International Studies Quarterly (2023) 67, sqac081

Names from Nowhere? Fictitious Country Names in Survey Vignettes

Affect Experimental Results
RESEARCH NOTE

JACKLYN MAJNEMER
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

AND

G U S TAV M E I B A U E R

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Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Using fictitious country names in hypothetical scenarios is widespread in experimental international relations research. We
survey sixty-four peer-reviewed articles to find that it is justified by reference to necessary “neutralization” compared to real-
world scenarios. However, this neutralization effect has not been independently tested. Indeed, psychology and toponymy
scholarship suggest that names entail implicit cues that can inadvertently bias survey results. We use a survey experiment
to test neutralization and naming effects. We find not only limited evidence for neutralization, but also little evidence for
systematic naming effects. Instead, we find that respondents were often more willing to support using force against fictitious
countries than even adversarial real-world countries. Real-world associations may provide a “deterrent” effect not captured
by hypothetical scenarios with fictitious country names. In turn, fictionalization may decrease the stakes as experienced by
respondents. Researchers should therefore carefully explain rationales for and expected effects of fictitious country names,
and test their fictitious names independently.
El uso de nombres de países ficticios en escenarios hipotéticos está muy extendido en la investigación experimental en el
ámbito de las RRII. En un estudio de 64 artículos revisados por pares, observamos que esto se justifica con referencia a la
«neutralización» necesaria en comparación con los escenarios del mundo real. Sin embargo, este efecto de neutralización no
se ha comprobado de forma independiente. De hecho, los estudios en el campo de la psicología y de la toponimia sugieren
que los nombres conllevan pistas implícitas que pueden sesgar inadvertidamente los resultados de las encuestas. Utilizamos un
experimento con encuestas para comprobar los efectos de neutralización y de asignación de nombres. Encontramos pruebas
limitadas de neutralización, pero también pocas pruebas de efectos sistemáticos de la asignación de nombres. En cambio,
observamos que los encuestados suelen estar más dispuestos a apoyar el uso de la fuerza contra países ficticios que incluso
contra países antagonistas del mundo real. Las asociaciones del mundo real pueden proporcionar un efecto «disuasorio» que
no se capta en los escenarios hipotéticos con nombres de países ficticios. A su vez, la ficcionalización puede disminuir lo que
está en juego según los encuestados. Por lo tanto, los investigadores deben explicar cuidadosamente las razones y los efectos
esperados de los nombres ficticios de los países, y comprobar sus nombres ficticios de forma independiente.
L’utilisation de noms de pays fictifs dans les scénarios hypothétiques est courante dans la recherche expérimentale en re-
lations internationales. Nous examinons 64 articles vérifiés par des pairs pour conclure qu’elle se justifie par référence à la
nécessité de « neutralisation » par rapport aux scénarios réels. Néanmoins, cet effet de neutralisation n’a pas fait l’objet d’une
évaluation distincte. En effet, les chercheurs en psychologie et toponymie estiment que les noms véhiculent des indications
implicites susceptibles d’influencer les résultats d’enquête. Nous avons recours à une expérience de sondage pour vérifier la
neutralisation et les effets d’appellation. Nous ne recueillons qu’un nombre limité de preuves attestant de la neutralisation,
mais aussi des effets d’appellation systématiques. Nous observons plutôt que les personnes sondées ont plus souvent tendance
à soutenir l’usage de la force à l’encontre de pays fictifs que de pays réels, même ennemis. Les liens avec le monde réel peuvent
générer un effet « dissuasif » non représenté par les scénarios hypothétiques incluant des noms de pays fictifs. La fictionnal-
isation peut, quant à elle, réduire les enjeux envisagés par les personnes sondées. Ainsi, les chercheurs devraient expliquer
précisément les raisons motivant leur utilisation de noms de pays fictifs, et les effets attendus, mais aussi essayer leurs noms
fictifs séparément.

Jacklyn Majnemer is a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program. Her research focuses on nu-
clear security and alliance politics.
Gustav Meibauer is an Assistant Professor in International Relations at the De-
partment of Political Science, Radboud University Nijmegen. His research focuses
on international relations theory and foreign policy decision-making.
Authors’ note: The authors contributed equally to this article. They are thank-
ful to Gokhan Ciflikli, Anna Getmansky, Jörg Meibauer, Paola Solimena, Haley
Swedlund, Peter Trubowitz, and Reinout van der Veer, as well as the LSE IR
Introduction
Experimental surveys have become an increasingly popular
tool in IR research. They are used widely to gauge atti-
tudes, simulate decisional dynamics, and elucidate psycho-
logical and behavioral concepts in political science and
Department’s Security/Statecraft and Theory Colloquiums for useful comments
and feedback. The data underlying this article are available on the ISQ Dataverse,
at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/isq.

