Elsevier

Current Opinion in Psychology

Volume 44, April 2022, Pages 112-116
Current Opinion in Psychology

Review
Prosociality as a foundation for intergroup conflict

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.09.002Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Highlights

  • Reviews behavioral experiments on costly cooperation and intergroup conflict.

  • Distinguishes parochial cooperation from parochial competition as distinct strategies underlying intergroup interaction.

  • Calls into question the predictive value of social identification.

  • Identifies the neurohormonal and sociocultural underpinnings of parochialism.

  • Specifies how human preparedness for prosociality manifests in both parochial cooperation and competition.

Abstract

Intergroup conflict can be modeled as a two-level game of strategy in which prosociality can take the form of trust and cooperation within groups or between groups. We review recent work, from our own laboratory and that of others, that shows how biological and sociocultural mechanisms that promote prosocial preferences and beliefs create in-group bounded, parochial cooperation, and, sometimes, parochial competition. We show when and how parochial cooperation and competition intensify rather than mitigate intergroup conflict.

Keyword

Cooperation
Social preferences
Intergroup relations
Parochialism
Reciprocity
Threat

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