U.S. Senators' Power Motivation and Their Votes for War versus Peace.

Previous content analysis of speeches and documents by national leaders and their advisers has demonstrated that the high levels of implicit power motive imagery are related to conflict escalation and decisions for war. This article extends the research to war support by the legislative branch, relating U.S. senators' motive imagery scores in debate to their votes for or against war (or war policies) in seven crises: the War of 1812, the 1861 debate on the "Crittenden Compromise" intended to placate the southern states and avoid a civil war, the 1898 Spanish--American War, the 1973 Case--Church and Eagleton Amendments to limit U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, the 1975 Tunney Amendment to cut off support for covert operations in the Angola civil war, the 1991 authorization to use force against the Iraq invasion of Kuwait, and the 2002 authorization to invade Iraq. In all seven cases, senators voting for war showed higher levels of power motive imagery in the debates--significantly so in three cases. A meta-analysis and regression analysis showed a highly significant overall positive relationship, across the seven cases, between the high levels of power motivation and voting for war. These findings have important implications for understanding several aspects of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]