Majnemer, Jacklyn, and Gustav Meibauer. (2023) Names from Nowhere? Fictitious Country Names in Survey Vignettes Affect Experimental Results. International Studies Quarterly,
https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqac081
© The Author(s) (2023). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.
2 Fictitious Country Names Affect Experimental Results
international relations (IR). They underpin work on peace
and conflict, regime theory, foreign policy decision-making,
public opinion, and media, as well as political psychology
(e.g., Beer, Healy, and Bourne 2004; Hudson and Butler
2010; Mintz, Yang, and McDermott 2011; McDermott 2011a;
Jensen, Mukherjee, and Bernhard 2014). Frequently, such
research employs experimental surveys with vignettes de-
scribing hypothetical scenarios that involve fictitious coun-
tries (e.g., Kerejistan) or abstracted countries (e.g., “a coun-
try”). We have identified sixty-four peer-reviewed articles in
political science and IR (published between 1971 and 2021)
with a total of eighty-six unique fictitious countries in exper-
imental vignettes (not including abstract names, e.g., “the
state”).
While the reasoning behind the selection of a particular
fictitious name is often not articulated, the assumption that
fictitious or abstract country names function as a kind of
empty placeholder and therefore have a neutralizing effect
on experimental results underlies much of this research.
Fictitious or abstract names should therefore remove bias
and increase the validity of results. However, this assumption
(the “neutralization hypothesis”) has not itself been empiri-
cally tested. Indeed, based on insights from toponymic, lin-
guistic, and psychological research, fictitious country names
are likely to contain implicit cues that can bias partici-
pant responses (“naming effects”). Building on relevant lit-
erature from IR and political science (Dafoe, Zhang, and
Caughey 2018; Kreps and Roblin 2019; McDonald 2020;
Croco, Hanmer, and McDonald 2021; Brutger et al. 2022)
and adapting a widely used scenario from experimental IR
(Tomz and Weeks 2013), we investigate whether different
fictitious names equally neutralize a real-world country, and
whether there are naming effects depending on the ficti-
tious name employed.
Our results do not uniformly support the neutralization
hypothesis. At the same time, we find only limited evidence
for the existence of systematic naming effects. Instead, we
find that participants were more willing, across the board, to
support attacking fictitious countries than real-world coun-
terparts. This “fictionalization effect” applied to both ficti-
tious countries and abstracted country names. We find that
the respondents’ willingness to use force is highest against
country names more easily identifiable as fictitious, slightly
lower for abstracted country names, and weaker still for ficti-
tious names that closely resemble real-life places (e.g., Kere-
jistan). These findings raise the question whether fiction-
alization of real-world countries in experimental vignettes
is the best way to measure general attitudes toward various
aspects of IR. Respondents may be more willing to use vi-
olence in a doubly costless setting: not only is the scenario
hypothetical, the possible targets are also fictionalized or ab-
stracted. We conclude with implications and suggestions for
further research.
Experimental Research and Fictitious Country Names
Fictitious or abstract country names in experimental survey
vignettes can pose internal validity problems when they bias
respondents’ answers. While external validity concerns have
been reviewed extensively (e.g., Mintz, Yang, and McDer-
mott 2011; Hainmueller, Hangartner, and Yamamoto 2015;
Kreps and Roblin 2019), internal validity concerns are less
often scrutinized. Internal validity concerns the extent to
which evidence, for example, an experimental survey, can
actually support a particular causal claim. It requires re-
searchers to ensure that there are no unknown or unmea-
sured factors in research design or execution that could
affect the results or indeed offer alternative (better)
explanations (McDermott 2011b). This extends to experi-
mental vignettes.
Vignette features (including wording, question order, and
survey length) can bias responses regardless of the underly-
ing characteristics ostensibly being measured. Even minor
changes can change the perceived meaning of questions or
vignettes (Pasek and Krosnick 2010, 43). Also, experimen-
tal surveys are cognitively taxing. This can lead respondents
to knowingly or unknowingly use “shortcuts,” including pre-
conceived notions, schemas, or prejudices, to guide their
responses, thereby effectively reaching outside of the ex-
periment (Groves et al. 2011, 219). The vignette’s features
should not inadvertently incentivize these shortcuts to an
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extent that fundamentally skews results (Dafoe, Zhang, and
Caughey 2018).
The use of fictitious or abstract country names in exper-
imental IR research has not been subject to much schol-
arly scrutiny. This extends to their potentially independent
causal effects on survey responses (for initial insights, see
Dafoe, Zhang, and Caughey 2018; Kreps and Roblin 2019;
McDonald 2020; Croco, Hanmer, and McDonald 2021;
Brutger et al. 2022). This is interesting because fictitious
country names are often used in experimental surveys to
prevent inadvertent biasing in vignette design: authors seek
to address an internal validity concern around the biasing
effects of real-world country names. However, the idea that
