Preemptive strike: An experimental study of fear-based aggression

Simunovic, Dora; Mifune, Nobuhiro; Yamagishi, Toshio

doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2013.08.003

Cited by 77 publications

(113 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Such defense-motivated attacks are historically well documented, 12 e.g., the Israeli strike against Egyptian airfields in 1967. Moreover, there is recent evidence 13 that aggression between individuals increases if it serves to protect one's own self (Abbink & 14 de Haan, 2014;Simunovic, Mifune, & Yamagishi, 2013), particularly when the interaction 15 partner is an out-group member (De Dreu et al, 2010). In the SEQ-PREEMPTIVE-STRIKE 16 condition, first-movers can reduce the negative effect of second-movers' 'out-group hate' on 17 and free-riding on the protective contributions of the other in-group members is still payoff 1 maximizing from the individual perspective because the intragroup public good dilemma 2 remains unchanged.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What makes people go to war? Defensive intentions motivate retaliatory and preemptive intergroup aggression

Böhm

Rusch

Gürerk

2016

Evolution and Human Behavior

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What makes people go to war? Defensive intentions motivate retaliatory and preemptive intergroup aggression

Böhm

Rusch

Gürerk

2016

Evolution and Human Behavior

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“…Although one study reported that a sad mood induced the rejection of unfair offers in the UG15, to our knowledge, no prior study has focused on the role of fear emotion in this context. As previous studies have found that fear induces defensive aggression21 and because rejection of unfair offers in the UG is thought to reflect aggression1722, it is likely that fear emotion will induce the rejection of unfair offers in the UG.…”

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confidence: 93%

Fear of Negative Evaluation Moderates the Effect of Subliminal Fear Priming on Rejection of Unfair Offers in the Ultimatum Game

Takagishi

Fujii

Nishina

et al. 2016

Sci Rep

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The purpose of this study was to examine whether the tendency to fear negative evaluation moderates the effect of fear emotion on the rejection of unfair offers in the ultimatum game (UG). A photograph of a fearful face or landscape was displayed subliminally (i.e., for 10 ms) before the proposer’s offer in the UG was presented to participants. We used the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (FNES) to measure participants’ anxiety regarding negative evaluations from others. Results showed a significant interaction between FNES and condition (fearful face vs. landscape) in relation to the rejection of an unfair offer. Furthermore, the mean rejection rate of an unfair offer was significantly higher in the fearful face condition relative to that in the landscape condition among participants whose FNES scores were higher than the median; however, this difference was not observed in participants whose FNES scores were lower than the median. These results suggest that fear of negative evaluation moderates the effect of subliminal fear priming on the rejection of unfair offers in the UG, and that negative emotion induced by unconscious stimuli enhances rejection of these unfair offers.

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“…It is likely that humans who continuously spend their social life in groups that are often in conflict with other groups have developed a fear-induced belief that they need to defend themselves from potential aggression from other groups, and this belief often prompts group members to engage in aggression toward potential aggressors in self-defense. In fact, Simunovic et al (2013) compared the frequency of spite-based aggression and fear-based aggression and demonstrated that the overwhelming majority of aggressive incidents in the minimal group situation were fear-based rather than spite-based. Furthermore, research on the interindividual-intergroup discontinuity has shown that people have a naïve belief that groups are more competitive than individuals (Pemberton et al, 1996), and hence exhibit defensive non-cooperation in intergroup rather than inter-individual interactions in the prisoner’s dilemma situation (Wildschut et al, 2003; Wildschut and Insko, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intergroup Biases in Fear-induced Aggression

Mifune

Simunovic²,

Yamagishi

2017

Front. Psychol.

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Using a recently created preemptive strike game (PSG) with 176 participants, we investigated if the motivations of spite and/or fear promotes aggression that requires a small cost to the aggressor and imposes a larger cost on the opponent, and confirmed the earlier finding that fear does but spite does not promote intergroup aggression when the groups are characterized as minimal groups; additionally, the rate of intergroup aggression did not vary according to the group membership of the opponent. The PSG represents a situation in which both the motivations of spite and of fear can logically drive players to choose an option of aggression against an opponent. Participants decide whether or not to attack another participant, who also has the same capability. The decision is made in real time, using a computer. We discuss theoretical implications of our findings on the evolutionary foundations of intragroup cooperation and intergroup aggression. The evolutionary model of intergroup aggression, or the parochial altruism model, posits that intragroup cooperation and intergroup aggression have co-evolved, and thus it predicts both intragroup cooperation and intergroup aggression to emerge even in a minimal group devoid of a history of intergroup relationships. The finding that only intragroup cooperation but not intergroup aggression emerged in the minimal group experiments strongly suggests that intergroup aggression involves a psychological mechanism that is independent from that of intragroup cooperation. We further discuss the implications of these findings on real-world politics and military strategy.

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Preemptive strike: An experimental study of fear-based aggression

Cited by 77 publications

References 19 publications

What makes people go to war? Defensive intentions motivate retaliatory and preemptive intergroup aggression

What makes people go to war? Defensive intentions motivate retaliatory and preemptive intergroup aggression

Fear of Negative Evaluation Moderates the Effect of Subliminal Fear Priming on Rejection of Unfair Offers in the Ultimatum Game

Intergroup Biases in Fear-induced Aggression

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