and lambast any of our friends and allies who don't share our narrative. 

Truth becomes 'a casualty of war' while propaganda flourishes, and we mentally disengage from taking moral responsibility for the awful harm that may ensue. This is abundantly clear in the statements being made now by those speaking for or in support of either side in the Israel-Hamas war. But we need to be alert to our politicians' rhetoric when it moves in that direction at earlier stages on the path to possible wars.

It was fascinating reading about how deeply militarism is embedded in us all; from the films we watch to the games children play, to our remembrance days. So how is it possible for an individual to make changes to this: surely it can only be done collectively?

I agree. The idea that we always need to be prepared for the possibility of war, that 'if you want peace, prepare for war', and that military defence is a government's first priority, is so deeply engrained in society that opposing it will have to be collective. Military spending and arms sales are controversial policy areas. 

Beliefs in nationalism versus cosmopolitanism may be harder to change but are also open for debate. Even remembrance events and memorials wax and wane in popularity. TV presenters, or at least their guests, could wear both red and white poppies; this would signify their commitment to peace and their recognition of the sacrifices that others have made.

When you examined the role of propaganda and persuasion in maintaining support for war you discuss the difference between the best war journalists compared with social media which has the potential to act as an accelerant to violence. Do you believe this is only going to get worse? What can we do about it?

There are individual war correspondents – the BBC's Fergal Keane, for example – who have made clear their abhorrence of war. But the print media has played a big role in war propaganda since at least the First World War. Social media can now play a role in recruitment and the spreading of false information, therefore contributing to the mental simplification that accelerates as war looms. 

Examples include the earlier Gaza Wars of 2008-09 and 2014 and the inter-ethnic and inter-religious armed hostilities in Myanmar/Burma from 2012 onwards. Social media's relative privacy and lack of regulation give it more potential for stoking the misperceptions and misunderstandings that accompany the path to war all the greater.

You devote a whole chapter to the relationship between war and morality and how wars can be seen as 'just'. How did religion play a part in this?

From 'holy wars' and classical gods of war, to the contortions that all world religions to this day manage in order to convince their adherents that wars can be 'just', religion has played its part in supporting war. Just War Theory in Christianity has two parts: the conditions required for waging a war to be just, jus ad bellum; and how wars may be justly prosecuted, jus in bello. 

They are a kind of rough guide to making war whilst maintaining a moral position. The criteria are all, needless to say, subjective and open to interpretation – the extent to which the enemy's civilians should be protected is just one such aspect. The arbitrariness was illustrated for me when I came across the Orthodox Church's Saint Basil the Great's proposal in the Fourth Century that murderers should abstain from Holy Communion for 20 years, but that those who kill in the course of war need only abstain for three years. 

That may be little comfort to those war veterans suffering from what we now recognise as 'moral injury', after killing another human being. 

Modern psychology has a slightly different take on war and morality, talking of ways of morally distancing ourselves from the killing and maiming, the destruction, the displacement, the disease, and other costs that war entails.

In your psychological war support model, you explain that there are particular steps that have to be followed in order for the public to support war, including Readiness, Threat Perception and Over Simplified Thinking. What can our readers do individually to make changes?

Yes, the Model of War Support which I developed as the book took shape has those three key elements: constant readiness for war, the perception that our group is under threat, and a simplified narrative about 'them' and 'us'. They all harden as we tread the path towards war, spiraling out of control as war breaks out. 

So, as individual psychologists and as a discipline we should be looking out for opportunities to at least question policy proposals that intensify the drumbeats of war, instead of quietening them. At the moment, there are voices advocating increased military spending, even bringing back conscription, talking of an increasingly dangerous world with threats to our way of life, and pointing to certain countries – the usual suspects – as more than just rivals with different world views, but as potential enemies. The British Psychological Society, and we as individuals, should, at the very least, be seen to be critically debating such policies from a psychological perspective.

To give a particular example, interpersonal contact theory predicts that lack of exposure to members of another group reinforces a negative, prejudiced view of the 'other'. In March 2022, the month following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the BPS voted to support the expulsion of Russia from the European Federation of Psychologists' Associations, 'as a demonstration of solidarity with Ukraine'. 

That could be construed as a mistake, since it cut UK psychologists off from contact with their Russian colleagues. A more thoughtful response might have helped maintain dialogue – not necessarily agreement about everything – and could have contributed to a more considered, complex understanding of events. Of course by then war had broken out, so it could equally be argued that the opportunity for dialogue had passed. But, then again, it is often said that wars nearly always end with negotiations.

Towards the end of the book, you also ask why psychology has neglected the question of support for war. Why do you feel this is? What needs to change?

I concluded that, as a discipline, psychology has either been relatively silent on the question of war support, or has taken an ambiguous position on the subject, or has positively contributed to war support rather than clearly opposing it. I would like to suggest that we devote more time to developing a proper anti-war psychology.

Although in the book I cite psychologists who have had insightful and important things to say about war – the late Albert Bandura is just one – they are few.

A sub-discipline that treats war as a problem, akin to a major killer disease or highly prevalent psychological disorder which is bad for us and should be reduced in prevalence and irradicated if possible, can scarcely be said to exist. It figures in political psychology and in peace psychology, but their starting points are different from mine.

Peace psychology, for example, has not taken an unambiguous position on war, often speaking of peace in the absence of social justice as 'negative peace', implying that armed conflict may be justified as a means of obtaining social justice. Discussions about war and militarism can easily get diverted into discussions about inequality, neoliberalism or climate change. 

Needless to say, such topics are themselves of monumental importance to psychologists and everyone else. But at the very least this has the effect of diverting attention from war and militarism on to a range of other humanitarian issues. This may be one of the reasons why there is not a more clearly defined sub-discipline within psychology focusing on war and support for war.

There is a further aspect to psychologists' lack of contribution to the study of war support. The fact is that many, especially in the US, have received funding for research which the funders hope will have use in war, or have themselves worked for the military in one way or another, as psychologists. 

Some military-related psychology is more 'collaborative', concerned with such things as the selection of service personnel, health assessments and psychological therapy. But some is more 'adversarial,' with direct application to warfare, interrogation techniques and intelligence operations. New weapons and ways of making war, such as drone and cyber warfare are creating new opportunities for the application of psychology and hence serve only to inflate these ethical dilemmas. 

• Jim Orford is an Emeritus Professor of Clinical and Community Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, and an Honorary Fellow of the British Psychological Society. On The Warpath: The Psychology of Public Support for Armed Action is published by Oxford University Press.