Making Sense, Making Choices
How Civilians Choose Survival Strategies during Violence
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3494566 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Aidan Milliff (0000-0003-4503-5154, Florida State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 118 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 1379-1397 |
| Publication date | 2024-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Political Science Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0003055423001259 |
| OpenAlex | W4389144784 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 71 |
How do ordinary people choose survival strategies during intense, surprising political violence? Why do some flee violence, while others fight back, adapt, or hide? Individual decision-making during violence has vast political consequences, but remains poorly understood. I develop a decision-making theory focused on individual appraisals of how controllable and predictable violent environments are. I apply my theory, situational appraisal theory, to explain the choices of Indian Sikhs during the 1980s-1990s Punjab crisis and 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms. In original interviews plus qualitative and machine learning analysis of 509 oral histories, I show that control and predictability appraisals influence strategy selection. People who perceive "low" control over threats often avoid threats rather than approach them. People who perceive "low" predictability in threat evolution prefer more-disruptive strategies over moderate, risk-monitoring options. Appraisals explain behavior variation even after accounting for individual demographics and conflict characteristics, and also account for survival strategy changes over time
Control (management · Criminology · Demographics · Economics · Political science · Politics · Predictability · Situational ethics · Sociology · Variation (astronomy · Demography · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
High accuracy with low costs
Fight, Flight, Collaborate, or Adapt
Civil Organizing in War
Risky Business
Informational lobbying and commercial diplomacy
Social reintegration of former al-Shabaab militants
Civilian Mindsets and Attitudes toward Peace in Wartime
Dynamics of internal displacement and conflict in Somalia
Civilian militia formation and protection against rebel violence
Estimating the Impact of Drone Strikes on Civilians Using Call Detail Records
On War
Democracy and Displacement in Colombia's Civil War
Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador
Weapons of Mass Migration
Military Power
Resistance and Rebellion
Exposure to War Crimes and Implications for Peace Building in Northern Uganda
Emotion and memory narrowing
Beyond valence
Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function
Telling more than we can know
Perception and Misperception in International Politics
Civilian Strategy in Civil War
Resilient Communities
Rivalry and Revenge
Ordinary Jews
Surviving the War in Syria
Resisting War
On the Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
The Politics of Uncertainty
The Logic of Violence in Civil War
Rebelocracy
Making sense of the meaning literature
Mobilizing in Uncertainty
Anger, legacies of violence, and group conflict
Sometimes You Just Have to Leave
The “Hearts and Minds” Fallacy
Relations among emotion, appraisal, and emotional action readiness
The politics of India since independence
War Comes to Long An
Forgotten Conflicts
Machine Learning Predictions as Regression Covariates
Narratives of Fear in Syria
Civilian Contention in Civil War
Facts Shape Feelings
How Narratives and Evidence Influence Rumor Belief in Conflict Zones
Rationalist explanations for war
Sex and Death
Give Me Attitudes
Conflict‐Induced Displacement, Understanding the Causes of Flight
Violence, Empathy and Altruism
Patterns of cognitive appraisal in emotion
Availability
The concept of power
Ground Hog Da Din' for the Sikh insurgency
Civilian Cooperation and Non-Cooperation with Non-State Armed Groups
Warfare, political identities, and displacement in Spain and Colombia
Horizontal Immobility
Seeking Safety
Dynamics of internal resettlement during civil war
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Can War Foster Cooperation
Ethics of archival research on political violence
Who dissents? Self-efficacy and opposition action after state-sponsored election violence
Risk tolerance during conflict
Introducing Acled
Crime Victimization and Political Participation
Religious Minorities and Resistance to Genocide
Can Employment Reduce Lawlessness and Rebellion? A Field Experiment with High-Risk Men in a Fragile State
Nested Analysis as a Mixed-Method Strategy for Comparative Research
Victimcy, Girlfriending, Soldiering
The Moral Economy of the Peasant
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 8 |