How defense rhetoric escalates intergroup conflict.

Luuk L Snijder, Jörg Gross, Carsten K W De Dreu

Abstract read

In one paragraph

Article in iScience, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it

0cells of the map it votes in

1citing papers in PubMed

–field-weighted citation impact

1 · What the graph read from it

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.

2 · The registry

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.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

Intentions poorly explain how and why people engage in offensive and defensive forms of violence.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
Article

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Luuk L SnijderFaculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands.

Jörg GrossSocial and Economic Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.

Carsten K W De DreuFaculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The first victim of conflict is often the truth. Using 261 manifestos from real-world conflicts, we show that leaders frequently misrepresent strategic intentions in their calls to arms and that such misrepresentation is asymmetric. Leaders of attacking parties hide their primary objective for exploitation behind claims of self-defense. Experiments show that self-defense rhetoric, true and false, is readily believed by naive participants (

Indexed as

Decision sciencePolitical scienceResearch methodology social sciencesSocial sciencesSociology

Identifiers

PMID41362766

DOI10.1016/j.isci.2025.113749

PMCPMC12682265

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata

LicenceCC BY

Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.