Anger and Political Conflict Dynamics

"Anger and Political Conflict Dynamics"

by Keith Schnakenberg and Carly Wayne (Washington University in St. Louis)

Abstract:

"Behavioral researchers have long contended that emotions such as anger play a crucial role in shaping international conflict dynamics. However, fully integrating emotional accounts of behavior into theories of conflict requires incorporating psychological findings into models of strategic interactions. In this article, we address this gap, explicitly integrating anger and the psychological motivations it engenders into an established incomplete information model of intergenerational conflict. In the standard model, conflicts may start because peaceful actions are misunderstood as aggressive ones, and continue for a time because agents update their beliefs about the preferences of others upon observing aggressive actions. In our model, agents become angry when they experience outcomes that they evaluate as worse than expected and blame those outcomes on the behavior of the other agents. Angry agents are more likely to act aggressively toward the other players. However, the indirect effect of susceptibility to anger is that it makes other agents less likely to retaliate in response to aggression by decreasing the informational effect of past behavior. This has important implications for understanding the interplay between psychological and material aims in both fomenting and ameliorating conflict."

Discussants:

Emily Ritter (Vanderbilt University)

David Siegel (Duke University)

OPSC Coordinator:

Brad Smith (Vanderbilt University)