fictitious country names can help with this concern rests on
untested assumptions, as we detail below.
Experimental vignettes have employed a multitude of
fictitious aspects and characters, such as fictitious re-
gions (Keller and Yang 2016), fictitious characters (Caspi,
Olekalns, and Druckman 2017; Balmas 2018; Schwartz and
Blair 2020), non-state entities (Garcia and Geva 2016), or
fictitious op-eds (Baele, Coan, and Sterck 2018). We focus
on fictitious countries in particular for two reasons: (1) The
state is central to most mainstream conceptions of the disci-
pline and (perhaps therefore) and (2) the use of fictitious
countries is a pervasive and easily traceable phenomenon in
experimental IR research.
Earliest examples of fictitious countries in experimental
IR research include articles on simulations (as quasi-
experiments) otherwise used to train diplomats and grad-
uate students (Guetzkow 1959; Brody 1963; Winham and
Bovis 1978, 1979). Morse and Gergen (1971) and Hopmann
and Walcott (1976) start employing vignettes with fictitious
countries to investigate IR questions. Experimental usage
of fictitious countries then takes off with Beer et al.’s piece
on information cues and foreign policy choice (Beer et al.
1987). Their scenario is modeled after the Falklands crisis
and uses “Afslandia” and “Bagumba.” An A–B logic seems
likely, but they do not explain these names further aside
from calling them “unlikely” and set in a “fantasy world”
(Beer et al. 1987, 708).
Since fictitious countries have become ubiquitous, exper-
imental IR has employed a colorful range of candidates
(e.g., Alpha, Ruritania, Cygnus, Erqat, and Moereland). Fic-
titious country names used in experimental vignettes are of-
ten “passed down” to a wider network with shared senior au-
thors (Beer et al. 1995; Bourne et al. 1996; Healy et al. 2002),
but amended to fit new research (Beer, Healy, and Bourne
2004). Mintz and Geva invented the most influential such
fictitious setup to investigate domestic incentives for keep-
ing the democratic peace (Geva, DeRouen, and Mintz 1993;
Mintz and Geva 1993). As no real cases exist of democra-
cies invading their neighbors, the authors used a scenario
that “borrowed features from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait”
 JACKLYN MAJNEMER
(Mintz and Geva 1993, 491). Around the original dyad of
Gorendy and Raggol, consecutive authors added Winmont,
Minalo, Kerzoune, Purportes, Vermaid, and Zorka (Mintz
et al. 1997; Geva and Hanson 1999; Redd 2002; Christensen
and Redd 2004; Mintz 2004; Rubenzer and Redd 2010;
Horowitz and Redd 2017, 2018).
Neutralization
Most authors do not explain why they use fictitious country
names.1 Boettcher discusses the unintended consequences
of framing in vignettes, but uses fictitious countries without
further explanation (Boettcher 1995, 577). Others mention
their scenario’s real-world basis (Astorino-Courtois 2000;
Keller and Yang 2008; Davies and Johns 2013, 2016, 349).
Of the scholars that justify the selection of a fictitious coun-
try, most argue that it is aimed at increasing internal validity.
Specifically, they suggest that the fictionalization has a
neutralizing effect compared to using real-world names.
Using fictitious countries would allow scholars to avoid
the biases and preconceptions that participants may have
about real countries, which could undermine the experi-
ment and muddy results (Beer et al. 1992, 323; Sirin 2011,
289; McLean and Roblyer 2017, 239). Unlike real countries,
participants should have no prior associations or particular
feelings about a fictitious country. Instead, they will have to
wholly rely on the information that is given to them by the
experimental vignette, allowing for a “pure” test of experi-
mental manipulations (Balmas 2018, 510; O’Brien, Leidner,
and Tropp 2018, 950). The use of fictionalized countries
should therefore increase the validity, reliability, and gen-
eralizability of their findings. For example, Balmas suggests
that “participants [ … ] could not have had prior knowl-
edge about the citizens of Cedria” and therefore “evaluated
Cedrians based only on their evaluation of its leader, which
could have been derived only from the content of the arti-
cle” (Balmas 2018, 510).
This argument also holds for abstract versions of coun-
try names (e.g., “country X,” “a foreign adversary”). Earlier
authors seemed to have shied away from such abstraction,
perhaps because a fictitious name increases memorability,
which is often advantageous. Still, abstraction with “the/a
country/state” seems to have become experimental stan-
dard (e.g., Heinrich, Kobayashi, and Peterson 2017; Kreps
and Maxey 2018; Schwartz and Blair 2020; Tomz, Weeks,
and Yarhi-Milo 2020), presumably because this would fur-
ther “neutralize” experimental results compared to fictitious
names.
Participants are assumed to lack knowledge of fictitious
or abstract countries and will therefore only use the in-
formation that is conveyed about the country in the vi-
gnette, rather than any preconceived notions or attitudes
that bias their responses. Fictitious countries are thus sup-
posedly “empty” placeholders well suited to robustness tests
and generalization beyond specific real-world cases (Li et al.
2016, 1008). However, this neutralizing effect is an assump-
tion: it should itself be experimentally tested in the con-
text of IR scholarship. To do so, we formulate the following
hypotheses:
H1 : A change in real-world country name will affect respondents’
willingness to use force.
1 3
Perhaps authors enjoy inventing poignant or humorous names with hidden
