This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: What causes adversaries to escalate conflicts into costly, prolonged wars even when neither side wants to fight? And in the fog of war, what might help them break that cycle and find a path to peace?
Those questions are at the heart of new research by UCLA cognitive scientist Tao Gao, who used a two-person territorial-conflict computer game to explore how individuals choose between war and peace by deploying troops across a grid. Gao, a professor in UCLA's departments of communication and statistics, and his colleagues found that the game's players frequently misinterpreted their opponents' defensive actions as threats, triggering cycles of escalating hostilities. But something as simple as a shared visual boundary, they found, helped players better understand one another's intentions and reach peaceful settlements.
The research, co-authored by Zhen Li of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, was recently published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. In the game, players compete to maximize their wealth by occupying limited territory on a grid. They expand their territory by dispatching troops from their bases, advancing one square per round, and they collect "tax" from each occupied square, generating wealth that is automatically converted into additional troops.
When opposing troops meet on the same square, a battle occurs, with the larger force having a higher probability of victory. The winning troops secure the square, while the defeated troops retreat. The war is deliberately designed to be mutually destructive, such that even the winner may suffer heavy casualties.
Because prolonged fighting can deplete both players' resources, they face a choice: Keep fighting a war of attrition or find a way to coexist. There's another complication: The players can't communicate with each other. They must determine what their opponent intends simply by observing troop movements.
That uncertainty creates a version of what military strategists call the "fog of war"—the difficulty of knowing an adversary's intentions during a conflict. The researchers found that without any obvious boundaries on the grid board, players had trouble distinguishing between offensive and defensive moves. They were particularly likely to mistake defense for aggression, creating what is known as a "security dilemma": One player moves troops forward for protection, but the opponent sees the move as a threat and responds with a military buildup of their own.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
