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How defense rhetoric escalates intergroup conflict.

Luuk L Snijder1, Jörg Gross2, Carsten K W De Dreu1,3,4

  • 1Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands.

Iscience
|December 9, 2025
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Conflict leaders often lie about their true intentions, using self-defense claims to rally support. This deceptive rhetoric, believed by people and AI, escalates conflicts, benefiting leaders at society's expense.

Keywords:
Decision sciencePolitical scienceResearch methodology social sciencesSocial sciencesSociology

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Area of Science:

  • Political Science
  • Behavioral Economics
  • Computational Social Science

Background:

  • Truth is often compromised in conflict situations.
  • Leaders' strategic communication plays a crucial role in conflict escalation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To analyze the strategic misrepresentation of intentions by leaders in conflict.
  • To investigate the role of self-defense rhetoric in mobilizing support and escalating conflict.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of 261 manifestos from real-world conflicts.
  • Experimental studies with human participants (n=252, 312).
  • Testing with large language models (2,162 resamples).

Main Results:

  • Leaders of attacking parties often mask exploitation objectives with self-defense claims.
  • Both true and false self-defense rhetoric are readily believed by humans and AI.
  • Self-defense claims increase follower support and costly contributions, even against non-threatening groups.

Conclusions:

  • Deceptive signaling by leaders, particularly self-defense rhetoric, is a key driver of conflict escalation.
  • This tactic benefits leaders by increasing conflict intensity and societal costs.
  • Understanding this dynamic is crucial for mitigating wasteful intergroup conflicts.