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Group conflict


Group conflict, or hostilities between different groups, is a feature common to all forms of social organization (e.g., sports teams, ethnic groups, nations, religions, gangs). Although group conflict is one of the most complex phenomena studied by social scientists, the history of the human race evidences a series of group-level conflicts that have gained notoriety over the years. For example, from 1820 to 1945, it has been estimated that at least 59 million persons were killed during conflicts between groups of one type or another. Literature suggests that the number of fatalities nearly doubled between the years 1914 to 1964 as a result of further group conflict.

Group conflict can be separated into two sub-categories of conflict: inter-group conflict (in which distinct groups of individuals are at odds with one another), and intra-group conflict (in which select individuals that are part of the same group clash with one another). Although both forms of conflict have the ability to spiral upward in severity, it has been noted that conflict present at the group level (i.e., inter-group rivalries) is generally considered to be more powerful than conflict present at an individual level – a phenomenon known as the discontinuity effect.

Social psychology, specifically the discontinuity effect of inter-group conflict, suggests that "groups are generally even more competitive and aggressive than individuals". Two main sources of intergroup conflict have been identified: "competition for valued material resources, according to realistic conflict theory, or for social rewards like respect and esteem...as described by relative deprivation theory"

Group conflict can easily enter an escalating spiral of hostility marked by polarisation of views into black and white, with comparable actions viewed in diametrically opposite ways: "we offer concessions, but they attempt to lure us with ploys. We are steadfast and courageous, but they are unyielding, irrational, stubborn, and blinded by ideology".

It is widely believed that intergroup and intragroup hostility are (at least to some degree) inversely related: that "there is, unhappily, an inverse relationship between external wars and internal strife". Thus "in politics, for example, everyone can get an extraordinarily comforting feeling of mutual support from their group by focussing on an enemy".Freud described a similarly quasi-benign version, whereby "it is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and ridiculing each other – like the Spaniards and Portuguese, for instance...[as] a convenient and relatively harmless satisfaction of the inclination to aggression, by means of which cohesion between the members of the community is made easier". The harder version of the theory would suggest that "pent-up sub-group aggression, if it cannot combine with the pent-up aggression of other sub-groups to attack a common, foreign enemy, will vent itself in the form of riots, persecutions and rebellions".


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