Power Differences Between Groups Caused Conflict in Computer Model

Researchers reviewed the research on factors that contribute to conflicts between groups. For a computer modeling experiment, they assigned numerical values to the following to see how many conflicts would occur and how much hostility one group felt for the other over time:

• The initial size and development of Group A versus Group B, and the rates at which each declined or grew.
• The differences in power between them, using a number "representing each group's piece of the total resource 'pie.' This index can represent economic or political power…"
• How many conflicts occurred in the past.

In a typical computer simulation, the researchers assign numerical values to various factors contributing to the issue they are investigating. They run the numbers through an equation that seems to mirror how all those factors are related in reality, change one of the numbers, then run the calculation again: 1,000 times for each scenario in this study, looking at change over ten time periods. The researchers kept some numbers the same each time; changed the factor they were looking at in a predictable way; and told the computer to assign values at random to the remaining factors. (Just as in life: some things you can control, and of the things you can't control, some are constant and some happen by chance.)

The result was, "as one group grows faster than the other—and thus collects more of the resource pie, conflict incidents increase." In particular, if the groups grew at the same rate, the number of conflicts started by one against the other were about the same. But if one group grew much faster, the weaker group became increasingly more hostile and started more and more conflicts.

The mere existence of hostility at a point in time was more important in causing conflicts later than whatever caused that hostility: current power differences, past conflicts, or just prior hostility. In other words, a group filled with hostility caused problems regardless of what made it hostile. And small differences in power actually increased the number of conflicts compared to larger differences.

When the weaker group "chose" to stop retaliating for prior conflicts, the stronger party stopped, too. And when the stronger party stopped first, retaliations by the weaker party dropped significantly, but it still retaliated some. Meanwhile, negotiation was quite effective in reducing conflicts: "Indeed only a 30% rate of (negotiation) success reduced the mean number of total incidents by half…because a successful negotiation leads to fewer retaliatory incidents down the road." Note, however, that the underlying hostility was not reduced as much: the groups still didn't like each other, though they stopped fighting as much.

Source: Miller, H., and K. Engemann (04), "A Simulation Model of Intergroup Conflict," Journal of Business Ethics 50:355.