2019-2022 | FWO
Against the background of the growing success of political actors that rally support with narratives that contain a strong conflict element, this project assesses the particularities and consequences of perceiving the world through the lens of social conflict in Western (European) societies among the public at large. We seek to answer three interrelated research questions. First, how can we measure conflict thinking at the individual level and what is the social and psychological profile of people who adhere to conflict thinking in contemporary European societies? Second, how do characteristics of the social context (country level) affect individual-level conflict thinking? And finally, what are (1) the causal origins and (2) behavioural and attitudinal consequences of conflict thinking? To answer these questions we rely on both cross-national and single-country studies (RQ1 & 2) as well as on (RQ3) population-based experiments that assess whether subtle manipulations in terms of (a) feelings of vulnerability and/or (b) the presence of conflict frames in new stories result in adaptations of thought and behaviour.
