Revisiting the form and function of conflict: Neurobiological, psychological, and cultural mechanisms for attack and defense within and between groups

Abstract

Conflict can profoundly affect individuals and their groups. Oftentimes, conflict involves a clash between one side seeking change and increased gains through victory and the other side defending the status quo and protecting against loss and defeat. However, theory and empirical research largely neglected these conflicts between attackers and defenders, and the strategic, social, and psychological consequences of attack and defense remain poorly understood. To fill this void, we model (1) the clashing of attack and defense as games of strategy and reveal that (2) attack benefits from mismatching its target's level of defense, whereas defense benefits from matching the attacker's competitiveness. This suggests that (3) attack recruits neuroendocrine pathways underlying behavioral activation and overconfidence, whereas defense invokes neural networks for behavioral inhibition, vigilant scanning, and hostile attributions; and that (4) people invest less in attack than defense, and attack often fails. Finally, we propose that (5) in intergroup conflict, out-group attack needs institutional arrangements that motivate and coordinate collective action, whereas in-group defense benefits from endogenously emerging in-group identification. We discuss how games of attack and defense may have shaped human capacities for prosociality and aggression, and how third parties can regulate such conflicts and reduce their waste.

In-group favouritism and out-group discrimination in naturally occurring groups

“…Buttelmann and Böhm [17] find that the development of in-group love in children precedes that of out-group hate (see de Dreu, Balliet, and Halevy [18], and Böhm, Rusch, and Baron [19] for overviews over the literature on the psychology of intergroup conflict. De Dreu and Gross [20] provide an overview and discussion of the literature on asymmetric intergroup relations and perceived threat).…”

Neurocognitive Underpinnings of Aggressive Predation in Economic Contests

“…In his Principles of Political Economy, John Stuart Mill (1859) observed that "a great proportion of all efforts… [are] spent by mankind in injuring one another, or in protecting against injury." Such appetite for "injuring others" and to defend against being injured has recently been documented in economic contest experiments in which individuals invest to obtain a reward at a cost to their competitor (henceforth attack) or to avoid losing their resources to their antagonist (henceforth defense; De Dreu & Gross, 2019;Chowdhury, Jeon, & Ramalingam, 2018;De Dreu, Kret, & Sligte, 2016;Wittmann et al, 2016;Chen & Bao, 2015;De Dreu, Scholte, van Winden, & Ridderinkhof, 2015;Zhu, Mathewson, & Hsu, 2012;Carter & Anderton, 2001;Grossman & Kim, 1996). These experiments showed that humans invest in injuring others through attacks and in protecting against injuring through defense, that investments in attack are typically less frequent and forceful than investments in defense, and that attack decisions disproportionally often fail and defenders relatively often survive (with ≈30% victories against ≈70% survivals; for a review, see, e.g., De Dreu & Gross, 2019).…”

“…Resonating with the idea that competition can be costly, participants during such attacker-defender contests typically waste about 40% of their wealth in fighting each other (De Dreu & Gross, 2019). Yet why people invest in attack and defense remains poorly understood.…”

“…When the attacker invests more than its defender, attackers obtain all what the defender did not invest, and the defender would be left with 0. If attackers invest equal or less than their defender, both sides earn their noninvested resources (De Dreu & Gross, 2019;Chowdhury et al, 2018;De Dreu, Gross, et al, 2016;De Dreu, Kret, et al, 2016;De Dreu et al, 2015;Carter & Anderton, 2001;Grossman & Kim, 1996). 1 It follows that investments can increase attacker earnings and their competitive success and can prevent defenders from losing their remaining endowment to their attacker.…”

The Moral Logic of Political Violence

“…In the social and behavioral sciences, investigations of intergroup conflict and aggression often begin with the premise that violence is a result of instrumentally rational reasoning bounded by heuristics that influence economic decision-making [8] . Violent human conflict is generally depicted as being motivated by material grievances or opportunities where an individual's decision to be in favor of, or to participate in war is the outcome of (imperfect) cost-benefit assessments; that is, of instrumental rationality [9] .…”