meanings, for example, Morse and Gergen’s (1971) Negreg or Dill and Schu-
biger’s (2021) Esor.
AND G U S TAV M E I B A U E R 3
This first hypothesis tests whether respondents care about
names provided to them in vignettes in the first place. It
could be the case, otherwise, that preferences about using
military forces are fixed independent of provided context
(e.g., strict pacifism) or that respondents may not pay atten-
tion to names at all, or as much as other information also
provided to them.
H2 : A change from a real-world country name to a fictitious or ab-
stract country name will affect respondents’ willingness to use force.
H3 : Respondents’ willingness to attack a fictious/abstract country
will lie between their willingness to attack a positively associated
real-world country and a negatively associated real-world country.
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While there is no clear-cut prediction about how neutral-
ization may affect results based on the above studies, it often
seems to imply the presence of a baseline attitude about for-
eign policy that can be amplified or dampened based on the
associated country. In this sense, neutralization can function
as a kind of mid-point between positive bias, for example,
associated with a close ally, and negative bias, for example,
associated with a foreign adversary.
Naming Effects
Scholarship in linguistics, and in particular into onoma-
tology and toponymy, has long suggested (and experimen-
tally tested) naming effects.2 Different names, including
fictitious ones, may entail implicit information that biases
participant responses (Dafoe, Zhang, and Caughey 2018).
Such naming effects could explain why neutralization might
work for some names and not others, and what direction
or strength we might expect the changes due to differ-
ent names have, based on three types of interlinked cues
that provide information on plausibility, familiarity, foreign-
ness, and even value of different names: toponymic, lexico-
graphic, and sound-symbolic.
Toponymic cues relate to knowledge of how place names
usually work, and what these names mean or encode in
terms of foreignness. Even fictitious names are usually ori-
ented toward existing toponymy (e.g., in using endings such
as –stan and –land).3 Some authors switch out real-world
place names (e.g., of cities) for country names (McDermott
and Cowden 2001; McDermott, Cowden, and Koopman
2002). This links to a plausibility requirement: to elicit rea-
sonable responses, fictitious names must be believable to
participants (Finch 1987, 111). Place names are revealing
about a place’s “physical geography, culture, history, and
population” (Kadmon 2000; Medway and Warnaby 2014,
154). For example, Winmont (Horowitz, Redd, and Ye 2014)
or Highland (Schafer 1997, 1999) evokes hills or moun-
tains. Place names also “evoke powerful images and conno-
tations, contributing to the development of a sense of place”
and help in “the social construction of space and the con-
tested process of attaching meaning to places” (Graham and
Howard 2012, 196). For example, Celesta (Keller and Yang
2016) evokes the sky and heaven. This induces cognitive ef-
fects, for example, that people tend to prefer places (they
2
While, to our knowledge, this particular scholarship has not previously been
introduced into IR, it connects with IR scholars’ increasing interest into the in-
tersections of language, psychology, and IR. In particular, the perception of dif-
ference and its relevance for behavior has long been a focus in IR scholarship,
especially in conflict studies (Kertzer and Tingley 2018) (see Fierke 2002; Albert
et al. 2008; McDermott 2011a; Kertzer and Tingley 2018).
Of the eighty-six fictitious country names we identified in experimental sur-
vey vignettes, fifteen fictitious country names end in –ia, six in –land, and two in
–stan.
4 Fictitious Country Names Affect Experimental Results
think are) more like their own, as well as according value
judgments. Consider Westria that entails information about
a geographical location, but could also be associated with
“the West” as a sociocultural realm (Brooks and Valentino
2011). In turn, based on toponymic knowledge of English
speakers, Drakhar (Keller and Yang 2016), Nizwar (Davies
and Johns 2016), Bachran (Falomir-Pichastor et al. 2012),
Kibagho (Terris and Tykocinski 2016), etc., may be associ-
ated with geographic and/or sociocultural spaces in Africa
and the Middle East. Kuzeya (Sirin 2011) or Abazie might
connote Eastern European or Central Asian countries (in-
tentionally so in Falomir-Pichastor et al. 2012).
Lexicographic cues concern the degree of familiarity a
name evokes given the respondent’s name lexicon. While
Westria or Celesta might sound familiar compared to other
known country names for an English-language speaker, Rag-
gol might imply strangeness (Davies 1990, 208). In turn, we
know from previous literature that the name lexicon inter-
acts with sociocultural background and, importantly, norma-
tive judgments. For example, people are likely to be able
to locate Kerejistan on a real-world map or even comment
on its customs, regime type, etc., because they orient them-
selves toward what they do know (or think they know) about
similarly named countries. It may not matter for this asso-
ciation whether the respondent knows that Kerejistan does
not exist. Specific types of names become attached to associ-
ated characteristics precisely because names primarily func-
tion as referential markers (Bright 2003). The association of
fictitious Kerejistan with, for example, Afghanistan in turn
evokes value judgments, which may extend to factors under
