When rival governments interfere in each other’s domestic affairs, disclosures of that interference often trigger demands for “collective punishment”—broadly punitive policies impacting the rival country’s ordinary citizens. 

Why do people support such indiscriminate policies that impose costs on an entire national group? We argue that people’s support for such measures is rooted in their perceptions of a national outgroup’s “groupness,” comprising two fundamental properties: entitativity/cohesion and essence/quality. 

These perceptions raise the perceived collective agency of outgroup nationals, making its members appear more threatening and responsible for their government’s actions. Our analysis of original U.S. policymaker and the mass public surveys show consistent support for the argument. We also test two information interventions designed to reduce collective punishment preferences, finding that individual-level humanising portrayals of outgroup members outperform group-level corrective information. The paper provides a new micro-foundational account of how great power competition generates domestic pressure for discriminatory policies.

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