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Revisiting the Form and Function of Conflict Behavioral and Brain Sciences Revisiting the form and function of conflict: Neurobiological, psychological, and cultural cambridge.org/bbs mechanisms for attack and defense within and between groups Target Article Cite this article: De Dreu CKW, Gross J. (2019) Carsten K. W. De Dreu and Jörg Gross Revisiting the form and function of conflict: Neurobiological, psychological, and cultural Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands Center for Research in Experimental mechanisms for attack and defense within and Economics and Political Decision Making (CREED), University of Amsterdam, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The between groups. Behavioral and Brain Sciences Netherlands and Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands 42, e116: 1–66. doi:10.1017/ [email protected] https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/carsten-de-dreu S0140525X18002170 [email protected] http://www.joerg-gross.net Target Article Accepted: 13 September 2018 Target Article Manuscript Online: 25 Abstract September 2018 Conflict can profoundly affect individuals and their groups. Oftentimes, conflict involves a Commentaries Accepted: 11 February 2019 clash between one side seeking change and increased gains through victory and the other Keywords: side defending the status quo and protecting against loss and defeat. However, theory and behavioral game theory; biobehavioral empirical research largely neglected these conflicts between attackers and defenders, and the – approach avoidance; coevolution of strategic, social, and psychological consequences of attack and defense remain poorly under- prosociality and aggression; conflict; conflict intervention; cultural institutions; intergroup stood. To fill this void, we model (1) the clashing of attack and defense as games of strategy relations; psychological adaptations 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, What is Open Peer Commentary? What whereas defense invokes neural networks for behavioral inhibition, vigilant scanning, and hos- follows on these pages is known as a Treatment, in which a significant and tile attributions; and that (4) people invest less in attack than defense, and attack often fails. controversial Target Article is published Finally, we propose that (5) in intergroup conflict, out-group attack needs institutional arrange- along with Commentaries (p. 15) and an ments that motivate and coordinate collective action, whereas in-group defense benefits from Author’s Response (p. 45). See bbsonline. endogenously emerging in-group identification. We discuss how games of attack and defense org for more information. may have shaped human capacities for prosociality and aggression, and how third parties can regulate such conflicts and reduce their waste. 1. Introduction Social conflict has been part and parcel of human history and exerts a range of effects that easily exceed imagination. Conflict is associated with the rise and fall of nations and large-scale migration flows, and interferes with individual life trajectories. Conflict destroys welfare and lives, creates collective imprints and out-group resentments that transcend generations, and can cause famine and the spreading of infectious disease. Conversely, conflict drives techno- logical innovation, inspires art, and creates and destroys hierarchies. Indeed, throughout his- tory, conflicts have revised established structures and divides, introduced new views and practices, and changed the social order of individuals and their groups. Conflict can be about many things such as ownership, territorial access, status and respect, and what is right and wrong (e.g., Blattman & Miguel 2010; Bornstein 2003;DeDreu2010; Deutsch 1973; Gould 1999; Rapoport 1960; Schelling 1960). Sometimes, these conflicts are about something all parties want but that only some can have (Coombs & Avrunin 1988). Examples include politicians competing for the same senate seat, rivaling research laboratories claiming the patent ownership of a potentially lucrative technology, and superpowers seeking world hegemony. Alternatively, conflicts emerge because some parties want something that others try to prevent from happening (Durham 1976; Miller 2009; Pruitt & Rubin 1986). Examples include revisionist states seeking to capture their neighbor’s territory, activist rebels fighting elitist powerholders, companies launching hostile take-over attempts, and terrorists attacking civilian and military targets. Conflicts among nonhuman animals typically have such a structure of attack and defense (Boehm 2009; 2012; Dawkins & Krebs 1979; Sapolsky 2017; Wrangham 