investigation, such as the legitimacy of killing noncombat-
ants or the trustworthiness of leaders (Dafoe, Zhang, and
Caughey 2018).
Sound-symbolic cues aid in interpreting fictitious names
based on language-specific sounds. This holds especially in
contexts where information that might otherwise be consid-
ered crucial is lacking (Dafoe, Zhang, and Caughey 2018).
Sound symbolism suggests that there are relationships be-
tween the meaning of a word and certain letter combina-
tions (producing sounds) it includes (Westbury et al. 2018,
122; Svantesson 2017 for a review). These nonarbitrary asso-
ciations are based on word features and meanings already
existent in the lexicon (Knoeferle et al. 2017; Westbury
et al. 2018, 124).4 Sound symbolism relates to perceived
“conventionality,” which in turn links with individual value
judgments (Elsen 2017; Westbury et al. 2018). It thus im-
bues names with specific meaning: this may include, for
example, size/shape, power (versus weakness), masculinity
(versus femininity), and danger (versus safety) (Knoeferle
et al. 2017). In marketing, different arrangements of vow-
els and consonants shape the interpretation of brand names
(Klink 2000; Preziosi and Coane 2017). Consider the name
Drakhar, whose consonant combinations (and the sounds
they produce) may, for English speakers, be associated neg-
atively: with harshness, darkness, danger, etc. Such inference
of attribute meaning and evaluation through sound is auto-
matic, uncontrollable, and outside of awareness (Yorkston
and Menon 2004, 43).
Based on the above literature, we should find differences
between the effects of various fictitious and abstract names
(which we take from experimental IR literature and detail
4
Standard examples involve gl and fl, which do not have a meaning themselves
but may encode “short/rapid/intense visual experience/movement” in [glimmer,
glint, glean, glow, glare] or [flame, flicker, flutter, flare, fly], connoted with light.
Similarly, sl may be encoded pejoratively in [slant, sly, slander, slut, slump, slang,
sloppy] (Svantesson 2017).
below) because of toponymic, lexicographic, and/or sound-
symbolic cues.
H4 : An increase in toponymic cues evoking negative value judg-
ments should increase respondents’ willingness to use force.
H5 : An increase in lexicographic cues evoking negative value judg-
ments should increase respondents’ willingness to use force.
H6 : An increase in sound-symbolic cues evoking negative value
judgments should increase respondents’ willingness to use force.
Methods
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To test neutralization and naming effects of fictitious coun-
try names in experimental vignettes, we conducted an ex-
perimental survey through the YouGov Omnibus on July
25–26, 2019. Participants were representative of British
adults (N = 1,613), and randomly assigned to treatment
groups. Each treatment group was given the same vignette,
with changes limited to the country name in a hypothet-
ical scenario (full vignette and instructions in the online
appendix).
Our vignette was based on Tomz and Weeks’ (2013) in-
fluential article on the democratic peace. It contained a
disclaimer to participants that the scenario that we were de-
scribing was hypothetical, even though it might bear resem-
blance to then-current events. Where we used a fictitious
country name, participants were also informed that it was
a fictitious country. We did not include any potentially bias-
ing information or other variables (regime type, alliances,
military capabilities, etc.). Our experiment focuses on the
effect of the difference in name only, rather than poten-
tial interaction effects between name and other informa-
tion in more elaborate experiments. This allows the names
to “soak up” some of the missing information respondents
otherwise use to inform their choices. Absent this informa-
tion, respondents are thus especially likely to use available
cues. We have thus intentionally designed our experiment to
be particularly sensitive to naming effects. This allows us to
check whether names matter in the context of experimental
IR, and whether the way they matter follows some system-
atic pattern (i.e., that suggested by naming effects scholar-
ship). A null result would indicate that even in an IR ex-
periment explicitly designed to evoke naming effects (like
ours), the difference in effect between various fictitious and
abstract names is negligible. In turn, significant or mixed re-
sults would indicate the need for further research to assess
the impact on specific experimental results, for example, in
the form of replication studies, and for careful design of any
future experimental vignettes.
The vignette described a situation in which a ficti-
tious country was 6 months away from developing nuclear
weapons, had unknown motivations and disposition toward
the United Kingdom, and could be prevented from devel-
oping nuclear weapons if the UK military would strike its
nuclear development sites. Participants were asked to rate
their approval to attack the sites on a scale of 1 (“strongly
disapprove”) to 7 (“strongly approve”). Participants were in-
formed of the survey’s true purpose after they had answered
and could withdraw consent (none did).
In addition to two real-world country names, we selected
fictitious country names used in previous studies and pub-
lished in high-ranking disciplinary journals. As explained,
we tried to maximize expected difference between the se-
lected names per the naming effects logic. This resulted in
seven treatment groups:
 JACKLYN MAJNEMER AND G U S TAV M E I B A U E R 5

