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We study cooperation within and between groups in the laboratory, comparing treatments in which two groups have previously been (i) in conflict with one another, (ii) in conflict with a different group, or (iii) not previously exposed to conflict. We model conflict using an intergroup Tullock contest, and measure its effects upon cooperation using a multi-level public good game. We demonstrate that conflict increases cooperation within groups, while decreasing cooperation between groups. Moreover, we find that cooperation between groups increases in response to an increase in the efficiency gains from cooperation only when the two groups have not previously interacted.
Can Violence Harm Cooperation? Experimental Evidence∗
2016
While folk theorems for dynamic renewable common pool resource games sustain cooperation at equi-librium, the possibility of appropriating violently the resource destroys the incentives to cooperate, because of the expectation of conflict when resources are sufficiently depleted. This paper provides experimental evidence that individuals behave according to the theoretical predictions. For high stocks of resources, when conflict is a highly costly activity, participants cooperate less than in the control group, and play non-cooperatively with higher frequency. This comes as a consequence of the anticipation that, when resources run low, the conflict option is used by a large share of participants.
Conflict, sticks and carrots: war increases prosocial punishments and rewards
Unlike most species, humans cooperate extensively with group members who are not closely related to them, a pattern sustained in part by punishing non-cooperators and rewarding cooperators. Because internally cooperative groups prevail over less cooperative rival groups, it is thought that violent intergroup conflict played a key role in the evolution of human cooperation. Consequently, it is plausible that propensities to punish and reward will be elevated during intergroup conflict. Using experiments conducted before, during and after the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, we show that, during wartime, people are more willing to pay costs to punish non-cooperative group members and reward cooperative group members. Rather than simply increasing within-group solidarity, violent intergroup conflict thus elicits behaviours that, writ large, enhance cooperation within the group, thereby making victory more likely.
Cooperation, norms, and conflict: A unified approach
2009
Cooperation is of utmost importance to society, but is often challenged by individual self-interests. While game theory has studied this problem extensively, there is little work on interactions within and across groups with heterogeneous preferences. Yet, interactions between people with incompatible interests often yield conflict, since behavior that is considered cooperative by one population might be perceived as non-cooperative by another.
Cooperation, Trust, and Antagonism
Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2013
One of the most continually vexing problems in society is the variability with which citizens support endeavors that are designed to help a great number of people. In this article, we examine the twin roles of cooperative and antagonistic behavior in this variability. We find that each plays an important role, though their contributions are, understandably, at odds. It is this opposition that produces seeming unpredictability in citizen response to collective need. In fact, we suggest that careful consideration of the research allows one to often predict when efforts to provide a collectively beneficial good will succeed and when they will fail. To understand the dynamics of participation in response to collective need, it is necessary to distinguish between the primary types of need situations. A public good is an entity that relies in whole or in part on contributions to be provided. Examples of public goods are charities and public broadcasting. Public goods require that citizens experience a short-term loss (of their contribution) in order to realize a long-term gain (of the good). However, because everyone can use the good once it is provided, there is also an incentive to not contribute, let others give, and then take advantage of their efforts. This state of affairs introduces a conflict between doing what is best for oneself and what is best for the group. In a public goods situation, cooperation and antagonism impact how one resolves this conflict. The other major type of need situation is a common-pool resource problem. Here, a good is fully provided at the outset, and citizens may sample from it. The resource is usually, but not necessarily, partially replenished. Examples of replenished resources are drinking water and trees; examples of resources that are functionally not replenished are oil and minerals. Common-pool resources allow citizens to experience a short-term gain (by getting what they want in the early life of the resource) but also present the possibility of a long-term loss (if the resource dries up). As with public goods, there is thus a conflict between, on the one hand, acting in one's best interest and taking as much as one wants all the time and, on the other, acting for the good of the group, which requires taking a lesser amount so that the replenishment rate can keep up with the rate of use. As with public goods, both cooperation and antagonism affect this decision. With these situations in mind, we can now dig deeply into the dynamics of both cooperation and antagonism. Cooperation is one of the most heavily studied aspects of human behavior, yet despite this attention, there is much that is not understood about it, including its fundamental base. There are a number of different perspectives on the base. Interdependence theory argues that cooperation is driven by how one interprets the subjective value of the outcomes that will result from various combinations of behaviors. A person who sees a potential result of "50 to you, 50 to me" as "We both would do well" is more likely to cooperate than the person who sees it as "I would not outgain the other person." Self-control theory suggests that cooperation is a function of how well a person can resist the impulse to benefit now and delay gratification. Evolutionary theory takes many forms but revolves around the extent to which cooperation is adaptive. Finally, the appropriateness framework takes a cognitive approach and assumes that cooperation is determined by a combination of social-cognitive (interpretation of self and the situation) Parks et al. and decision-heuristic factors. We propose that it is possible to integrate across these approaches and understand cooperation as a behavior that is influenced by all of these factors as well as other dynamics, such as cultural mores and personality traits. Antagonism, as it relates to the collective welfare, is a phenomenon with a lesser history but one that is clearly influential. A number of facets of antagonism are relevant. Power, and its abuse, is a major factor, and a specific application to collective goods is the notion of a "gatekeeper," or a person who can completely determine whether a public good exists or a common-pool resource can be used. Gatekeepers tend to demand ample compensation from others in order for the good or resource to go forward. If this demand is resisted, as it often is, the end result is that the good is not provided or the resource not accessed. Another facet is the desire to see an out-group be harmed. Sometimes, this motivation is so strong that people will deny themselves a good outcome in order to see the harm occur. Why someone would want to see an out-group be harmed is debatable, but it may be attributable to a desire to be seen as a winner, or it may be a strategy designed to produce a net benefit for one's in-group. Emotions also play a role, with people tending to assume that out-group members have just basic emotions such as happiness and sadness and not secondary emotions such as guilt and shame. Because out-group members are emotionally simple, it is seen as acceptable to treat them badly. Complicating matters even further is that antagonism can sometimes be seen against in-group members who deviate, in either direction, from the group norm and against individuals who are behaving in a clearly selfless manner, like volunteers. A number of approaches have been proposed to the resolution of public goods problems. Structural solutions act to alter the basic dynamic of the dilemma by means of interventions such as rewards for cooperation, punishment for noncooperation, and selection of a single group member to chart a course of action for everyone. Third-party solutions involve the bringing in of an external agent to help determine how group members should behave. These agents may be more passive and merely suggest solutions, or they may be more active and dictate how decisions will be made, what decision will be made, or both. Finally, psychological solutions involve changing how people view the situation. We finish by discussing how policy makers can improve the chances of a publicly valuable good being supported. We particularly emphasize creation of a felt connection with future generations; clear demonstration of immediate and concrete consequences as a result of failure to provide the good; instillation of a sense of community; and isolation of the good from other, related issues. We also take up the general problem of distrust of those who establish policy and discuss some methods for helping minimize distrust.