2018). Human con- flicts may be no different. In fact, more than two-thirds of the 2,000 militarized interstate dis- © Cambridge University Press 2019 putes that emerged since the Congress of Vienna in 1816 involved a revisionist state and a non-revisionist state (De Dreu et al. 2016a; Gochman & Maoz 1984; Wright 2014). Likewise, 68% of community disputes involved a challenger who desired a revision and a defender who protected the status quo (Ufkes et al. 2014). Finally, people often perceive the other side as the threatening aggressor who leaves them no option but to aggressively defend 2 De Dreu & Gross: Revisiting the form and function of conflict themselves, a psychological bias often fueled by leader rhetoric groups of people, and (coalitions of) nation states (e.g., (Chambers et al. 2006; Plous 1985; Staub 1996). Blattman & Miguel 2010; Bornstein 2003; Cunningham et al. Although conflicts often have an attack-defense structure, the- 2009; Gould 1999; Humphreys & Weinstein 2006; Pietrazewski ory and research have rarely made a clear distinction between 2016; Rusch 2014a). At the same time, there is a growing consen- attack and defense (Lopez 2017; Pruitt & Rubin 1986; Rusch sus to view conflicts as situations in which individuals or groups 2014a; 2014b; Wrangham 2018). We currently lack theory and cannot realize their preferred state when other individuals or research about the ways in which clashes between attackers and groups realize their own preferred state (Coombs & Avrunin defenders evolve, about the neurocognitive mechanisms that scaf- 1988;DeDreu2010; Deutsch 1973; Kelley & Thibaut 1978; fold attack and defense, and about the cultural institutions that Pruitt 1998; Schelling 1960). This conceptualization of conflict groups use to attack their neighbors or to defend against enemy as incompatibility of interests is adopted here as well. attacks. Accordingly, our aim here is to provide a framework of At the core of this unifying approach is behavioral game the- the structure, psychological adaptations, and institutional conse- ory, which offers stylized models of conflict (e.g., Camerer 2003; quences of attacker-defender conflicts. Hirshleifer 1988; Kagel & Roth 1995; Schelling 1960). Indeed, We proceed as follows. Section 2 presents a formal model of game theoretical models of conflict have been used extensively attack-defense conflict and identifies unique properties of games in the study of international tension and interstate warfare of attack and defense that are neither present in nor captured by (Bacharach & Lawler 1981; Huth & Russett 1984; Jervis 1978; canonical games of conflict that have dominated classic and con- Snyder & Diesing 1977) to understand the group dynamics and temporary conflict analysis and research. Section 3 maps these cultural arrangements that create and fuel intergroup conflict properties onto behavioral decision-making and delineates its (Abbink 2012; Bornstein 2003; Colman 2003; De Dreu et al. underlying neurocognitive mechanisms. We show that psycholog- 2014; Lacomba et al. 2014), to investigate the neural networks ical “biases” often viewed as a result of imperfect human cognitive and neuroendocrine pathways involved in cooperation and com- architectures may be functional for either attack or defense. petition (Cikara & Van Bavel 2014; Decety & Cowell 2014;De Section 4 considers games of attack and defense between groups Dreu 2012; Rilling & Sanfey 2011), and to model the evolution of people. We argue that groups face greater difficulty motivating of human prosociality and aggression (Bowles & Gintis 2011; and coordinating a collective attack of out-groups than defending Garcia et al. 2014; Henrich & McElreath 2003;Nowak2006; against outside enemies, and that an out-group attack requires dis- Rusch 2014a; West et al. 2007). tinctly different sociocultural mechanisms and institutional Almost invariably, these lines of inquiry rely on models of con- arrangements than in-group defense. Section 5 shows how games flict in which opposing decision-makers compete for the same of attack and defense, both within and between groups, may reason(s). Accordingly, these models are ill-suited to approach have shaped human capacities for cooperation and aggression. the attacker-defender conflicts between revisionist and non- revisionist states, rebels and elitist powerholders, terrorists and security officers, or progressives and traditionalists. In this sec- 2. The structure of conflict tion, we highlight the structural properties of attack-defense con- Mankind spends great amounts of energy on injuring others, and on pro- flicts that set them apart from the canonical games of conflict that tecting
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