The fire burns within: Individual motivations for self-sacrifice

The question whether individual behavior is driven not only by situational circumstances, but also by person-specific differences, has long occupied psychology (Epstein & O'Brien Reference Epstein and O'Brien1985) and also applies to extreme self-sacrificial behavior in intergroup conflict. Whitehouse's theory largely considers situation-specific factors as drivers of self-sacrifice in intergroup contexts: “Fusion” with the in-group as an antecedent for individuals’ willingness to self-sacrifice for the group is thought to stem from transformative experiences and perceived shared biological properties. Adding to the theory from a perspective of interindividual differences, I argue that actors’ motivations and individual level characteristics could contribute to extreme self-sacrificial behavior. I approach the question of which individual-level differences could increase individuals’ propensity to commit self-sacrificial acts in intergroup conflict from two lines of reasoning. First, I consider person-specific factors associated with individuals’ probability to commit self-harming acts outside of intergroup conflicts, arguing that a general individual-level tendency toward such behavior may also manifest in an increased inclination to self-sacrifice in intergroup conflicts. Second, I consider person-specific factors associated with individuals’ probability to enter intergroup conflicts, arguing that people who are more likely to join intergroup conflicts are also more likely to take extreme measures in these conflicts. In sum, I argue that understanding self-sacrifice requires a broad integration of situation- and person-specific factors.

First, predictors of individuals’ propensity to commit self-sacrifice in general could also predict self-sacrifice in intergroup conflict. Interindividual differences have been considered to explain self-harm with respect to both clinically relevant behavior (Gratz Reference Gratz2003; Gratz et al. Reference Gratz, Conrad and Roemer2002), which has been related to individual emotions and relationship attachments, and nonclinical self-harm, which has been related to narcissism and risk attitudes (Bobadilla Reference Bobadilla2014; Vazire & Funder Reference Vazire and Funder2006), as well as self-deception (Fink & Trivers Reference Fink and Trivers2014; Trivers Reference Trivers2006). Moreover, martyrdom, defined as individuals’ readiness to suffer and sacrifice their lives for a cause, has been related to the readiness to self-sacrifice in a video game and the endurance of pain (Bélanger et al. Reference Bélanger, Caouette, Sharvit and Dugas2014).

Additionally, self-sacrifice can be explained from the perspective of decision theory as an individual's choice, affecting both one's own and others’ outcomes. To reach a decision, individuals are argued to weigh outcomes for themselves and other parties affected and to have stable social preferences, that is, preferences for outcome distributions (Messick & McClintock Reference Messick and McClintock1968). Such social preferences can be construed as inequality concerns (Bolton & Ockenfels Reference Bolton and Ockenfels2000; Fehr & Schmidt Reference Fehr and Schmidt1999) or individuals’ social value orientation (SVO) (Messick & McClintock Reference Messick and McClintock1968). Self-sacrificial behavior can be understood in the scope of the continuous model of SVO (Griesinger & Livingston Reference Griesinger and Livingston1973) as assigning no or negative value to own outcomes and can be differentiated by its motivation to promote, disregard, or decrease others’ outcomes (Fig. 1). For example, when the Vietnamese monk Quảng Đức decided to publicly burn himself to death in 1963 to protest the persecution of Buddhists, he incurred extremely negative outcomes for himself. However, this decision also imposed extreme costs on the oppressive Diệm government, which would eventually be overthrown, and extreme positive outcomes for Buddhists in the country. In other words, understanding self-sacrifice as driven by a preference to incur costs or to disregard own outcomes may be a promising approach to understanding individual-level motivations as drivers for this type of behavior within and beyond intergroup conflicts.

Figure 1.

Graphical model of the dimensions of social value orientation.

Second, individuals’ propensity to join intergroup conflict could explain why some also choose self-sacrifice as a means to contribute to intergroup conflict. For example, some groupy decision makers consistently favor their in-group across different situations, whereas others are conditionally groupy or nongroupy (Kranton & Sanders Reference Kranton and Sanders2017). At least in part, some theories of intergroup conflict recognize the contribution of interindividual differences to individual behavior in intergroup conflict (Duckitt et al. Reference Duckitt, Wagner, du Plessis and Birum2002), juxtaposing authoritarian attitudes and social dominance. For example, social dominance orientation (SDO) (Pratto et al. Reference Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth and Malle1994; Sidanius et al. Reference Sidanius, Pratto and Mitchell1994), the individual preference for between-group hierarchy in society, has been associated with a competitive, cutthroat worldview (Perry et al. Reference Perry, Sibley and Duckitt2013), aggressive intergroup attitudes (Ho et al. Reference Ho, Sidanius, Pratto, Levin, Thomsen, Kteily and Sheehy-Skeffington2012), and support of violence against out-groups, for example, against immigrants (Thomsen et al. Reference Thomsen, Green and Sidanius2008). Extreme preferences for socially dominating others may therefore also be connected to extreme out-group violence, even including self-sacrifice as a tool for domination.

Again taking a decision-making perspective incorporating social preferences, individual behavior in intergroup conflict could be construed as choices in a public goods game (Choi & Bowles Reference Choi and Bowles2007). Individuals decide how much effort or other resources to invest in intergroup conflict, and although the individually rational option is to contribute nothing, the group goal (survival, social dominance, etc.) requires the in-group to invest more than competing groups, leaving all in-group members better off in case of success. Investments in intergroup conflict for the benefit of the in-group or to hurt the out-group at one's own cost (e.g., parochial altruism [Bernhard et al. Reference Bernhard, Fischbacher and Fehr2006]) may depend on SVO (Aaldering et al. Reference Aaldering, Greer, Van Kleef and De Dreu2013; but see Thielmann & Böhm Reference Thielmann and Böhm2016). Among individuals who chronically disregard or discount their own outcomes and assign positive value to in-group or negative value to out-group outcomes, self-sacrifice could be understood as a rational (yet extreme) tool for resolving intergroup conflict.

In sum, I propose enriching Whitehouse's framework by considering individual differences as additional drivers of extreme self-sacrifice. In particular, I suggest that SVO is a promising framework to understand the propensity both to self-sacrifice and to engage in intergroup conflict from the perspective of decision theory. Beyond SVO, other interindividual differences such as SDO, the tendency to deceive oneself, and narcissism and risk-seeking could be investigated to predict extreme self-sacrifice. Empirically assessing the predictive power of such person-specific factors in relation to and interacting with situational factors might enrich the theoretical model describing self-sacrifice.