What War Narratives Tell About the Psychology and Coalitional Dynamics of Ethnic Violence

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-2-2019

Publication Title

Journal of Cognition and Culture

Volume

19

Issue

2019-01-02

First page number:

1

Last page number:

38

Abstract

Models of ethnic violence have primarily been descriptive in nature, advancing broad or particular social and political reasons as explanations, and neglecting the contributions of individuals as decision-makers. Game theoretic and rational choice models recognize the role of individual decision-making in ethnic violence. However, such models embrace a classical economic theory view of unbounded rationality as utility-maximization, with its exacting assumption of full informational access, rather than a model of bounded rationality, modeling individuals as satisficing agents endowed with evolved domain-specific competences. A newer theoretical framework hypothesizing the existence of a human coalitional psychology, an evolved domain of competence, allows us to make sense of core features of memorial narratives about ethnic violence. Qualitative data from the interviews of fifty-seven participants who were impacted by the Croatian Homeland War support expectations entailed by a coalitional psychology model of ethnic strife.

Keywords

Ethnic violence; Coalitional psychology; Croatia; Bounded rationality; Memory

Disciplines

Ethnic Studies | Social and Cultural Anthropology

Language

English

UNLV article access

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