Dead Certain |
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Authors: | Johnson Dominic D P McDermott Rose Cowden Jon Tingley Dustin |
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Institution: | 1.Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Edinburgh, 15a George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LD, UK ;2.Department of Political Science, Brown University, 36 Prospect St., Providence, RI, 02912, USA ;3.Department of Social Work, SJSU, San José, CA, 95192, USA ;4.Department of Government, Harvard University, 1737 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA ; |
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Abstract: | Evolutionary psychologists have suggested that confidence and conservatism promoted aggression in our ancestral past, and
that this may have been an adaptive strategy given the prevailing costs and benefits of conflict. However, in modern environments,
where the costs and benefits of conflict can be very different owing to the involvement of mass armies, sophisticated technology,
and remote leadership, evolved tendencies toward high levels of confidence and conservatism may continue to be a contributory
cause of aggression despite leading to greater costs and fewer benefits. The purpose of this paper is to test whether confidence
and conservatism are indeed associated with greater levels of aggression—in an explicitly political domain. We present the
results of an experiment examining people’s levels of aggression in response to hypothetical international crises (a hostage
crisis, a counter-insurgency campaign, and a coup). Levels of aggression (which range from concession to negotiation to military
attack) were significantly predicted by subjects’ (1) confidence that their chosen policy would succeed, (2) score on a liberal-conservative
scale, (3) political party affiliation, and (4) preference for the use of military force in real-world U.S. policy toward
Iraq and Iran. We discuss the possible adaptive and maladaptive implications of confidence and conservatism for the prospects
of war and peace in the modern world. |
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