Abstract
Members of societies involved in an intractable conflict usually consider costs that stem from the continuation of the conflict as unavoidable and even justify for their collective existence. This perception is well-anchored in widely shared conflict-supporting narratives that motivate them to avoid information that challenges their views about the conflict. However, since providing information about such major costs as a method for moderating conflict-related views has not been receiving much attention, in this research, we explore this venue. We examine what kind of costs, and under what conditions, exposure to major costs of a conflict affects openness to information and conciliatory attitudes among Israeli Jews in the context of the intractable Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Study 1 (N = 255) revealed that interventions based on messages providing information on mental health cost, economic cost, and cost of the conflict to Israeli democracy had (almost) no significant effect on perceptions of the participants of these prices, openness to new information about the conflict, or support for conciliatory policies. However, the existing perceptions that participants had about the cost of the conflict to Israeli democracy were positively associated with openness to alternative information about the conflict and support for conciliatory policies. Therefore, in Study 2 (N = 255), we tested whether providing information about future potential costs to the two fundamental characteristics of Israel, a democracy or a Jewish state, created by the continuation of the conflict, will induce attitude change regarding the conflict. The results indicate that information on the future cost to the democratic identity of Israel significantly affected the attitude of the participants regarding the conflict, while the effect was moderated by the level of religiosity. For secular participants, this manipulation created more openness to alternative information about the conflict and increased support for conciliatory policies, but for religious participants, it backfired. We discuss implications for the role of information about losses and the relationship between religiosity and attitudes regarding democracy and conflict.
Highlights
Societies that live under the harsh circumstances of a prolonged, violent conflict invest huge material and psychological resources for their continuous management (Kriesberg, 1993)
Since the conditions were unbalanced in terms of religiosity and gender [with 53.1 women to 46.9% men in the mental health cost condition, 45.3 women to 54.7% men in the economic cost condition, 65.1 women to 34.9% men in the democracy cost condition, and 40.6 women to 59.4% men in the control condition; χ 2(3) = 8.7, p = 0.034; conditions were similar in terms of political orientation and age of the participants; all pairwise comparison ps > 0.530], we controlled for these background variables throughout the statistical analysis
The second study examined whether information about future potential costs to the democracy of Israel or to its Jewish character created by the continuation of the conflict will create attitude change regarding the conflict
Summary
Societies that live under the harsh circumstances of a prolonged, violent conflict invest huge material and psychological resources for their continuous management (Kriesberg, 1993). Members of societies involved in the conflict usually consider their investment in the conflict as unavoidable and even justify and praise it as a necessary sacrifice for their collective existence (Bar-Tal, 2013). This perception is well-anchored in their collective conflictsupporting narratives that provide explanation for the outbreak of the conflict, justify its continuation, and provide rationale for the required immense investments. The narratives serve as a barrier to ideas and policies aimed at resolving the conflict peacefully (see Cairns and Roe, 2003; Coleman et al, 2009; Halperin and Bar-Tal, 2011; Garagozov, 2012)
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