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Conflict and cooperation

The multi-level social dilemmas of intergroup interactions

Nature Reviews Psychology volume 4, page 684 (2025)Cite this article

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Researchers working on a team grant proposal face a common dilemma. All the researchers in the team benefit if the proposal is funded, but writing proposals is exhausting and takes a lot of time. What is best for an individual researcher (letting their teammates do the hard work) is not best for the team, and what helps a team win (getting everyone to contribute to their best ability) might not be good for all researchers. In the end, only a limited number of proposals will be funded. Having all teams push to the limit wastes everyone’s time and energy for no extra gain.

Intergroup conflicts — whether violent or not — are multi-level social dilemmas with tensions within and between groups. Each group must rally contributions to win. But because the rewards of winning are often shared by all members (such as grant money for a team project or territorial gains in wars), self-interested people might prefer to hold back and let others bear the cost of contribution. Meanwhile, strong cooperation within groups intensifies competition and might lead to a waste of resources. Considering the collective welfare of all people irrespective of their group membership, the best choice in this scenario would be not to compete at all.

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References

Original article

  • Bornstein, G. Intergroup conflict: individual, group, and collective interests. Person. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 7, 129–145 (2003)

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  • Böhm, R., Rusch, H. & Baron, J. The psychology of intergroup conflict: a review of theories and measures. J. Econ. Behav. Organ. 178, 947–962 (2020)

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  • Thielmann, I., Böhm, R., Ott, M. & Hilbig, B. E. Economic games: an introduction and guide for research. Collabra Psychol. 7, 19004 (2021)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Qinyu Xiao

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  1. Qinyu Xiao
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Correspondence to Qinyu Xiao.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Xiao, Q. The multi-level social dilemmas of intergroup interactions. Nat Rev Psychol 4, 684 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-025-00498-y

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