Draining the will for peace or war: Understanding how social influence and self-regulation processes interact in conflict

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Conflict is common, whether between racial, religious, and political groups, or between businesses and firms. Yet conflict frays tempers, wastes time, costs money, and hurts people. Destructive conflict escalation often occurs despite rational plans and good intentions. This process is poorly understood. The present research applies new psychological research on understanding motivation to improve our understanding of how good intentions fail and conflict escalates. By studying how conflict drains our ability to exercise willpower and increases our vulnerability to situational cues that promote confrontation, we will be able to develop interventions to reduce unwanted conflict escalation.