The less Americans know about Ukraines location, the more they want U.S.

to intervene
BY KYLE DROPP, JOSHUA D. KERTZER AND THOMAS ZEITZOFF April 7 at 10:18 am

Wheres Ukraine? Each dot depicts the location where a U.S. survey respondent situated Ukraine; the dots are colored based on how far removed they are from the actual country, with the most accurate responses in red and the least accurate ones in blue. (Data: Survey Sampling International; Figure: Thomas Zeitzoff/The Monkey Cage) Joshua Tucker: The following is a guest post from political scientists Kyle Dropp (Dartmouth College) Joshua D. Kertzer (Harvard University) and Thomas Zeitzoff ( rin!eton University). Since Russian troops first entered the Crimean peninsula in early March, a series of media polling outlets have asked Americans how they want the !S! to respond to the ongoing situation! Although two"thirds of Americans have reported following the situation at least #somewhat closely,$ most Americans actually know very little a%out events on the ground & or even where the ground is!

'n March ()"*+, (,+-, we asked a national sample of (,,.. Americans /fielded via Survey Sampling 0nternational 0nc! /SS01, what action they wanted the !S! to take in kraine, %ut with a twist: 0n addition to measuring standard demographic characteristics and general foreign policy attitudes, we also asked our survey respondents to locate kraine on a map as part of a larger, ongoing pro2ect to study foreign policy knowledge! 3e wanted to see where Americans think kraine is and to learn if this knowledge /or lack thereof1 is related to their foreign policy views! 3e found that only one out of si4 Americans can find kraine on a map, and that this lack of knowledge is related to preferences: The farther their guesses were from kraine5s actual location, the more they wanted the !S! to intervene with military force! Ukraine: Where is it? Survey respondents identified kraine %y clicking on a high"resolution world map, shown a%ove! 3e then created a distance metric %y comparing the coordinates they provided with the actual location of kraine on the map! 'ther scholars, such as Markus 6rior, have used pictures to measure visual knowledge, %ut unlike many of thetraditional open"ended items political scientists use to measure knowledge, distance ena%les us to measure accuracy continuously: 6eople who %elieve kraine is in 7astern 7urope clearly are more informed than those who %elieve it is in 8ra9il or in the 0ndian 'cean! A%out one in si4 /+. percent1 Americans correctly located kraine, clicking somewhere within its %orders! Most thought that kraine was located somewhere in 7urope or Asia, %ut the median respondent was a%out +,),, miles off & roughly the distance from Chicago to :os Angeles & locating kraine somewhere in an area %ordered %y 6ortugal on the west, Sudan on the south, ;a9akhstan on the east, and <inland on the north! Who is more accurate? Accuracy varies across demographic groups! 0n general, younger Americans tended to provide more accurate responses than their older counterparts: (= percent of +)"(year olds correctly identified kraine, compared with +- percent of .>? year"olds! Men tended to do %etter than women, with (, percent of men correctly identifying kraine and +* percent of women! 0nterestingly, mem%ers of military households were no more likely to correctly locate kraine /+.!+ percent correct1 than mem%ers of non" military households /+. percent correct1, %ut self"identified independents /(@ percent correct1 outperformed %oth Aemocrats /+- percent correct1 and Repu%licans /+>

percent correct1! nsurprisingly, college graduates /(+ percent correct1 were more likely to know where kraine was than non"college graduates /+* percent correct1, %ut even == percent of college graduates failed to correctly place kraine on a mapB the proportion of college grads who could correctly identify kraine is only slightly higher than the proportion of Americans who told 6ew that 6resident '%ama was Muslim in August (,+,! Does accuracy matter? Aoes it really matter whether Americans can put kraine on a mapC 6reviousresearch would suggest yes: 0nformation, or the a%sence thereof, can influence Americans5 attitudes a%out the kind of policies they want their government to carry out and the a%ility of elites to shape that agenda! Accordingly, we also asked our respondents a variety of Duestions a%out what they thought a%out the current situation on the ground, and what they wanted the nited States to do! Similarly to other recent polls, we found that although Americans are undecided on what to do with kraine, they are more likely to oppose action in kraine the costlier it is & -> percent of Americans supported %oycotting the E) summit, for e4ample, while only +* percent of Americans supported using force! Fowever, the further our respondents thought that kraine was from its actual location, the more they wanted the !S! to intervene militarily! 7ven controlling for a series of demographic characteristics and participants5 general foreign policy attitudes, we found that the less accurate our participants were, the more they wanted the !S! to use force, the greater the threat they saw Russia as posing to !S! interests, and the more they thought that using force would advance !S! national security interestsB all of these effects are statistically significant at a @> percent confidence level! 'ur results are clear, %ut also somewhat disconcerting: The less people know a%out where kraine is located on a map, the more they want the !S! to intervene militarily!