This discussion paper originates from the preceding annual workshop of the Special Interest Group on Social Conflict and Social Simulation (SIG-SCSS) of the ESSA. The workshop especially focused on the need to identify and examine challenges to modeling social conflicts. It turned out that the polysemous nature of social conflicts makes it very difficult to get a grasp of their complexity. In o...

Most theories in social and political psychology stress self-interest, intergroup conflict, ethnocentrism, homophily, ingroup bias, outgroup antipathy, dominance, and resistance. System justification theory is influenced by these perspectives—including social identity and social dominance theories—but it departs from them in several respects. Advocates of system justification theory argue that ...

In animal and human societies, social services such as protection from predators are often exchanged between group members. The tactics that individuals display to obtain a service depend on its value and on differences between individuals in their capacity to aggressively obtain it. Here we analysed the exchange of valuable social services (i.e. grooming and relationship repair) in the afterma...

According to the Rubicon Model of Action Phases (in: J. Gollwitzer, 1996), Motivation, volition, and action, Enzyclopedia of psychology, series "motivation and emotion", Vol. 4, Hogrefe, Göttingen, 1996, pp. 531-582), different stages in goal pursuit are accompanied by different mindsets that enhance processing of mindset-congruous information. Before people engage in action, they usually delib...

This paper aims to move the debate over the status of the conflict between emotion and judgement forward by refuting three implicit claims: that conflict between emotion and judgement is always to be avoided; that any conflict should always be resolved and, moreover, that it should be resolved immediately; that judgement should usually take priority in any resolution. Refutation of these three ...

This paper is a contribution to the development of an ontology of conflict. In particular, we single out and we study a peculiar notion of group conflict, that we suggestively label ‘social contradiction’. In order to do so, we shall introduce and discuss the methodology of social choice theory, since it allows for defining the notion of collective attitude that may emerge from a number of poss...

Financial development is vulnerable to social conflict. Conflict reduces the demand for domestic currency as a medium of exchange and a store of value. Conflict also leads to poor quality governance, including weak regulation of the financial system, thereby undermining the sustainability of financial institutions. Conflict therefore reduces the social return to financial liberalization and oth...

Financial development is vulnerable to social conflict. Conflict reduces the demand for domestic currency as a medium of exchange and a store of value. Conflict also leads to poor quality governance, including weak regulation of the financial system, thereby undermining the sustainability of financial institutions. Conflict therefore reduces the social return to financial liberalization and oth...

Sexually selected infanticide is an important source of infant mortality in many mammalian species. In species with long-term male-female associations, females may benefit from male protection against infanticidal outsiders. We tested whether mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) mothers in single and multi-male groups monitored by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund's Karisoke Research Center ...