Security and Insecurity in International Relations: Symbolic and Material Gains and Losses, a Cross-National Experimental Analysis.

What threatens us? Rationalists in IR focus on the material determinants of threat, such as military and economic power, energy and other material resource dependencies. Constructivists and others who work more in the symbolic realm focus instead on identities and ideas as determinants of threat perception. There is little empirical or theoretic work seeking to bridge this symbolic-material divide. There is also little work on cross-national similarities and differences in the perception of threat. For instance, are there significant differences in the ways that Chinese and Americans experience threat? And finally, while prospect theory has been applied to IR, little work has explores cross-national similarities and differences in the experience of gains and losses in the international realm. Using a 2x2x2 experimental design, this study seeks to empirically explore the determinants of threat perception among US and Chinese students. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]