Between-group competition and human cooperation
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2009
A distinctive feature of human behaviour is the widespread occurrence of cooperation among unrelated individuals. Explaining the maintenance of costly within-group cooperation is a challenge because the incentive to free ride on the efforts of other group members is expected to lead to decay of cooperation. However, the costs of cooperation can be diminished or overcome when there is competition at a higher level of organizational hierarchy. Here we show that competition between groups resolves the paradigmatic 'public goods' social dilemma and increases within-group cooperation and overall productivity. Further, group competition intensifies the moral emotions of anger and guilt associated with violations of the cooperative norm. The results suggest an important role for group conflict in the evolution of human cooperation and moral emotions.
A social learning model of conflict and cooperation in human societies
Human Ecology, 1982
Patterns of conflict and cooperation both within and between societies may be related to the degree of cultural similarity within and between the same societies. A simple model of social learning is used to predict patterns of conflict and cooperation in hypothetical societies that differ in the roles of relatives and nonrelatives in the enculturation of children. The model is illustrated by comparing its predictions to known differences in the patterns of conflict between males in patrilocal and matrilocal societies.
Genetic and cultural evolution of …, 2003
We here review the evolutionary theory relevant to the question of human cooperation and compare the results to other theoretical perspectives. Then, we will summarize some of our own work, distilling a compound explanation that we believe gives a plausible account of human cooperation and selfishness. This account leans heavily on group selection 1 on cultural 2 variation but also includes lower level forces driven by both micro-scale cooperation and purely selfish motives. We propose that innate aspects of our social psychology coevolved with group selected cultural institutions to produce just the kinds of social and moral faculties originally proposed by Darwin. We call this the "tribal social instincts" hypothesis. The account is systemic in the sense that human social systems are functionally differentiated, conflicted, and diverse. A successful explanation of human cooperation has to account for these complexities. For example, a tribal scale cultural group selection process alone cannot account for human patterns of cooperation because, on the one hand, much conflict exists within tribes and, on the other, people have proven able to organize cooperation on a much larger scale than tribes. We include multi-level selection and gene-culture coevolution effects to account for some of these complexities. We allude to some empirical tests of the resulting hypotheses. In particular, we argue that strong support for the tribal social instincts hypothesis comes from the structure of modern social institutions. These institutions have conspicuous "work-arounds" that shed light on the underlying instincts.
Choice of the Group Increases Intra-Cooperation
This research investigates how variation in sociality, or the degree to which one feels belonging to a group, affects the propensity for participation in collective action. By bringing together rich models of social behavior from social psychology with decision modeling techniques from economics, these mechanisms can ultimately foster cooperation in human societies. While variation in the level of sociality surely exists across groups, little is known about whether and how it changes behav- ior in the context of various economic games. Specifically, we found some socialization task makes minimal group members behavior resemble that of an established group. Consistent with social identity theory, we dis- covered that inducing this type of minimal sociality among participants who were previously unfamiliar with each other increased social identity, and sustained cooperation rates in the newly formed groups to the point that they were comparable to those in the already established groups. Our results demonstrate that there are relatively simple ways for indi- viduals in a group to agree about appropriate social behavior, delineate new shared norms and identities.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2011
Our research provides experimental and survey evidence on the pro-social behavior (trust, reciprocity, a sense of fairness) and preferences for anonymous market transactions of former combatants. Our results, from a random sample in postwar Tajikistan, show that trust, reciprocity, generosity (dictator giving) are lowest among those respondents reporting having fought during the 1992-1997 Tajik civil war or anytime since its end, especially when the experimental treatment matches individuals with anonymous others from their local community. Consistent with the behavioral results, fighting is associated with lower trust towards any group outside the direct family, a lower willingness to engage in impersonal exchange and stronger kinship-based norms of morality. Replicating previous literature results, we find that ex-combatants are more likely to participate in groups and collective action but we caution that this may just capture political opposition, just as participating in combat did. Overall, our results point to a lasting "conflict gap" between combatants and non-combatants, even long after the end of the civil war, which question the rehabilitation of combatants.