Table 1. Overall approval of use of force (1 = lowest, 7 = highest) across all treatment groups

Responses 1 (lowest) 2 3 4 5 6 7 (highest) Total

Frequency 317 174 195 407 223 90 207 1,613

Percentage 19.65 10.79 12.09 25.23 13.83 5.58 12.83 100.00

Mean Standard error 95% confidence interval

Participant response 3.708617 0.0482489 3.61398 3.803255

• “Iran” (treatment group size N = 246). Iran is salient and Table 2. Mean approval for use of force, standard deviations, and
schema-consistent to the scenario (Brutger et al. 2022, number of responses by treatment
14–15), given that the vignette is based on this real-world
Country Average approval Standard deviation Frequency

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case and that the experiment was run during increased
tensions between Iran and the United Kingdom over the
Iranian nuclear program.
• “Canada” (N = 194). Canada is schema-inconsistent to
the scenario. Due to Canada’s friendly relations with the
United Kingdom, we expect it to severely decrease partic-
ipants’ willingness to use force compared to Iran.
• “The/a country” (N = 229). Based on the neutralization
and naming effect hypotheses, “a country” should be most
empty in terms of preconceptions and cues.
• “Celesta” (N = 205) (Keller and Yang 2016). “Celesta”
provides lexicographic, toponymic, and sound-symbolic
cues that are likely to evoke positive value judgments. We
therefore expect it to decrease participants’ willingness to
use force compared to all other fictitious names.
• “Minalo” (N = 270) (Mintz et al. 1997; Redd 2002;
Christensen and Redd 2004; Rubenzer and Redd 2010;
Horowitz and Redd 2017, 2018). Minalo provides lexi-
cographic cues that mean that we expect it to increase
participants’ willingness to use force compared vis-à-vis “a
country” and Celesta.
• “Kerejistan” (N = 246) (Druckman, Olekalns, and Smith
2009; Druckman and Olekalns 2013; Caspi, Olekalns, and
Druckman 2017). “Kerejistan” provides lexicographic and
toponymic cues that are likely to evoke negative value
judgments. We therefore expect it to increase partici-
pants’ willingness to use force compared to “a country,”
Celesta and Minalo.
• “Drakhar” (N = 223) (Keller and Yang 2008, 2016).
“Drakhar” provides toponymic, lexicographic, and sound-
symbolic cues that are likely to evoke negative value judg-
ments. We therefore expect it to increase participants’
willingness to use force compared to “a country,” Celesta,
Minalo, and Kerejistan.
Results
Across treatment groups, respondents slightly favor not us-
ing military force in this scenario (mean = 3.71), with 25
percent of all respondents opting for the middle option and
clustering around both extreme responses (table 1).
The treatment-group-specific averages are loosely clus-
tered around the across-group average, with the clearest de-
viations in mean for Canada and Celesta. Iran, our baseline
country, has a mean response of 3.57 (table 2). Interestingly,
all fictitious country names score higher than Iran on aver-
age.
To test the neutralization hypotheses, we first run an
ordinary least squares regression on the baseline “Iran”
(table 3). If we had an Iran-based scenario and wanted to
neutralize it per the assumptions prevalent in experimental
IR literature, we would abstract and/or fictionalize Iran. We
Canada 2.319588 1.6417253 194
Iran 3.569106 1.9020131 246
Kerejistan 3.792683 1.8388404 246
The country 3.89083 1.894441 229
Minalo 3.985185 1.9395519 270
Drakhar 4.094171 1.9160564 223
Celesta 4.102439 1.8508726 205
control for respondent age, gender, political attention, and
education level.
Respondents are significantly less likely to support using
military force to strike in a hypothetical scenario that em-
ploys Canada than one that employs Iran.5 This provides
confirmatory evidence that the names provided in the sce-
nario matter to respondents, that is, that exchanging the
country name in the vignette can have a significant effect
on responses (H1 ). We find some existence of a neutraliza-
tion effect for fictitious and abstract country names in the
sense that they differ from the Iran baseline (H2 ). While all
fictitious country names differ from the real-world baseline
Iran, not all differences are statistically significant.
However, contrary to H3 , respondents are more likely to
support attacking Celesta, Drakhar, and Minalo (p < 0.01)
as well as “the country” (p < 0.05). Rather than at some
mid-point between a friendly, positively associated country
(Canada) and an adversarial, negatively associated country
(Iran), respondent support for using force was consistently
higher for fictitious countries. Kerejistan is not significantly
different compared to Iran (p = 0.208). Overall, this pro-
vides weak support for the neutralization hypothesis, and
suggests that a different, “fictionalization” effect might be
at play, which we discuss below. Female respondents as well
as those with a higher education level were less willing to
support using military force (p < 0.01).
The confidence intervals (figure 1) already indicate
mixed results regarding systematic naming effects (H4 , H5 ,
H6 ). A Kruskal–Wallis test showed that there was statistically
significant difference in willingness to use force between all
seven treatment groups (compared by mean ranks; χ 2 (2) =
127.527, p = 0.0001; table 4). We used Dunn–Bonferroni
post hoc tests on each pair of groups, and adjusted the
p-values for false discovery rates using the Benjamini–
Hochberg method. As expected, this provided signifi-
cant differences between the Iran and Canada treatment
groups as well as between Canada and all fictitious coun-
try names. Iran was also significantly different from Celesta
and Drakhar at p < 0.05. However, it did not significantly
5
Note that even though Canada is schema inconsistent to the chosen vignette
(it is unrealistic that it would be placed in the provided scenario), we do not see
results that could suggest that respondents did not take the question seriously.
6 Fictitious Country Names Affect Experimental Results

Table 3. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression on “Iran” as baseline

Coefficient Standard error t P > |t| 95% confidence interval

Constant 4.804849 0.3157116 15.22 0.000 4.185598 5.42101

Country
Canada −1.266281 0.1762189 −7.19 0.000 −1.611924 −0.9206368
Celesta 0.5250181 0.1733122 3.03 0.002 0.1850756 0.8649607
Drakhar 0.5147249 0.1695385 3.04 0.002 0.1821842 0.8472655
Kerejistan 0.2081938 0.1654583 1.26 0.208 −0.1163437 0.5327314
Minalo 0.4200486 0.161504 2.60 0.009 0.1032673 0.7368299
The country 0.3316844 0.1683771 1.97 0.049 0.0014219 0.6619469
Age 0.0012402 0.002993 0.41 0.679 −0.0046303 0.0071108
Gender −0.3712228 0.0927164 −4.00 0.000 −0.5530811 −0.1893646
Highest education −0.3859341 0.0635528 −6.07 0.000 −0.5105895 −0.2612786

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Political attention 0.0081894 0.0214211 0.38 0.702 −0.033827 0.0502057

SS df MS Observations 1,613
Model 675.551382 10 67.5551382 F (10,1602) 20.13
Residual 5,377.49884 1,602 3.35674085 Probability > F 0.0000
Total 6,053.05022 1,612 3.75499393 R2 0.1116
Adjusted R2 0.1061
Root MSE 1.8321

