HSD: The Dynamics of Religion and Conflict: A Multidisciplinary, Empirical Approach

无论是中东的以色列人和巴勒斯坦人，苏丹的饥荒，还是丹麦报纸上的政治漫画，人们只需要看看晚间新闻就能认识到，宗教可能在群体间冲突的产生和维持中发挥了重要作用，而且这种冲突往往具有远远超出其直接领域的影响。不幸的是，在宗教影响冲突过程的方式方面，几乎没有深入的、基于数据的知识。这些知识对于分析冲突局势、预测冲突局势的出现以及制定政策以化解潜在冲突或更好地管理现有冲突至关重要。基于来自广泛学科（如社会心理学、政治学、宗教研究、人类学、社会学）的见解和关于导致群体冲突的过程的现有发现（如对稀缺资源的感知竞争、不相容的价值观），本项目测试了关于宗教影响冲突可能出现的地点、方式、情况和原因的假设。采用一种创新的基于互联网的调查方法，一个庞大的国际社会和行为科学家网络将被招募来提供全球约100个地区的数据。这种方法提供了探索许多地区的能力，收集有关许多相关因素的定量数据，减少专家信息偏差的潜在影响。并进行现代统计分析，从而使调查人员能够发现宗教是否存在基本的跨文化原则，通过这些原则，宗教可以增强或减少冲突。将使用现代计算机模拟建模技术来探索研究结果的含义。总之，受宗教影响的冲突对全球个人和团体的生活、对国际事务的管理以及对国家安全的维护都有直接影响。因此，本项目旨在以数据为基础，了解宗教在群体间关系中所扮演的角色，同时也为进行跨文化研究创造一种创新且相对廉价的方法。

Whether it be Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East, starvation in the Sudan, or political cartoons in Danish newspapers, one need only turn to the evening news to recognize that religion may play a significant role in the creation and maintenance of intergroup conflict and that such conflicts often have implications that extend well beyond their immediate realm. Unfortunately, there exists little in the way of deep, data-based knowledge of the manner in which religion influences conflict processes. Such knowledge is critical for analyzing conflict situations, for being able to anticipate the emergence of conflict situations, and for creating policies to defuse potential conflicts or better manage existing conflicts. Building upon insightsfrom a wide range of disciplines (e.g., social psychology, political science, religious studies, anthropology, sociology) and existing findings about the processes that contribute to group conflict (e.g., perceived competition over scarce resources, incompatible values), this project tests hypotheses about where, how, under what circumstances, and for whom religion-influenced conflict could emerge. Employing an innovative Internet-based survey methodology, a large, international network of social and behavioral scientists will be recruited to provide data about 100 locales around the world. This method provides the ability to explore many locales, gatherquantitative data about many relevant factors, reduce the potential impact of biases in expert informant?s reports, and conduct modern statistical analyses, thereby enabling the investigators to discover whether there are fundamental, cross-cultural principles through which religion may enhance or decrease conflict. Contemporary computer simulation modeling techniques will beused to explore the implications of the findings. In sum, religion-influenced conflict has direct implications for the lives of individuals and groups across the globe, for the management of international affairs, and for the maintenance of national security. This project thus aims to generate a data-based understanding of the role that religion plays in intergroup relations, while also creating an innovative and relatively inexpensive method for performing cross-cultural research.