Escalation is the phenomenon of something getting more intense step by step, for example a quarrel, or, notably, a war between states possessing weapons of mass destruction

Weapons of mass destruction

A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...

. Compare to escalator

Escalator

An escalator is a moving staircase – a conveyor transport device for carrying people between floors of a building. The device consists of a motor-driven chain of individual, linked steps that move up or down on tracks, allowing the step treads to remain horizontal.Escalators are used around the...

, a device that lifts something to a higher level. While the word escalation was used as early as in 1938, it was popularized during the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 by two important books: On Escalation (Herman Kahn

Herman Kahn

Herman Kahn was one of the preeminent futurists of the latter third of the twentieth century. In the early 1970s he predicted the rise of Japan as a major world power. He was a founder of the Hudson Institute think tank and originally came to prominence as a military strategist and systems...

, 1965) and Escalation and the Nuclear Option (Bernard Brodie, 1966).

In psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

, escalation is a change in behavior

Behavior

Behavior or behaviour refers to the actions and mannerisms made by organisms, systems, or artificial entities in conjunction with its environment, which includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the physical environment...

, usually from stable or acceptable towards unstable or unacceptable.

In corporate usage, escalation is an act of informing people on the next (higher) management level about a problem or a situation, to get their attention and help.

See also

• De-escalation
  De-escalation
  This is a commonlly used term in Social Work practice. It is used as an anger management tool to remove tension between two participants in a conflictual relationship or intervention. A cooling off period is experienced and then the potential for further communication is invitedDe-escalation refers...
  
  
• Cost escalation
  Cost escalation
  Cost escalation is defined as changes in the cost or price of specific goods or services in a given economy over a period of time. This is a similar to the concepts of inflation and deflation except that escalation is specific to an item or class of items , it is often not primarily driven by...
  
  
• Conflict escalation
  Conflict escalation
  Conflict escalation describes the escalation of a conflict to a more destructive, confrontational, painful, or otherwise "less comfortable" level; in particular, it is concerned with how persons or forces can be controlled or subdued in conflict...
  
  
• Privilege escalation
  Privilege escalation
  Privilege escalation is the act of exploiting a bug, design flaw or configuration oversight in an operating system or software application to gain elevated access to resources that are normally protected from an application or user...
  
  
• Irrational escalation
• Technological escalation
  Technological escalation
  Technological escalation describes the situation where two parties in competition tend to employ continual technological improvements in their attempt to defeat each other. Technology is defined here as a creative invention, either in the form of an object or a methodology...
  
  

External links

• Herman Kahns escalation ladder