ABSTRACT
The long-term goal of this research is to bridge the gap between simple particlelike models which have traditionally been used by mathematical scientists to describe the kinetics of insurgent conflicts and terrorist activity, and the complex reality of real-world scenarios in which social, cultural and behavioral aspects play a crucial role in the underlying decision-making at the level of both individuals and groups. As a first step, I discuss here the global patterns which appear in the escalation and severity of individual violent events in human conflicts and global terrorism. I also discuss virtual conflict within massively parallel online roleplaying games. I summarize the minimal mechanistic models that we have developed, and I explain why this mechanistic approach, which is inspired by nonequilibrium statistical physics, fits naturally within the framework of recent ideas within the social science literature concerning analytical sociology. These findings therefore support the push within social science, in particular social psychology, to explain conflict dynamics in terms of human social, cultural and behavioral factors.
