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Reasons to strike first

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2019

William Buckner  and
Luke Glowacki
William Buckner
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616. wvbuckner@ucdavis.eduhttps://traditionsofconflict.com/about/
Luke Glowacki
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802. glowacki@psu.edu https://www.hsb-lab.org/
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Abstract

De Dreu and Gross predict that attackers will have more difficulty winning conflicts than defenders. As their analysis is presumed to capture the dynamics of decentralized conflict, we consider how their framework compares with ethnographic evidence from small-scale societies, as well as chimpanzee patterns of intergroup conflict. In these contexts, attackers have significantly more success in conflict than predicted by De Dreu and Gross's model. We discuss the possible reasons for this disparity.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 42 , 2019 , e119
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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