Why Do People Sacrifice for Their Nations?

This article examines how national identification can become so powerful as to overcome considerations of self-interest and win a contest of altruisms with primary social groups in the name of an imagined community. It develops a prototheory that draws on the insights of three competing theoretical approaches to nationalism: primordialist, instrumentalist, and constructivist. It explorres a rational choice approach to nationalism, the limitations of which show the need to focus on how national leaders use emotional and metaphorical appeals to tie national symbols to the strong forces of primary group identification. Nationalist appeals work by focusing individuals on emotional imperatives or moral norms linked to the nation, thus prempting rational self-interest calculations and competing loyalties. The theory is consistent with current understanding of evolved human cognitive capacities and mechanisms of altruism, identifies specific rhetorical mechanisms, and suggests particular hypotheses about nationalist rhetoric