<figure class="alignright size-full"><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">LISTEN TO CARSTEN DE DREU NOW!
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“We have been evolving into a species that is super-cooperative: we work together with strangers, we can empathize with people, we are really an empathic flock,” begins Carsten de Dreu, a professor at Leiden University. “And at the same time, there is increasing evidence from archaeological excavations all around the world that already 10, 20 and 30 thousand years ago, people were actually violently killing each other.”

Trained as a social psychologist, de Dreu uses behavioral science, history, economics, archaeology, primatology and biology, among other disciplines to study the basis of conflict and cooperation among humans. In this Social Science Bites podcast, he discusses how conflict and violence – which he takes pains to note are not the same – mark our shared humanity and offers some suggestions on how our species might tamp down the violence.

“Violence,” de Dreu explains to host David Edmonds, “is not the same as conflict – you can’t have violence without conflict, but you can have conflict without violence.” Conflict, he continues, is a situation, while violence is a behavior. Conflict, he says, likely always will be with us, but resorting to violence need not be.

The psychologist says behavior has a biological basis, and various hormones may ‘support’ violent actions. For example, greater concentrations of oxytocin – which helps maintain in-group bonds and has been dubbed “the love hormone” — is found in primate poo after groups fights. But, he cautions, that is not to say we are innately violent.

But when we do get violent, it’s worse when we’re in groups. Then, the potential for violence, as he put it, “to get out of hand,” increases, escalating faster and well beyond the violence seen between individuals (even if that one-on-one violence sometimes can be horrific).

“In an interpersonal fight, the only trigger is the antagonist. In intergroup violence, what we see is that people are sometimes blinded to the enemy – they might not even recognize who they were because they were so concerned with each other.”

What drives this violence is both obvious and not, de Dreu suggests. “Even among my colleagues, there is sometimes fierce debate – conflicts sometimes about what are conflicts! But if you zoom out, there are two core things that groups fight about:” resources and ideas.

Fighting over resources is not unique to humans – groups of primates are known to battle over land or mates. But fighting over ideas is uniquely human. And unlike resource conflicts, which have the potential to be negotiated, “for these truth conflicts … there is no middle ground, no trade-off.” Regardless, he argues, values have value.

Citing recent work with colleagues, de Dreu says he thinks “these values, these truths, these worldviews that we have, that we share within our groups and our communities, within our countries sometimes, they are the ‘oil’ of the system. To work together so that we all can survive and prosper, we need certain rules, a certain shared view of how the world operates, what is good and bad, what is right and wrong. These are very important shared values we need to have in order to function as a complex social system.”

But “when these values get questioned, or attacked, or debunked, that’s threatening.” Depending on how severe the threat is seen, violence is deployed. And sometimes, as even a casual observer may divine, it’s not the direct quest for resources or to protect values that sparks violence, but what de Dreu terms “collateral damage” from leaders cynically weaponizing these drivers – or even inventing threats to them — while actually pursuing their own goals.

But de Dreu ends the podcast on a (mostly) upbeat note. He says we can break the cycles of violence, even if there’s no neat linear trajectory to do so, and concludes by offering some rays of hope.

To download an MP3 of this podcast, right-click HERE and save. The transcript of the conversation appears below.

For a complete listing of past Social Science Bites podcasts, click HERE. You can follow Bites on Twitter @socialscibites and David Edmonds @DavidEdmonds100.

Transcript

David Edmonds: Individuals fight, and groups fight, too: religious and ethnic groups, national armies, even opposing groups of sports fans. Why? What’s driving the violence? Carsten de Dreu is a psychologist at the University of Leiden. He’s devoted years to the study of conflict and group violence. Carsten de Dreu, welcome to Social Science Bites.  

Carsten de Dreu: Oh, thank you, Dave. It’s an exciting endeavor. 

Edmonds: So, we’re going to have a peaceful and civilized conversation today, I hope, on why groups of humans fight. Has fighting always been part of the human experience? 

De Dreu: I think it has been. We have been evolving into a species that is super cooperative: we work together with strangers, we can empathize with people, we are really an empathic flock. And at the same time, there is increasing evidence from archeological excavations all around the world that already 10-, 20-, 30,000 years ago, people were actually violently killing one another. 

Edmonds: Okay, so violence takes many forms—my kids fight, there are fights outside pubs—but you’re particularly interested in fighting between groups. Why groups in particular? Does group violence have interesting elements that are different from individual acts of violence?  

De Dreu: I think it does. And of course, we have limited evidence from our deeper past, but violence between groups can get really violent. Violence between individuals—of course, we have domestic violence that includes all kinds of nasty things—but somehow, it seems that especially the violence, the conflicts, between groups of people can escalate really quickly. The organized ways of fighting each other really oftentimes get out of hand. So, I find those the most “interesting,“ if you want, because they also have the most destructive and long-ranging consequences.  

Edmonds: But that’s interesting. So, group violence is liable to escalate quicker than individual violence? 

De Dreu: I think there is good evidence for that. It seems to be related to the fact that we fight alongside each other, and we are more concerned with what my neighbor or my mate is doing and whether he will survive, or whether my strength is actually helping him rather than just the enemy. In an interpersonal fight, we see the enemy in front of us; the only trigger here is the antagonist. In an intergroup violence, what we see is that people are sometimes blinded to the enemy; they might not even recognize who they were because they were so concerned with each other.  

And that somehow creates a bit of a group mind that can lead to forms of violence and fighting that we would never think we are even able to do.  

Edmonds: Now, violence is not the same as conflict. Presumably we can have conflict without violence. For example, the UK and the US could have a trade dispute. That’s a kind of conflict. But fortunately, it’s unlikely to spill over into violence.  

De Dreu: Absolutely, yes. I think it’s super important to make that distinction. If you think about it, very simplistically, perhaps, we can say you cannot have violence without conflict. But you can have conflicts without violence. Of course, oftentimes, conflicts—we don’t see unless you start to really closely look. Your example of a UK, US trade dispute is a very good example, because we read about it in the news, and we’ll read on; we forget about it. But those are also conflicts. 

There are situations where we want something the other frustrates us of having, and then we can use violence to get our way. But—and I think this is super important—we don’t have to use violence. There are other ways.  

Edmonds: So, we’ll come on to the other ways later. But another point of clarification: ar