In 2014, Russia denied that its military was assisting separatists in eastern Ukraine, despite overwhelming evidence. Why do countries bother to deny hostile actions like this even when they are obvious? Scholars have argued that making hostile actions covert can reduce pressure on the target state to escalate. Yet it is not clear whether this claim applies when evidence of responsibility for the action is publicly available. We use three survey experiments to test whether denying responsibility for an action in the presence of contradictory evidence truly dampens demand for escalation among the public in the target state. We also test three causal mechanisms that might explain this: a rationalist reputation mechanism, a psychological mechanism, and an uncertainty mechanism. We do find a de-escalatory effect of noncredible denials. The effect is mediated through all three proposed causal mechanisms, but uncertainty and reputational concern have the most consistent effect.

2014 年，尽管有压倒性的证据，俄罗斯否认其军队正在协助乌克兰东部的分离主义分子。为什么各国不费心否认这样的敌对行动，即使它们是显而易见的呢？学者们认为，将敌对行动隐蔽起来可以减少目标国家升级的压力。然而，目前尚不清楚当对该行为负责的证据公开时，这种说法是否适用。我们使用三个调查实验来测试在存在矛盾证据的情况下否认对某项行动负责是否真的抑制了目标州公众对升级的需求。我们还测试了可能解释这一点的三种因果机制：理性主义声誉机制、心理机制和不确定性机制。我们确实发现了不可信的否认的降级效果。这种影响是通过所有三种提出的因果机制来调节的，但不确定性和声誉担忧具有最一致的效果。