Sources of Risk Acceptance in Territorial Disputes

Zhou, Andi; Goemans, H. E.; Weintraub, Michael

doi:10.2139/ssrn.4422049

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…For example, anger is linked to support for the use of military force (Cheung-Blunden and Blunden 2008;Fisk, Merolla, and Ramos 2018;Skitka et al 2006), retributive counterterror policies (Liberman 2013;Wayne 2023), preferences for punitive justice in criminal prosecution (García-Ponce, Young, and Zeitzoff 2023), intergroup prejudice (DeSteno et al 2004), and the perpetration of ethnic violence in civil conflicts (Balcells 2010;Claassen 2016;Petersen 2002). Anger can also heighten interstate conflict, stoking state rivalries and exacerbating territorial conflict by increasing citizens' risk acceptance and loss aversion (Lim and Tanaka 2022;Zhou, Goemans, and Weintraub 2023).…”

Section: Emotions In International Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anger and Political Conflict Dynamics

SCHNAKENBERG,

WAYNE

2024

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Emotions shape strategic conflict dynamics. However, the precise way in which strategic and emotional concerns interact to affect international cooperation and contention are not well understood. We propose a model of intergroup conflict under incomplete information in which agents are sensitive to psychological motivations in the form of anger. Agents become angry in response to worse-than-expected outcomes due to actions of other players. Aggression may be motivated by anger or by beliefs about preferences of members of the other group. Increasing one group’s sensitivity to anger makes that group more aggressive but reduces learning about preferences, which makes the other group less aggressive in response to bad outcomes. Thus, anger has competing effects on the likelihood of conflict. The results have important implications for understanding the complex role of anger in international relations and, more generally, the interplay between psychological and material aims in both fomenting and ameliorating conflict.

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