With God on our side: Religious primes reduce the envisioned physical formidability of a menacing adversary

Does the union always make the force? Group status and recategorization influence the perceived physical formidability of potential coalition groups

Coalitions among individuals and between groups, which have had critical evolutionary benefits for humans, play an important role in contemporary life. One key element of the processes of assessing potential allies is how they may contribute to the perceived physical formidability - fighting ability or the capacity to inflict costs on others - of the alliance. In three studies, focused for the first time on intergroup coalitions, we investigated how qualities of the groups such as status (social prestige) and the relationship between them influence the perceived physical formidability of a coalition (i.e., European Union, EU). Study 1 found that the inclusion of a group with higher or similar (but not lower) status increased the perceived formidability of the EU. Studies 2 and 3 showed that learning that ingroup members recategorized a low-status group within a common-group identity increased the perceived formidability of the EU including that group, compared with the conditions in which either outgroup members recategorized or no information was provided. Study 3 also revealed mediation by fusion - a visceral connection - with outgroup members, which has been relatively unexplored. Taken together, these studies reveal that both, status and social identity processes, may significantly affect the estimations of coalitional formidability.

Transcultural pathways to the will to fight

In 2022, the "Will to Fight Act" was referred to the US Congress urging attention to measuring and assessing will to fight. That Bill was not enacted, and evaluation efforts within the political and military establishment remain contentious, fragmented, and meager. This likely will persist, along with attendant policy failures and grievous costs, without awareness of research that the social and psychological sciences reveal on the will to fight [S. Atran, Science 373, 1063 (2021)]. We illustrate such research using converging data from a multimethod and multicultural approach, including field and online studies from the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. These studies reveal specific psychosocial pathways, within a general causal framework, that predict willingness to make costly sacrifices, including to cooperate, fight, and die in war and sustained conflict. From the continuing strife in Iraq to embattled Ukraine, 31 studies were conducted in 9 countries with nearly 12,000 participants. These include people in longstanding conflicts, refugees, imprisoned jihadists and gangs, US military, studies in Ukraine before and during the current war, and rolling studies with a European ally of Ukraine. Results provide evidence for a mediation model of transcultural pathways to the will to fight. Building on our previous behavioral and brain research, on the battlefield in Iraq, with violent extremists, and with US military, the linear mediation yielding the will to fight involves identity fusion, perceived spiritual formidability, and trust. The model, a variation on "The Devoted Actor Framework," applies to primary reference groups, core cultural values, and leaders.

Spiritual over physical formidability determines willingness to fight and sacrifice through loyalty in cross-cultural populations

Across 11 studies involving six countries from four continents (n = 3,285), we extend insights from field investigations in conflict zones to offline and online surveys to show that personal spiritual formidability—the conviction and immaterial resources (values, strengths of beliefs, character) of a person to fight—is positively associated with the will to fight and sacrifice for others. The physical formidability of groups in conflict has long been promoted as the primary factor in human decisions to fight or flee in times of conflict. Here, studies in Spain, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Morocco reveal that personal spiritual formidability, a construct distinct from religiosity, is more strongly associated with the willingness to fight and make costly self-sacrifices for the group than physical formidability. A follow-on study among cadets of the US Air Force Academy further indicates that this effect is mediated by a stronger loyalty to the group, a finding replicated in a separate study with a European sample. The results demonstrate that personal spiritual formidability is a primary determinant of the will to fight across cultures, and this individual-level factor, propelled by loyal bonds made with others, disposes citizens and combatants to fight at great personal risk.

Continuous Theta Burst Stimulation of the Posterior Medial Frontal Cortex to Experimentally Reduce Ideological Threat Responses

Decades of behavioral science research have documented functional shifts in attitudes and ideological adherence in response to various challenges, but little work to date has illuminated the neural mechanisms underlying these dynamics. This paper describes how continuous theta burst transcranial magnetic stimulation may be employed to experimentally assess the causal contribution of cortical regions to threat-related ideological shifts. In the example protocol provided here, participants are exposed to a threat prime-an explicit reminder of their own inevitable death and bodily decomposition-following a downregulation of the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC) or a sham stimulation. Next, disguised within a series of distracter tasks, participants' relative degree of ideological adherence is assessed-in the present example, with regard to coalitional prejudice and religious belief. Participants for whom the pMFC has been downregulated exhibit less coalitionally biased responses to an immigrant critical of the participants' national in-group, and less conviction in positive afterlife beliefs (i.e., God, angels, and heaven), despite having recently been reminded of death. These results complement prior findings that continuous theta burst stimulation of the pMFC influences social conformity and sharing and illustrate the feasibility of investigating the neural basis of high-level social cognitive shifts using transcranial magnetic stimulation.

May God Guide Our Guns : Visualizing Supernatural Aid Heightens Team Confidence in a Paintball Battle Simulation

The perceived support of supernatural agents has been historically, ethnographically, and theoretically linked with confidence in engaging in violent intergroup conflict. However, scant experimental investigations of such links have been reported to date, and the extant evidence derives largely from indirect laboratory methods of limited ecological validity. Here, we experimentally tested the hypothesis that perceived supernatural aid would heighten inclinations toward coalitional aggression using a realistic simulated coalitional combat paradigm: competitive team paintball. In a between-subjects design, US paintball players recruited for the study were experimentally primed with thoughts of supernatural support using a guided visualization exercise analogous to prayer, or with a control visualization of a nature scene. The participants then competed in a team paintball battle game modeled after “Capture the Flag.” Immediately before and after the battle, participants completed surveys assessing confidence in their coalitional and personal battle performance. Participants assessed their coalition’s prospects of victory and performance more positively after visualizing supernatural aid. Participants primed with supernatural support also reported inflated assessments of their own performance. Importantly, however, covarying increases in assessments of their overall coalition’s performance accounted for the latter effect. This study provided support for the hypothesis that perceived supernatural support can heighten both prospective confidence in coalitional victory and retrospective confidence in the combat performance of one’s team, while highlighting the role of competitive play in evoking the coalitional psychology of intergroup conflict. These results accord with and extend convergent prior findings derived from laboratory paradigms far removed from the experience of combat. Accordingly, the field study approach utilized here shows promise as a method for investigating coalitional battle dynamics in a realistic, experientially immersive manner.

Gulliver’s Politics

Political conservatives have been widely documented to regard out-group members as hostile, perceive individuals of ambiguous intent as malevolent, and favor aggressive solutions to intergroup conflict. A growing literature indicates that potential violent adversaries are represented using the dimensions of envisioned physical size/strength to summarize opponents’ fighting capacities relative to the self or in-group. Integrating these programs, we hypothesized that, compared to liberals, conservatives would envision an ambiguous out-group target as more likely to pose a threat, yet as vanquishable through force, and thus as less formidable. Participants from the United States (Study 1) and Spain (Study 2) assessed Syrian refugees, a group that the public widely suspects includes terrorists. As predicted, in both societies, conservatives envisioned refugees as more likely to be terrorists and as less physically formidable. As hypothesized, this “Gulliver effect” was mediated by confidence in each society’s capacity to thwart terrorism via aggressive military or police measures.