Nationalism, Internationalism, and Perceived UN Irrelevance: Mediators of Relationships Between Authoritarianism and Support for Military Aggression as Part of the War on Terror

The present research tests a model of predicted relationships among right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA), social dominance orientation (SDO), nationalism, internationalism, perceived United Nations (UN) irrelevance, and support for the use of aggressive military action against countries perceived to support terrorism. In the hypothesized model, nationalism and internationalism were expected to mediate the relationship between authoritarian dispositions and support for aggressive military policies, while internationalism was expected to predict perceived UN irrelevance. Perceived UN irrelevance was also expected to predict support for military aggression directly. Across samples of community adults, hypotheses were largely supported, with only minor changes being made to the proposed model in order to improve model fit.