Instrumental goals shape EU citizens' attitudes to the Russia–Ukraine war over time

Abstract

The European Union (EU) legislation suggests that EU member states progressively adopt and implement policies that are primarily in line with the broader European interests, and secondarily with specific national interests. Yet, citizens from various EU member‐states often oppose these EU directives and adopt attitudes that favour national interests. The current study investigates whether EU citizens progressively comply with—or digress from—the directives of the superordinate EU group during the Russia–Ukraine war. In a two‐wave study we investigated the role of instrumental reasons (i.e., maximisation of material gain) to cooperate with an EU outgroup, namely Russia, in Greeks' (an EU member state) compliance with the EU directives over time during the Russia–Ukraine war. We hypothesised and found that instrumental reasons to cooperate with Russia: (a) encourage EU citizens to support digressing from EU directives and (b) predict decreased identification with the superordinate identity of EU over time. Moreover, since NATO's approach to the Russian invasion closely mirrors that of the EU, we further investigated the effects of instrumental reasons to cooperate with Russia on Greeks' identification with a different superordinate group, namely NATO. Results were largely similar to those we obtained when focusing on EU as a superordinate group.