Socio-psychological barriers to peace making: An empirical examination within the Israeli Jewish Society

TLDR

Socio‑psychological barriers sustain intractable conflicts by creating a closure that resists alternative information that could promote peacemaking. The authors aimed to validate a process model of how these barriers function in conflict resolution. They conducted a large‑scale survey of a nationwide representative sample of Israeli Jews, using a questionnaire that measured the model’s key variables. The results showed that general worldviews, values, authoritarianism, and implicit group theories predict openness to new information and readiness to compromise, mediated by conflict‑related beliefs such as victimhood and delegitimization, indicating that informational closure maintains non‑compromising attitudes.

Abstract

Socio-psychological barriers play a major role in the continuation of intractable conflicts. They are responsible for the socio-psychological closure that resists and prevents the entertainment of alternative information that could potentially facilitate the acceptance of ideas advancing peacemaking processes. In an attempt to validate a process model that depicts the functioning of the socio-psychological barriers to conflict resolution, an empirical study was conducted among a nationwide representative sample of Jews in Israel, within the context of the Middle Eastern conflict. The reported study utilized a large scale survey, based on a nationwide representative sample of Israeli Jews who were asked to respond to a questionnaire which included the model’s selected variables. As hypothesized, the results showed a path leading from general worldviews (e.g. General values, Right Wing Authoritarianism, Implicit theories about groups) to openness to new information and readiness to compromise through the mediation of the conflict-related societal beliefs (e.g. victimhood, delegitimization). These results indicate that closure to new information that may shed new light on both the rival and the conflict emerges as a crucial factor in the maintenance of society members’ non-compromising views. The theoretical as well as the applied implications of the findings are discussed.