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The Role of Rewards in Motivating Participation in Simple Warfare

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Abstract

In the absence of explicit punitive sanctions, why do individuals voluntarily participate in intergroup warfare when doing so incurs a mortality risk? Here we consider the motivation of individuals for participating in warfare. We hypothesize that in addition to other considerations, individuals are incentivized by the possibility of rewards. We test a prediction of this “cultural rewards war-risk hypothesis” with ethnographic literature on warfare in small-scale societies. We find that a greater number of benefits from warfare is associated with a higher rate of death from conflict. This provides preliminary support for the relationship between rewards and participation in warfare.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Ralph Montilio of Tozzer Library for his generous assistance in locating references. We thank Padmini Iyer and four anonymous reviewers for comments and suggestions.

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  1. Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Peabody Museum, 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Luke Glowacki & Richard W. Wrangham

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Glowacki, L., Wrangham, R.W. The Role of Rewards in Motivating Participation in Simple Warfare. Hum Nat 24, 444–460 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-013-9178-8

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