Thinking about Arabs and Muslims makes Americans shoot faster: Effects of category accessibility on aggressive responses in a shooter paradigm

Is the same person perceived as more dangerous if the perceiver is induced to think about Arab and Muslim categories versus no category? Using the shooter paradigm, this study investigated the effects of the accessibility of ethnic (Arab) versus religious (Muslim) categories versus no category on spontaneous aggressive responses toward a target with an ambiguous appearance. Results demonstrated that shooting reactions toward armed targets were faster than non‐shooting reactions toward unarmed targets, especially if the target was a man. Despite these main effects, participants made faster decisions to shoot an ambiguous armed target if primed with the category Arab or Muslim (versus no category priming). The findings indicate that the mere priming of these social categories is sufficient to facilitate aggressive responses, even if the targets themselves are ambiguous. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conscious inhibitions: Freud,anti-Semitism,and Hobbesian imagination

This work aims to portray the effects of Freud’s anxiety about anti-Semitic violence on his political theory and metapsychology. Taking as its entry point Freud’s reorientation of anti-Semitism as aggressive action, I argue that Freud’s fear of the violent mob can be located in three interconnected dimensions of his work, all deeply informed by Hobbesian imagination. First, Freud accepted a Hobbesian vision of social antagonism into his political theory; second, he formulated a deeper, more efficient defence mechanism against mob violence with his notion of psychical guilt; third, Freud’s fears penetrated his metapsychology. Suffering from anti-Semitism, Freud was not only quick to accept a Hobbesian perspective – he also reconstructed it to a degree that radically changed its meaning. Freud’s third and most pervasive manoeuvre destabilized one of Hobbes’s fundamental theoretical tenets by suggesting that the Hobbesian State of Nature is inherently a non-human reality.     

Support for Self‐Censorship Among Israelis as a Barrier to Resolving the Israeli‐Palestinian Conflict

Self‐censorship, defined as an “act of intentionally and voluntarily withholding information from others in the absence of formal obstacles” often serves as a barrier to resolving intractable conflicts. Specifically, in order to protect the group, and in absence of objective constraints such as institutionalized censorship, individuals practice self‐censorship and support its practice by other society members. This prevents free flow and transparency of information, within a society, regarding the conflict and the adversary. In an attempt to investigate the factors that contribute to the functioning of self‐censorship as a sociopsychological barrier to conflict resolution, a longitudinal study was conducted among a large sample of Jews in Israel. The survey was administered in three waves: a few months before, during, and a few months after Israel's Operation Pillar of Defense in the Gaza Strip. The findings showed that armed confrontation can increase support for self‐censorship. In addition, the findings revealed that personal characteristics (e.g., authoritarianism, ethnocentrism, siege mentality) predicted support for self‐censorship, which, in turn, mediated the effect of personal characteristics on support for negotiations and for providing humanitarian aid. The theoretical as well as the applied implications of the findings are discussed.     

Mothers’ and Fathers’ Reluctance to Seek Psychological Help for Their Children

We investigated the gap between parents’ willingness to seek help for their children and their willingness to refer other parents to help, and the relationship of this gap to gender. Two hundred and eleven parent couples with elementary-school children reported their willingness to seek help from professional and informal sources for a hypothetical problem with their child, and their willingness to refer a friend’s child with an identical problem to similar help. Attitudes toward help seeking and parental behaviors were also measured. Findings revealed that parents were more willing to refer a friend’s child to professional help than they were to seek such help for their own child, although no gap was found regarding informal help. No gender differences were found regarding willingness to seek help or to refer another, although gender was related to variables that predicted help seeking.     

When Victimhood Goes to War? Israel and Victim Claims

Prominent sociopsychological approaches interpret collective victimhood as inseparable, central characteristic of societies involved in intractable conflicts. Victimhood is broadly perceived as an essential conflict-supportive belief also in other disciplines. In the context of Israel, there is a cross-disciplinary consensus that collective victimhood is the country's foundational identity. This project argues that states' employment of this theme changes and is context dependent. It discusses under what conditions Israel's political elites incorporate victim narratives towards armed conflicts. It examines public communication during the 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense (OPD) and the Yom Kippur war of 1973 (YKW). Employing a modified method of narrative conceptualization analysis, the research demonstrates that victim narratives were used almost twice as much during OPD than during YKW. The findings suggest that we need to differentiate between the role these narratives play for collectives versus states. For the latter, the presence of victim narratives is highly variable and reflects strategic developments. The project is the first systematic study exposing that victim narratives can be a challenge for governance. By conceptualizing victim narratives as claims, it captures the dynamic, contextual characteristics of collective victimhood in state affairs offering a theoretical tool for understanding the political dimension of this identification.     

Perceptions of Prolonged Occupation as Barriers to Conflict Resolution

The goal of this research was to examine whether a denial of a prolonged occupation by the occupying society constitutes a meaningful sociopsychological barrier to resolving the conflict peacefully. We hypothesized that this perception will be associated with objections both to conflict resolution processes and to specific compromises intended to end the occupation. Furthermore, we hypothesized that the association between denial of the occupation and compromises will be partially mediated by denial of its costs, low levels of moral emotions, and closure to new information about the conflict. Taking the prolonged Israeli occupation as our case study, we used three nationwide representative polls of Jewish Israelis to test our hypotheses. The studies supported our hypotheses, pointing to the distinct role that the perception of prolonged occupation by the occupying society plays in peacefully ending this situation, and the psychological mechanisms underlying occupation denial as a barrier to conflict resolution.     

Ideological orientation and social context as moderators of the effect of terrorism: The case of Israeli‐Jewish public opinion regarding peace

The study investigated the effect of severe terror attacks on Israeli‐Jewish public opinion regarding peace in a context of progress toward peace (1994–1997) compared to a context of conflict escalation (2001–2002). We hypothesized that ideological orientations supporting peace (doves) or opposing it (hawks), as well as the social context in which terror occurs, would moderate its effects. We used the database of Peace Index polls, administered monthly to representative samples of Israeli Jews. Polls pose three recurring questions regarding peace. We selected eight polls conducted within a week or less following a severe terror attack, and matched each to a “control” poll, taken at the nearest available time and not preceded by terror. Findings showed that during the 1990s, hawks' opinions regarding peace became less favorable following terror, whereas doves exhibited minimal opinion change. During 2001–2002, however, doves' opinions regarding peace became less favorable following terror, whereas hawks' support for peace increased while their belief in peace did not change. This suggests that the effect of terror on opinions regarding peace varies according to ideological orientations and the transitional context in which terror occurs, implying that contextual factors from multiple levels may interact to affect individuals' opinions. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Who wants to be collectively guilty? A causal role for motivation in the regulation of collective guilt

Motivation and Emotion - Two studies tested the role of guilt instrumentality in motivating the regulation of collective guilt up or down by motivated reasoning, and its dependence on mental...