Morally opposed? A theory of public attitudes and emerging military technologies

Michael C. Horowitz and Sarah Maxey
Additional contact information
Michael C. Horowitz: 6572University of Pennsylvania
Sarah Maxey: 2456Loyola University Chicago

Conflict Management and Peace Science, 2026, vol. 43, issue 1, 58-80

Abstract: Military technology does not exist in a vacuum; it is mediated by difficult choices about development and use. Public attitudes influence these choices, but emerging technologies present a challenge: assessing public opinion without a clear picture of the technology's use. Focusing on autonomous weapon systems, we argue that attitude stability depends on moral conviction and concern with inherent characteristics or outcomes. Combining these dimensions into four reasoning categories creates a new framework for attitudes toward emerging technologies, validated with two Cooperative Congressional Election Study surveys. We find that moral conviction is prevalent, current opposition heterogeneous, and some attitudes depend on outcomes, especially civilian protection.

Keywords: autonomous weapons; military technology; moral conviction; public opinion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/07388942251320027 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:compsc:v:43:y:2026:i:1:p:58-80

DOI: 10.1177/07388942251320027

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Conflict Management and Peace Science from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().