Doubts and Dogmatism in Conflict Behaviour

Abstract

We consider a conflict under incomplete information where two opponents fight to impose their preferred policy. Before the conflict, one opponent (the agent) trusts the information received by his principal. Under some conditions, the principal induces hawkish attitudes in the agent: the agent never doubts the optimality of his preferred policy, conflicts are violent, and bad decisions are sometimes made. Under other conditions, the agent believes that his opponent may be right, even when all evidence indicates that the policy preferred by the opponent is certainly suboptimal. In this case, the agent adopts dovish attitudes and conflicts are less violent.