Angela Liu

The Nuclear (Teen)Age: Attitudes of American Teenagers Towards the Use of Nuclear Weapons

Abstract

Significant interest has been given to the American public’s views on nuclear weapon use, leading to theories like the Nuclear Taboo, which explains the lack of nuclear warfare after the Second World War. Prior research has investigated public opinion on nuclear weapons through survey experiments and focused on adults. However, current teenagers growing up in post-9/11 America have not been studied. To address this gap, I replicated a survey experiment on a different demographic: American teenagers from New York. I sent out paper surveys to the entire student body of a public high school, and found that American teenagers do not have an strong aversion to nuclear weapons. In a baseline condition where nuclear weapons and conventional weapons are equally effective, teenagers are much less averse to nuclear weapon use than adults. Their willingness to use nuclear weapons increases from 32% to 68% when nuclear effectiveness doubles, following a consequentialist logic (where a decision is made based on the results and consequences of it). Opposition to nuclear weapons often stems from the lasting effect they have on humans; students who supported nuclear weapon use did so out of retributiveness and compatriot partiality, weighing American lives more heavily than foreign civilians throughout both conditions. A limitation was the limited variation in the sample, so future research could include gathering a more varied sample.