Salient threat cues raise perceived threat probability and trigger preemptive retaliation

Evidence

The deleterious consequences of the players being able to threaten one another in the Trucking Game may partly be accounted for by the way in which the prominent positioning of the gates focuses attention on that potential threat. From Ross et al.’s (1977) results one would infer that this prominence leads each to increase the subjective probability of the threat being implemented. This is turn could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy as each attempts to get his retaliation in first. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 694

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Hardin’s observability thesis — visibility of threat options itself alters strategic behavior, the sensory substrate of trust in the reader’s wider project. — connects to: Perspective taking can weaken fear-based realistic threat via induced empathy. — Blake M. Riek, Eric W. Mania, and Samuel L. Gaertner, Intergroup Threat and Outgroup…, 166
• SEED: Possible essay angle: the geometry of threat display in trust scenarios — how the mere physical prominence of conflict options degrades cooperation.