Anger and Political Conflict Dynamics

Emotions shape strategic conflict dynamics. However, political science lacks theories integrating strategic and emotional concerns. We propose a model of intergroup conflict under incomplete information in which agents are sensitive to psychological motivations in the form of anger. In the model, agents become angry when they experience worse-than-expected outcomes and blame those bad outcomes on the intentional actions of another player. Friendly players who experience bad outcomes may act aggressively out of anger or because the outcomes contain information about the preferences of the other group. Increasing one group's sensitivity to anger may cause that group to act more aggressively. However, this also reduces the informational effect of that group's actions, which may make the other group less aggressive. Thus, anger has competing effects on the likelihood of conflict. The results have important implications for understanding the interplay between psychological and material aims in both fomenting and ameliorating conflict.