ERC Advanced Grants for Carsten de Dreu
Psychologist Carsten de Dreu has received an 'advanced grant' of the European Research Council (ERC). The grant is for well-established top researchers with a recent high-level research track-record and profile which identifies them as leaders in their field.
Social and Organisational psychologist De Dreu receives € 2.5 million for his research project: Pressured to Attack: How Carrying-Capacity Stress Creates and Shapes Intergroup Conflict
What is the background of your research project?
Throughout history, groups of people fighting each other has caused tremendous suffering. While behavioral science research has advanced our understanding of such intergroup conflict, it has exclusively focused on micro-level processes within and between groups at conflict.
Disciplines that employ a more historical perspective, like climate studies or political geography report that macro-level pressures due to changes in climate or economic scarcity can go along with social unrest and wars. I am interested in questions such as: How do these macro-level pressures relate to micro-level processes? Do they both occur independently, or do macro-level pressures trigger micro-level processes that cause intergroup conflict? And if so, which micro-level processes are triggered, and how? We urgently need answers to these questions, due to unavoidable signs of climate change and increasing resource scarcities.
How do you propose to study this?
I propose carrying-capacity stress (CCS) as the missing link between macro-level pressures and micro-level processes. A group experiences CCS when its resources do not suffice to maintain its functionality. CCS is a function of macro-level pressures and creates intergroup conflict because it impacts micro-level motivation to contribute to one’s group’s fighting capacity and shapes the coordination of individual contributions to out-group aggression through emergent norms, communication and leadership.
How will you test this?
To test these propositions I develop a parametric model of CCS that is amenable to measurement and experimentation, and use techniques used in my work on conflict and cooperation: Meta-analyses and time-series analysis of macro-level historical data; experiments on intergroup conflict; and measurement of neuro-hormonal correlates of cooperation and conflict. In combination, this project provides novel multi-level conflict theory that integrates macro-level discoveries in climate research and political geography with micro-level processes uncovered in the biobehavioral sciences.
The European Research Council, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the first European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. Every year, it selects and funds the very best, creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based in Europe. The ERC has three core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants and Advanced Grants.
ERC Advanced Grants: €540 million from EU to 231 senior researchers