ReviewAnnals of the New York Academy of Sciences2025
What Sustains Wars: Will to Fight Versus Military Might.
Review in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- What Sustains Wars: Will to Fight Versus Military Might.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
This essay explores the contributions of psychosocial factors in sustaining wars and other extreme group conflicts. It uses the Devoted Actor Framework (DAF) to better understand will to fight (WTF) as a quest for ontological significance. Devoted actors are viscerally and inseparably fused to one another and to their group by moral ideals often held to be sacred and indivisible, and thus highly resistant to negotiation and compromise. The quest for ontological significance involves affirming and securing group identities and associated moral ideals. The importance of WTF and reasons for its postwar neglect are highlighted in an analysis of initial versus later stages of the European theater in WWII. Next is an assessment of the limits of rational realism and the significance of religion and nationalism, followed by an examination of psychosocial factors involved in WTF via behavioral and brain studies in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and North America. The discussion section examines the scope and limits of DAF in terms of descriptive and explanatory power and in relation to other approaches to war and group conflict. A final coda addresses the Israel-Palestine conflict and the recent Gaza War to illustrate DAF's relevance for understanding and managing seemingly intractable conflicts.
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Registered trials
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.