Images, Dehumanization, and South Koreans' Attitudes towards Unification In KINU 통|X식p¬ 2018: ¨북평T 시대X 통|X식. The KINU Unification Survey 2018: New Era of Peace in Korean Peninsular and Unification Attitudes. Ed. Sang Sin Lee. Seoul: Korea Institute for National Unification, 2019. Pre-publication version: September 3, 2018 Joshua D. Kertzer Paul Sack Associate Professor of Political Economy Department of Government, Harvard University. 1737 Cambridge St, Cambridge MA, 02138, USA. Email: [email protected]. Web: http:/people.fas.harvard.edu/~jkertzer/ Introduction At both the elite and mass level, international politics is driven by the perceptions that actors have about one another.1 Just as the images leaders have about other countries shape the types of foreign policies they pursue, the images that citizens have about other countries affects the types of foreign policies they support.2 One of the key barriers to conflict resolution, for example, involves changing the images that citizens on each side of the conflict have of one another; when citizens on one side view their opponents as inferior or less than human, it legitimizes the use of violence and retaliatory aggression.3 Yet just as images can shape the likelihood of intergroup conflict, they can also affect the likelihood of cooperation. For example, the key causal mechanism in classic theories of economic integration | and central rationale behind economic and cultural exchanges | is that as individuals from different groups interact with one another, their images of each other change, making future conflict less likely.4 This chapter borrows from psychological research on images, stereotypes, and dehu- manization to ask three questions.5 First, what images do South Koreans have about North Koreans? Second, what demographic factors and political orientations explain variation in these perceptions? Third, how do these perceptions relate to South Koreans' attitudes about unification? These questions have clear substantive importance, but are also of interest for theoretical reasons, since some of these theoretical frameworks have yet to be systematically tested in the context of inter-Korean relations. The discussion below has four parts. It begins by reviewing how political psychologists 1. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni- versity Press, 1976); Richard K. Herrmann, Perceptions and Behavior in Soviet Foreign Policy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985). 2. Richard K. Herrmann and Michael P. Fischerkeller, \Beyond the Enemy Image and Spiral Model: Cognitive-Strategic Research After the Cold War," International Organization 49, no. 3 (1995): 415{50. 3. Ifat Maoz and Clark McCauley, \Threat, dehumanization, and support for retaliatory aggressive poli- cies in asymmetric conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 52, no. 1 (2008): 93{116; Emile Bruneau and Nour Kteily, \The enemy as animal: Symmetric dehumanization during asymmetric warfare," PLOS ONE 12, no. 7 (July 2017): 1{20. 4. Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1953); Thomas F. Pettigrew, \Intergroup Contact Theory," Annual Review of Psychology 49 (1998): 65{85. 5. Susan T. Fiske et al., \A Model of (Often Mixed) Stereotype Content: Competence and Warmth Respectively Follow From Perceived Status and Competition," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82, no. 6 (2002): 878{902; Nick Haslam, \Dehumanization: An Integrative Review," Personality and Social Psychology Review 10, no. 3 (2006): 252{64. 1 have studied images in international relations, focusing on two theoretical frameworks in par- ticular: stereotypes, and dehumanization. It then investigates the content of South Koreans' images of North Koreans, finding that South Koreans perceive their Northern counterparts as being not particularly warm, but also not especially cold, and significantly less compe- tent. It also finds evidence of South Korean dehumanization of North Koreans, specifically with respect to what the dehumanization literature refers to as \human nature" traits, rather than \human uniqueness" traits. South Koreans don't dehumanize North Koreans by viewing them animalistically, but by viewing them mechanistically instead; in as much as North Koreans are perceived as somehow less than human, it is that they are perceived as nonhuman, rather than subhuman. Third, it investigates the demographic correlates of these perceptions in a multivariate context, identifying the types of respondents more or less likely to embrace each stereotype. It finds in particular the existence of stark generational differences, with younger South Koreans displaying more negative stereotypes about North Koreans than older generations, as do the less wealthy, and more conservative. Younger South Koreans are also more likely to dehumanize the North with respect to human nature traits, as do the less educated. Finally, it explores the political consequences of these perceptions, showing that vari- ation in perceived warmth and human nature dehumanization is significantly associated both with attitudes towards reunification, operationalized both in terms of general support for reunification, and as willingness to personally sacrifice for unification. These effects hold even when controlling for a variety of demographic and political characteristics, demonstrat- ing the importance of examining perceptions of outgroups in the context of inter-Korean relations. Images and perceptions in international politics One of the central insights of psychological theories of international politics is their emphasis on actors' perceptions.6 In privileging the ideational over the material, these theories can be 6. Robert Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow, and Janice Gross Stein, Psychology and Deterrence (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1985); Keren Yarhi-Milo, Knowing the Adversary: Leaders, Intelligence, 2 contrasted with realist theories of international politics that focus more on the structure of the international system as a whole, and less on the perceptions of the units that populate it.7 Theories of international politics that emphasize perceptions argue that state behavior (at the elite level) or policy preferences (at the mass public level) cannot always be strictly deduced from structural factors like the balance of power, since actors can define situations in myriad ways, such that actors' perceptions are not simply reducible to their environment. If perceptions were completely idiosyncratic, they would be difficult to study systemat- ically. Image theory, however, argues that even if the specific content of actors' perceptions vary, the structure of the perceptions remain the same; even though we have a large number of perceptions and beliefs about our relationships with other actors, we tend to categorize them along a small number of common dimensions that work together to form a holistic judgment of who the target is and what they want. Early work on image theory argued that actors' images of others in international politics essentially reduced to a single dimension: whether the target's intentions were understood to be hostile or friendly, and thus, whether it poses a threat, or an opportunity.8 More recent work on images in international politics has gone beyond the simple dis- tinction between friends and foes to argue that images of other countries are structured along three dimensions. First, we analyze others based upon the degree of perceived threat or opportunity they pose, such as whether they pose a threat, a chance for mutual gain, or an opportunity for exploitation; this is the valence dimension central to earlier work on images. Importantly, however, we also categorize targets on two additional dimensions: their relative power, and perceived status. Along the second dimension, a target can be evaluated as less powerful, equally powerful, or more powerful than the observer; along the third, the target can be perceived as of lower status, equal status, or higher status.9 Thus, an enemy and Assessment of Intentions in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014); Joshua D. Kertzer, Resolve in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). 7. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1979). 8. Kenneth E Boulding, \National images and international systems," Journal of Conflict Resolution 3, no. 2 (1959): 120{131. 9. Herrmann and Fischerkeller, \Beyond the Enemy Image and Spiral Model: Cognitive-Strategic Research After the Cold War"; Richard K. Herrmann, \Perceptions and Image Theory in International Relations," in Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, 2nd Ed., ed. Leonie Huddy, David O. Sears, and Jack S. Levy (Oxford University Press, 2013), 334{363. 3 image, for example, is attributed to an actor perceived of being comparable in power, with threatening intentions, of equal status, whereas a colony image is attributed to an actor weaker in power, lower in status, and who offers an opportunity for exploitation. The power of images is that they are linked to behavioral tendencies. If we think of another group as our enemy (as the Americans did towards the Soviets during the second half of the twentieth century), we treat it very differently than if we think of it as a colony (as the Japanese did towards the Koreans in the first half of twentieth century). Images thus not only shape how we wish the target to be treated, but function as cognitive schema, with implications