This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Costanza, R. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Review Essay: The Nuclear Arms Race and the Theory of Social Traps

Center for Wetland Resources, Louisiana State University

Social traps are those all too common situations in which people behave contrary to their own self-interest while making what appear to them to be rational decisions. These situations may provide useful models for explaining (and analyzing possible escapes from) the nuclear arms race. The literature on social traps is reviewed, concentrating on three recent books: (1) Social Traps (1980) by J.G. Cross and M.J. Guyer, which provides a taxonomy of traps and escapes: (2) Too Much Invested to Quit (1980) by A.I. Teger, which is a detailed experimental study of the dollar auction game, an easily repeatable social trap designed to study conflict escalation; and (3) The War Trap (1981) by B. Bueno de Mesquita, which is only tangentially about social traps but provides supporting data and models on the history of international conflicts. Pos sible escapes from the nuclear arms trap are reviewed and the idea of a weapons tax to convert the trap into a trade-off is proposed and discussed.

Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 21, No. 1, 79-86 (1984)
DOI: 10.1177/002234338402100106


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?