For Cause and Comrade: Devoted Actors and Willingness to Fight

Scott Atran,Angel Gomez,Hammad Sheikh

doi:10.21237/c7clio5124900

Abstract

This report provides initial evidence that “devoted actors” who are unconditionally committed to a sacred cause, as well as to their comrades, willingly make costly sacrifices, including fighting and dying. Although American military analysts since WWII tend to attribute fighting spirit to leadership and the bond of comradeship in combat as a manifestation of rational self-interest, evidence also suggests that sacrifice for a cause in ways independent, or all out of proportion, from the reasonable likelihood of success may be critical. Here, we show the first empirical evidence that sacred values (as when land or law becomes holy or hallowed) and identity fusion (when personal and group identities collapse into a unique identity to generate a collective sense of invincibility and special destiny) can interact to produce willingness to make costly sacrifices for a primary reference group: by looking at the relative strength of the sacred values of Sharia versus Democracy among potential foreign fighter volunteers from Morocco. Devotion to a sacred cause, in conjunction with unconditional commitment to comrades, may be what allows low-power groups to endure and often prevail against materially stronger foes.

Highlights

What determines the “political pull” and “fighting spirit” that motivates people to knowingly risks lives, and even probable death, in joining revolutionary and insurgent groups battling against much greater material forces? In this report, we provide arguments and initial evidence that “devoted actors” who are unconditionally committed to their sacred cause, as well as to their comrades, willingly make costly sacrifices, including fighting and dying
We have presented initial evidence for the hypothesis that “devoted actors” who are unconditionally committed to a sacred cause, as well as to their comrades, express willingness to make costly sacrifices, including fighting and dying
Casablanca’s Sidi Moumen, we found a highly significant interaction between the sacred value of Sharia and fusion with close comrades in predicting willingness to make costly sacrifices

Summary

Introduction

In For Cause and Comrades, James McPherson (1997) notes that, unlike later American armies of mostly draftees and professional soldiers, Civil War armies on both sides were both composed mainly of volunteers who often joined up and fought with family, friends and neighbors from the same communities. The Lincoln Brigade was not religious, far from it, but it was motivated by a transcendental cause of socialism as a historical necessity opposed by the evil of fascism It appears, that, despite U.S patriotic propaganda and the studies that discount it, American warfare from WWII to today may be an exception to the heartfelt sense of war as a noble cause.

Background

Findings

Conclusion