Canada

Celesta

Drakhar

Kerejistan

Minalo

The country

−1.5 −1 −.5 0 .5 1

Figure 1. Response effect estimates and confidence intervals of treatment groups mapped against the baseline “Iran” (vertical
line at position “0”).

differ compared to Kerejistan, Minalo, and “the country.”
Importantly, the fictitious country names did not perform
significantly differently compared to each other in the way
we might expect based on naming effects literature (H4 –6 ).
Of our experiment’s fictitious countries, Kerejistan per-
formed most similar to Iran (compared to other fictitious
names). Beyond Kerejistan, we did not find evidence that
variation between different fictitious country names has an
effect on survey responses.
Discussion
Previous studies that employed fictitious or abstract country
names did often not provide an explicit reason for doing
so. Even among those articles that did, usually based on in-
ternal validity concerns, none demonstrated (in either the
article text or the respective appendices, where available)
that fictitious country names actually provided a neutraliza-
tion effect.6 Instead, they relied on two untested assump-
tions: that all fictitious country names are similarly neutral-
izing and that there is no biasing effect from the fictitious
name itself. Our experiment seeks to test these assumptions
to investigate what effect, if any, fictionalized or abstract
names have on respondents’ willingness to use force.
We find only limited support for the neutralization hy-
pothesis. The example of Kerejistan (as compared to the
Iran baseline) already shows that not all fictitious names
have a uniform effect. It also runs counter to the neutraliza-
tion hypothesis that both fictionalized and abstract names
6
With the possible exception of Dill and Schubiger, who show that the name
“Esor” did not drive their results (Dill and Schubiger 2021).
 JACKLYN MAJNEMER AND G U S TAV M E I B A U E R 7

Table 4. Kruskal–Wallis equality-of-populations rank test and Dunn–Bonferroni post hoc test (adjusted)

Country name Observations Rank sum

Canada 194 92,531.00

Celesta 205 184,858.50
Drakhar 223 200,650.00
Iran 246 190,316.50
Kerejistan 246 203,237.50
Minalo 270 234,715.00
The country 229 195,382.50

Chi-squared 123.496 with 6 df

Probability 0.0001
Chi-squared with ties 127.527 with 6 df
Probability 0.0001

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Dunn’s pairwise comparison of respondent choices by country name (Bonferroni)

Canada Celesta Drakhar Iran Kerejistan Minalo

Celesta −9.252439
(0.0000)
Drakhar −9.395682 0.044487
(0.0000) (1.0000)
Iran −6.741038 2.955401 2.976137
(0.0000) (0.0328) (0.0306)
Kerejistan −7.934474 1.743650 1.736797 −1.270894
(0.0000) (0.8528) (0.8654) (1.0000)
Minalo −9.094823 0.763850 0.734430 −2.368092 −1.067978
(0.0000) (1.0000) (1.0000) (0.1877) (1.0000)
The country −8.412077 1.101630 1.080113 −1.890160 −0.642215 0.391386
(0.0000) (1.0000) (1.0000) (0.6167) (1.0000) (1.0000)

