Research

Research

The Groups & War lab studies small group dynamics, with particular attention to group formation and the impact of group identification, and the psychology of war, with particular attention to the evolution of social capacities that help men and women cope with the challenges to survival and reproductive success posed by war.

Ongoing projects in the lab are investigating the following topics:

  • Warrior Psychopaths
  • Charitable Behaviors
  • Counterterrorism Training Programs

Current Online Surveys

Cross-Cultural Survey (no longer active)


Current Research

Warrior Psychopathy Project: 
Inspired by ongoing communication with combat veteran and author of Memoirs of an Anonymous Psychopath, we began exploring a potential personality configuration that we now call the warrior psychopath. Warrior psychopaths, we propose, are specifically adapted to the demands of war, and tend to be both highly effective in combat and resilient against combat stress. Like traditional psychopaths, warrior psychopaths tend to be more antisocial than their non-psychopathic counterparts. What makes them different is their ability to experience empathy. While traditional psychopaths appear to lack empathy for everyone, warrior psychopaths do feel selective empathy for family, friends, members of their team, and certain classes of people they consider innocent and deserving of protection (e.g., children, civilian women). This empathy vanishes when dealing with the enemy or other unworthy people, who warrior psychopaths treat with the ruthless hostility that traditional psychopaths are known for.

We believe that this selective empathy, combined with a domineering and sensation-seeking fearlessness, attract warrior psychopaths not only to the military, but also to jobs in corrections and law enforcement, where they can derive pleasure from hunting, controlling, and punishing criminals—especially those (such as many traditional psychopaths) who prey on the innocent.

We are currently testing out a variety of scales designed to distinguish warrior psychopaths, traditional psychopaths, and “normal” range individuals.  We are also interested in predicting differential attraction to and judgments about real life warrior psychopaths and fictional characters such as the Dark Knight from the Batman movies, or Lee Child’s character Jack Reacher, who exemplify these traits.
Investigators: Cameron Kay, Holly Arrow


Examining Conditions That Impact Charitable Behavior:
This project seeks to understand charitable giving behavior, and in particular investigates the conditions that might boost or diminish people’s willingness to contribute to specific charitable appeals. Many of the charitable appeals used in this work are related to refugee aid/outreach.
Investigator: Alex Garinther


Analyzing Counterterrorism Training Programs:
The goal of this work is to understand how to evaluate properly the effectiveness of programs that train military, police, and security personnel skills in visual search and crime detection. We work to quantify the learning outcomes and skill-building associated with these trainings, and use our findings to improve future programs in this area.
Investigator: Alex Garinther


Past Projects

How Groups Adapt to Adversity:
This project examines how groups respond to adversity. The study investigates why some groups respond to adversity in adaptive, effective ways while others deteriorate under stress. The current focus is on how leadership styles affect a group’s response to a complex, highly difficult task.
Investigator: Trevor Setvin


Resilience Against Combat Stress:
With over two million deployments of soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, the impact of combat stress is becoming increasingly important. While a large amount of the combat stress literature concerns treatment, a new focus of research and conceptual development is prevention and resilience. Some promising steps have been taken to differentiate among domains of combat stress injury and resilience, including physical, psychological, behavioral and occupational, medical and environmental, nutritional, spiritual, social, and family domains (Jonas, O’Connor, Deuster, & Macedonia, 2010). Our current study is examining how social support promotes resilience and determines psychological outcomes.
Source: Veterans History Project
Investigator: Bill Schumacher


Cross-Cultural Project:
We are examining how behavior in a crisis is viewed by people in different countries.
Investigators: Erica Buczek-Tanaka, Holly Arrow


Groups and Relational Aggression:
This project explores how group members respond to relational aggression (e.g., gossip, ostracism) against a fellow group member. Past research with K-12 students indicates that former victims of relational aggression reduce their risk of being targeted if they have at least one friend. The current study investigates the means by which a college student’s membership in an on- or off-campus group such as a sports team, religious organization, Greek society, or a music group might have a similar buffering effect. We anticipate that the gender composition of the group (all-female, all-male, mixed-sex) will affect how “bystander” members respond to aggression against a fellow group member.
Investigator: Mary Hetrick


Finding your place: How gender composition affects emergent group influence hierarchies:
An existing dataset of 43 growing groups was used to test whether influence hierarchies in all-female, majority-female, and majority-male groups stabilized at the same rate and in the same way.  Contrary to Martin’s (2009) findings, both the top (alpha) and the bottom (omega) ends of the influence hierarchies stabilized most quickly in the all-female groups.  Sex composition and the pattern of group growth also interacted in predicting influence stability.  Groups that grew from two to four to five members stabilized more quickly than groups that grew from two to three to five members.  This was especially true of majority-male groups, whose only female member arrived last and alone.  Findings suggest that membership change is more likely to disrupt the stabilization of group structure when it also changes the group’s gender composition.
Investigator: Constance Locklear
Download the Poster Here!


Military Influence Tactics: Lessons Learned in Iraq and Afghanistan:
For most influence attempts in everyday life, success makes life easier and failure is a disappointment, not a tragedy. When U.S. soldiers deployed overseas attempt to influence civilians, however, success can save lives and failure can be deadly. Along with the high stakes consequences of influence attempts, soldiers face the challenges of bridging differences in language, culture, beliefs, and agendas. The current study examined cross-cultural influence attempts made by deployed soldiers, contributing to existing influence research by examining influence attempts in a complex and challenging wartime environment. Survey data from 228 military personnel with deployment experience to Iraq and Afghanistan revealed that empathy, respect, prior relationships, and familiarity with influence targets predicted success. Five influence technique clusters emerged, and use of technique clusters involving resources and positive feelings were more successful than negative tactics.
Investigator: Andrea Wolfe


Rank Matters: Tactics U.S. Military Personnel Use to Influence Civilians:
One hundred twenty-six U.S. military personnel (68 enlisted, 58 officers) completed an online survey about the influence tactics they used with Iraqi and Afghani civilians (Wolfe, 2011).  Clusters of influence tactic clusters that were associated with successful influence attempts (positive feelings and resources) were used more commonly than those associated with less successful attempts (negative and power differential). The tendency to choose successful over unsuccessful tactics was stronger for officers than enlisted.
Download the Poster here!
Investigator: Zach Land