The Shared-Foundation Attentional Displacement and Recursive Coalition Reconfiguration Theory

.This paper proposes the Shared-Foundation Attentional Displacement and Recursive Coalition Reconfiguration Theory (SFAD-RCRT), an integrated framework for investigating why groups that share a broad foundational belief feature may nevertheless prioritize disputes among themselves over a more fundamental difference between their position and a non-belief position. The primary case concerns religious or belief-based groups that disagree over doctrine, institutional authority, practices, or subgroup identity while retaining some broader feature of belief in common. The framework proposes that structural overlap does not necessarily become a salient superordinate identity. Under certain conditions, subgroup differentiation, historical grievances, issue-specific relevance, and unequal attention allocation may coincide with persistent internal conflict and comparatively lower attention to foundational belief-non-belief differences.The framework integrates two complementary modules. The first, Shared-Foundation Attentional Displacement (SFAD), concerns the distinction between structural overlap, identity salience, attentional allocation, and intra-belief conflict persistence. The second, Recursive Coalition Reconfiguration (RCRT), explains how new events or changes in relevance can alter threat appraisal, response selection, intergroup coordination, coalition formation, and subsequent feedback.Fourteen analytical layers, ten research domains, ten named mechanisms, six theoretical propositions, twelve testable hypotheses, and an operational measurement architecture are specified. Proposed mathematical components include a relative Attentional Displacement Index, a Foundation-Salience Gap index, a multinomial attention allocation model, a threat-appraisal model, a coalition-formation model, and a longitudinal conflict-persistence model.The mathematical expressions are proposed specifications rather than empirically established equations. The theory does not assume that non-belief entails hostility toward religion, that religious groups necessarily perceive non-belief as threatening, or that shared foundations inevitably lead to coalition formation. These relationships remain conditional and falsifiable. No empirical dataset is analyzed in this paper; the framework is presented as a research architecture requiring operational validation, comparison with established theories, and independent replication Keywords : attentional displacement; shared foundations; religious identity; intra-belief conflict; subgroup differentiation; threat appraisal; coalition formation; recursive feedback; social identity; mathematical modeling.