The evolved psychology of coercion

ABSTRACT

Coercion can be employed both to entice people to do something they do not want to do, as well as to force them to stop doing something they want to do. Yet, some influence strategies work better than others. Current policy undermines coercive goals by depending on economic models for incentivizing behavior which are totally at odds with human psychology. Psychological models provide more accurate understandings of the nature of coercion, and offer more effective strategies for accomplishing such goals. Such an approach might improve both our understanding and practice of coercion in real-life decision-making situations.

Notes on contributor

Rose McDermott ([email protected]) is the David and Mariana Fisher University Professor of International Relations at Brown University and a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received her PhD (political science) and MA (experimental social psychology) from Stanford University and has taught at Cornell, UCSB, and Harvard. She has held numerous fellowships, including from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Women and Public Policy Program, all at Harvard University. She is also a past and current fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences. She is the author of three books, a coeditor of two additional volumes, and author of over a hundred academic articles across a wide variety of disciplines encompassing topics such as experimentation, emotion and decision making, and the biological and genetic bases of political behavior.

Notes

1. Jerome H. Barkow et al., The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1992); Peter K. Hatemi and Rose McDermott, eds., Man is By Nature a Political Animal: Evolution, Biology, and Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

2. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence: With a New Preface and Afterword. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).

3. Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, Homicide (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1988); Joshua D. Duntley and David M. Buss, “Homicide Adaptations,” Aggression and Violent Behavior, vol. 16, no. 5 (2011): 399–410.

4. Duntley and Buss, “Homicide Adaptations,” 399–410.

5. Aaron Sell, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides, “Formidability and the Logic of Human Anger,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 106, no. 35(2009): 15073–15078.

6. Aaron Sell et al., “Human Adaptations for the Visual Assessment of Strength and Fighting Ability from the Body and Face,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 276, no. 1656 (2009): 575–584.

7. Aaron Sell et al., “Adaptations in Humans for Assessing Physical Strength from the Voice,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 277 (2010): 3509–3518.

8. Randall Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer, A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001); M. N. Muller and R. W. Wrangham, editors, Sexual Coercion in Primates and Humans: An Evolutionary Perspective on Male Aggression against Females (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).

9. Susan Brownmiller, “Making Female Bodies the Battlefield,” in Alexandra Stiglmayer, ed., Mass Rape: The War against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina, (University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 180–02; Cassandra Clifford, “Rape as a Weapon of War and Its Long-Term Effects on Victims and Society,” in 7th Global Conference on Violence and the Contexts of Hostility, Budapest, May 5–7, 2008; Kathryn Farr, “Extreme War: Rape in Today's Civil-War-Torn States; A Contextual and Comparative Analysis,” Gender Issues, vol. 26, no. 1: 1–41; and Alexandra Stiglmayer, ed., Mass Rape.

10. Thomas J. Scheff, “Shame and Conformity: The Deference Emotion System, American Sociological Review, June (1988): 395–406.

11. Roy F. Baumeister, Arlene M. Stillwell, and Todd F. Heatherton, “Guilt: An Interpersonal Approach,” Psychological Bulletin, vol. 115, no. 2 (March 1994): 243–267.

12. Dov Cohen, Richard E. Nisbett, Brian F. Bowdle, and Norbert Schwarz, “Insult, Aggression, and the Southern Culture of Honor: An ‘experimental ethnography,’” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 70, no. 5: (1996): 945.

13. David A. Lake, 996). Anarchy, hierarchy, and the variety of international relations. International Organization, vol. 50, no. 1 (1996): 1–33.

14. Solomon E. Asch, “Opinions and Social Pressure,” Readings about the Social Animal, vol. 193 (1955): 17–26.

15. Stanley Milgram, “Behavioral Study of Obedience,” The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 67, no. 4 (1963): 371.

16. Laurent Bègue, Jean-Léon Beauvois, Didier Courbet, Dominique Oberlé, Johan Lepage, and Aaron A. Duke, “Personality Predicts Obedience in a Milgram Paradigm,” Journal of Personality, vol. 83, no. 3 (2015): 299–306.

17. Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); Gambetta, Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).

18. John Ermisch and Diego Gambetta, “Do Strong Family Ties Inhibit Trust?” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, vol. 75, no. 3 (2010): 365–376.

19. Diego Gambetta, ed., Making Sense of Suicide Missions (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press), 259–299.

20. Diego Gambetta and Steffan Hertog, “Engineers of Jihad,” Working Paper, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.

21. Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).

22. Stephen Nickerson, “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises,” Review of General Psychology, vol. 2, no, 2(1998): 175.

23. Charles G. Lord, Less Ross, and Mark R. Lepper, Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects of Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 37, no. 11(1979): 2098.

24. Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, “Why Do Humans Reason? Arguments for an Argumentative Theory,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 34, no. 2 (2011): 57–74.

25. David Pietraszewski, “What is Argument For? An Adaptationist Approach to Argument and Debate,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 34, no 2 (2011): 86–87.