Collaborative Research: NSCC/SA Status, Manipulating Group Threats, & Conflict within & between Groups

之前的研究表明，当面临来自外部的威胁时，群体往往会变得更有凝聚力或更紧密地团结在一起，无论这些威胁来自其他群体还是来自自然界。面对这样的威胁，人们往往会变得更加自我牺牲，更愿意将集团的利益置于个人福祉之上。此外，当一个集团受到威胁时，其成员也变得不太可能竞争集团内的权威或主导地位，而是倾向于投入他们的努力和资源来帮助整个集团取得成功。虽然这种倾向是许多伟大无私和英雄主义行为的基础，但它也可能成为一个群体的阿喀琉斯之踵。研究人员早期的实验工作表明，一些群体成员--特别是那些在群体中占据主导地位的成员--利用人们在面临群体威胁时表现出利他主义的倾向，通过制造虚假威胁并从随后其他人的自我牺牲中获利。占优势的个人可以通过利用威胁的表象来阻止对其地位的竞争，从而巩固他们在集团内的地位。该项目通过探索主导群体成员为了保持自己的地位而歪曲对群体的威胁的趋势背后的机制，扩展了这些发现。研究人员还将探索当群体成员对明显的威胁变得怀疑和反应迟钝时发生的“威胁疲劳”与个人能够在多大程度上独立获得有关威胁的准确信息之间的关系。最后，研究人员将调查威胁操纵的动态，测试威胁操纵的模式和对这种操纵的反应是否根据群体的性质(即民主和非民主群体)和威胁的性质(即源于另一个群体或自然灾害等非人为原因)而有所不同。因此，智力贡献包括对为什么会发生威胁操纵，以及信息、政治机构和威胁的性质如何塑造行为的更好理解。这项工作的更广泛影响包括汇集生物和社会科学的研究，并将其应用于国家内部和国家之间的互动。主导-威胁操纵环节对于理解领导人和公民之间的互动、避免不适当地提高或降低警戒的成本和风险、减少腐败、滥用权力、领导人操纵公民以及对所谓的国家安全威胁漠不关心至关重要。

Previous research suggests that groups tend to become more cohesive or tightly bonded when facing threats from the outside, whether those threats come from other groups or from the natural world. In the face of such threats, people tend to become more self-sacrificing and more willing to place the good of the group over their own personal well-being. Furthermore, when a group is threatened, its members also become less likely to compete for positions of authority or dominance within the group, in favor of investing their effort and resources in helping the group as a whole succeed. While this tendency underlies many acts of great selflessness and heroism, it also may become a group's Achilles heel. Earlier experimental work by the researchers showed that some group members -- especially those with dominant positions within the group -- exploit people's tendency to behave altruistically in the face of threats to the group, by manufacturing false threats and profiting from the subsequent self-sacrifice of others. Dominant individuals can bolster their positions within the group by using the appearance of a threat to discourage competition for their position. This project extends these findings by exploring the mechanisms underlying this tendency of dominant group members to misrepresent threats to the group in order to maintain their position. The researchers also will explore the relationship between "threat fatigue," which occurs when group members become skeptical and unresponsive to apparent threats, and the extent to which individuals can obtain accurate information about the threats on their own. Finally, the researchers will investigate the dynamics of threat manipulation, testing whether patterns of threat manipulation and responses to such manipulation differ as a function of the nature of the group (i.e., democratic and non-democratic groups) and the nature of the threat (i.e., stemming from another group or from non-human causes such as natural disasters). The intellectual contributions thus include an enhanced understanding of why threat manipulation occurs, and how information, political institutions, and the nature of threats shape behavior. The broader impacts of this work include bringing together research from the biological and social sciences and applying it to interactions within and between nations. The dominance-threat manipulation link is crucial for understanding interactions between leaders and citizens, avoiding the costs and perils of inappropriately high or low vigilance, and for reducing corruption, abuses of power, manipulation of citizens by leaders, and apathy regarding alleged threats to national security.