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What Makes People Go to War? Defensive Intentions Motivate Retaliatory and Preemptive Intergroup Aggression

Author

Listed:
  • Böhm, Robert
  • Rusch, Hannes
  • Gürerk, Özgür
Abstract
Although humans qualify as one of the most cooperative animal species, the scale of violent intergroup conflict among them is unparalleled. Explanations of the underlying motivation to participate in an intergroup conflict, however, remain unsatisfactory. While previous research shows that intergroup conflict increases ‘in-group love’, it fails to identify robust triggers of ‘out-group hate’. Here, we present a controlled laboratory experiment, which demonstrates that ‘out-group hate’ can be provoked systematically. We find direct and causal evidence that the intention to protect the in-group is not only a crucial motivator of ‘out-group hate’ in defensive reactions, but also promotes preemptive offensive actions against out-group threat. Hence, the strength of ‘out-group hate’ depends on whether the own group is perceived to be on the offensive or the defensive side of the conflict. This finding improves our understanding of the escalation of intergroup conflicts and may have important implications for their prevention, as we find in our experiment that removing out-group threat substantially reduces intergroup aggression, leading to full peace.

Suggested Citation

  • Böhm, Robert & Rusch, Hannes & Gürerk, Özgür, 2015. "What Makes People Go to War? Defensive Intentions Motivate Retaliatory and Preemptive Intergroup Aggression," MPRA Paper 64373, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:64373
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert Böhm & Bettina Rockenbach, 2013. "The Inter-Group Comparison – Intra-Group Cooperation Hypothesis: Comparisons between Groups Increase Efficiency in Public Goods Provision," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(2), pages 1-7, February.
    2. Leibbrandt, Andreas & Sääksvuori, Lauri, 2012. "Communication in intergroup conflicts," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 1136-1147.
    3. Greiner, Ben, 2004. "An Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments," MPRA Paper 13513, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Abbink, Klaus & de Haan, Thomas, 2014. "Trust on the brink of Armageddon: The first-strike game," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 190-196.
    5. Helen Bernhard & Urs Fischbacher & Ernst Fehr, 2006. "Parochial altruism in humans," Nature, Nature, vol. 442(7105), pages 912-915, August.
    6. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Roman M. Sheremeta, 2018. "Behavior In Group Contests: A Review Of Experimental Research," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 683-704, July.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    intergroup conflict; parochial altruism; in-group love; out-group hate; defense;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B52 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Historical; Institutional; Evolutionary; Modern Monetary Theory;
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • N40 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - General, International, or Comparative

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