More Equal than Others: Race and Religion Alter Support to Countries in Conflict

How does an invaded country's identity alter Americans' sympathy and support? Moving beyond the White-Black binary, I argue racialization creates support penalties for Asian and Arab countries and shapes evaluations of country capability. Two pre-registered experiments use AI-images to manipulate the race of an invaded country, revealing White Americans feel colder and less supportive toward Asian and Arab countries, while the Black-White difference is indistinguishable. Race also lowers perceived military capability of Arab and Black countries, but mainly under uncertainty. Turning to aggressor identity and religion, two paired-profile conjoint experiments on quota-based US samples reveal strong support for victims of aggression, but this weakens substantially when a Christian government attacks non-Christian governments or when ethnocentric respondents see a White government attacking an Asian/Indigenous one. This research shows binary studies of identity can generate incorrect conclusions about foreign policy salience, and underscores how identity infuses judgments of strategic and material considerations.