Family wise error rate 0.05

increase willingness to use force. We also find only lim-
ited evidentiary support for systematic naming effects (with
the exception of Kerejistan), that is, differences between
fictitious names induced by lexicographic, toponymic, or
sound-symbolic cues. While Celesta, Drakhar, and Minalo
prompted significantly different responses compared to the
baseline Iran, the different fictitious names were not signif-
icantly different from each other. This matters because they
were selected based on assumed difference of embedded
cues. Even below significance thresholds, the order and di-
rection in which the fictitious names differ from the baseline
do not support the naming effect hypotheses.
Notably, our findings suggest that fictitious and abstract
names increase participants’ willingness to support the use
of force compared to real-world (or realistic) counterparts.
This holds even compared to schema-consistent real world,
adversarial, and/or pariah states. It questions whether the
neutralization effect actually neutralizes—or whether in-
deed there is a “fictionalization effect” that may lead schol-
ars to overestimate respondents’ willingness to use force
in hypothetical scenarios involving fictitious or abstract
countries. Our results suggest that the more clearly ficti-
tious a country name, the easier to condone attacking it—
fictionality and its perceived costlessness can therefore em-
bolden respondents to provide more aggressive responses.
These results point to the relevance of perceived realistic-
ness: the more “real” a country name sounds to respon-
dents, the weaker the fictionalization effect. In particular,
there seems to be a deterrent effect associated with realistic-
ness, for example, of being able to imagine more easily the
consequences associated with attacking Iran, especially bar
any additional information that “fills out” the scenario. The
realistic-ness of a country name is (at least partially) a func-
tion of perceived toponymic plausibility and lexicographic
familiarity. Note that this could also lead respondents to
consider real-life country names unrealistic, depending on
their individual knowledge of country names, geography,
and their respective native languages. While we have not
separately asked our respondents to rate the realistic-ness
of the provided name or scenario, it seems likely that differ-
ent fictitious names connote realistic-ness to different de-
grees. Consider the difference between Celesta, Drakhar,
and Minalo on the one hand, and Kerejistan on the other—
respondents may more readily identify the former as ficti-
tious, while the latter may challenge respondents not famil-
iar with the geography of central Asia. In turn, perceived
realistic-ness influences their responses.
Indeed, our results indicate that Kerejistan does not have
significantly different effects on participant responses com-
pared to Iran. Kerejistan may evoke connotations that are,
on average and for British respondents, similar to those
evoked by Iran. The close lexicographic and toponymic as-
sociation of Kerejistan with, for example, Afghanistan seems
likely to evoke value judgments that overlap with those
respondents make regarding Muslim, Middle-Eastern, or
autocratic states, despite the considerable real-world differ-
ences between Iran and Afghanistan. This possible informa-
tion equivalence problematizes the neutralization hypothe-
sis: not all fictitious country names are similarly neutraliz-
ing. It implies the necessity for experimental researchers to
carefully justify or pilot fictitious country names and
scenarios in advance of collecting results (also see Steiner,
Atzmüller, and Su 2017).
8 Fictitious Country Names Affect Experimental Results
Among the treatments employed, “the country” is the
most abstract fictionalization—it does not offer a name but
a placeholder. In terms of results, it constitutes a borderline
case. While not significantly different from Iran in our cross-
treatment comparison above, participants evaluated “the
country” similar to the other fictitious names. In principle,
its lexicographic, toponymic, and sound-symbolic “empti-
ness” could induce respondents to think about which coun-
try could be meant—which, given the salience of Iran to
both the context in which our experiment was conducted
and the hypothetical vignette, could have led respondents
to infer that the vignette meant Iran. Instead, “the country”
seems to have increased the willingness to support the use of
force in similar ways to the other fictitious names. From this
perspective, it is thus not consistently less fictitious (or more
neutral) than more colorful names. This is especially rel-
evant because employing abstract names has become stan-
dard in experimental IR more recently.
Finally, then, we may ask whether fictionalization of real-
world countries (through experimental vignettes) is the best
way to measure general attitudes toward IR or foreign policy
choice (also see McDonald 2020; Croco, Hanmer, and Mc-
Donald 2021). It may well be preconceived notions about a
country (name) that predict survey responses, rather than
the respondents’ attitudes toward foreign policies. This is
the standard justification for using fictitious names in the
first place. However, doing so may carry its own effects, per-
vasive enough so that past results would not in fact capture
any “true” baseline untainted by the preconceptions respon-
dents hold about real-world countries. Is the respondents’
acceptance of attacking fictitious countries (rather than
Iran) more reflective of participants’ general attitudes, or
only of their attitude toward fictitious countries (McDonald
2020)? If the latter, previous research employing fictitious
country names may have too freely generalized respondents’
attitudes on a wide range of concepts and processes of IR.
Conclusion
We challenge the assumption that fictitious names are
an unproblematic means of removing respondent bias in
experimental IR research. What name is chosen for the
vignette matters—and experimental researchers need to fac-
tor this into their survey design (Dafoe, Zhang, and Caughey
2018; Renshon, Dafoe, and Huth 2018). The most com-
mon rationale for the use of fictitious or abstract coun-
try names within experimental surveys suggests that they
provide what we label the “neutralization effect,” allowing
respondents to provide their views on the phenomena of
interest while avoiding that their personal opinions of real
countries and/or available background information bias
their responses. Testing this assumption, we find limited sup-
port for the neutralization effect, which indicates that previ-
ous experimental results may not be as robust as previously
assumed. We also find only limited support for systematic
naming effects (beyond perceived toponymic closeness in
the example of Iran and Kerejistan). We find an overall ef-
fect of fictitious and abstract country names on responses
of increasing willingness to use force. However, these re-
sults seem to be driven by a different kind of logic than the
hypothesized naming effects.
Instead, complementing previous literature (Dafoe,
Zhang, and Caughey 2018; Brutger et al. 2022), we find ev-
idence suggestive of a fictionalization effect. Respondents
are more willing to use violence against fictitious countries
regardless of the name employed, more so even than against
real-world countries that are perceived as adversarial. The
breakdown of real-world associations induced by fictional-
ization seems to cognitively decrease the stakes as experi-
enced by respondents; in turn, realistic or plausible names
may have a deterrent effect. The fictionalization effect con-
stitutes an important avenue for future research, including
with an eye to generalization beyond the characteristics of
the population here surveyed.
Notably, our results cannot currently tell us whether,
for example, the results of Tomz and Weeks’ study would
differ (in what way) had they used any particular, differ-
ent name in their vignette. This is partially a function of
our experimental design: in particular, future research may
seek to investigate the strength of the fictionalization effect
when experimental vignettes include additional informa-
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/67/1/sqac081/6987670 by guest on 01 February 2023
tion/variables. Interaction between names and other infor-
mation might vary, for example, where people have stronger
attitudes toward some policy areas rather than others (e.g.,
toward using force compared to trade sanctions). The fic-
tionalization effect could be stronger if respondents base
their responses on their attitudes toward the countries in-
volved to compensate for their lack of strongly held general
attitudes toward less salient issues. This means that while it
must remain unclear to what extent the internal validity of
any one study employing fictitious names is undermined,
we uphold the possibility that different names can affect
survey responses by increasing willingness to use force and
perhaps also in other unintended ways. At a minimum, this
indicates that abstraction and fictionalization need to be jus-
tified carefully, matched with the overall research design,
and ideally piloted in pre-surveys before use in experimental
vignettes.
Supplementary Information
Supplementary information is available at the International
Studies Quarterly data archive.
Funder Information
The International Relations Department at the London
School of Economics and Political Science provided funding
to conduct the experimental survey underlying this article.
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