Social, Economic and Organizational Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Center for Experimental Economics and Political Decision Making, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2021 Apr 12;376(1822):20200135. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0135. Epub 2021 Feb 22.
Political conflicts often revolve around changing versus defending a . We propose to capture the dynamics between proponents and opponents of political change in terms of an asymmetric game of attack and defence with its equilibrium in mixed strategies. Formal analyses generate predictions about effort expended on revising and protecting the , the form and function of false signalling and cheap talk, how power differences impact conflict intensity and the likelihood of revision. Laboratory experiments on the neurocognitive and hormonal foundations of attack and defence reveal that out-of-equilibrium investments in attack emerge because of non-selfish preferences, limited capacity to compute costs and benefits and optimistic beliefs about the chances of winning from one's rival. We conclude with implications for the likelihood of political change and inertia, and discuss the role of ideology in political games of attack and defence. This article is part of the theme issue 'The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms'.
政治冲突往往围绕着改变与捍卫现状展开。我们建议，用一个带有混合策略均衡的攻守不对称博弈来描述政治变革的支持者和反对者之间的动态变化。形式分析对修订和保护现状所投入的努力、虚假信号和廉价言论的形式和功能、权力差异对冲突强度和修订可能性的影响做出了预测。关于攻击和防御的神经认知和激素基础的实验室实验表明，由于非自利偏好、计算成本和收益的能力有限以及对从竞争对手那里获胜机会的乐观信念，非均衡的攻击投资才会出现。最后，我们得出了关于政治变革和惯性可能性的结论，并讨论了意识形态在政治攻守游戏中的作用。本文是“政治大脑：神经认知和计算机制”主题特刊的一部分。
