ArticleHuman nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.)2013
The role of rewards in motivating participation in simple warfare.
Article in Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.), 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers.
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Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Toward an Integrative Approach to the Study of Positive-Affect-Related Aggression.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025Review
- Social induction and the developmental trajectory of participation in intergroup conflict by vervet monkeys.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
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- US homicide rates increase when resources are scarce and unequally distributed.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Article
- Turkana warriors' call to arms: how an egalitarian society mobilizes for cattle raids.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Key individuals catalyse intergroup violence.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Sex bias in intergroup conflict and collective movements among social mammals: male warriors and female guides.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Climate change-induced population pressure drives high rates of lethal violence in the Prehispanic central Andes.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
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- Hawks, Doves, and mongooses.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Exploitative leaders incite intergroup warfare in a social mammal.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Human large-scale cooperation as a product of competition between cultural groups.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Acculturation drives the evolution of intergroup conflict.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Evolutionary Models of Leadership : Tests and Synthesis.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2019Article
- Bands of brothers and in-laws: Waorani warfare, marriage and alliance formation.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Male monkeys use punishment and coercion to de-escalate costly intergroup fights.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Two types of aggression in human evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In the absence of explicit punitive sanctions, why do individuals voluntarily participate in intergroup warfare when doing so incurs a mortality risk? Here we consider the motivation of individuals for participating in warfare. We hypothesize that in addition to other considerations, individuals are incentivized by the possibility of rewards. We test a prediction of this "cultural rewards war-risk hypothesis" with ethnographic literature on warfare in small-scale societies. We find that a greater number of benefits from warfare is associated with a higher rate of death from conflict. This provides preliminary support for the relationship between rewards and participation in warfare.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.