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Peace Psychology Study Notes (Mid Term)

Class notes + What is Peace Psychology the Psychology of?
Origins of Peace Psych
- Cold War period (1947-1991)
o Psychologists reflected about the psychological reasons and
dynamic behind conflicts and violence
§ Unbridled arms race
§ Mutually distorted perceptions
§ Destructive communication patterns
§ Coercive interactions
§ Competition
§ Fear
o About war and how to avoid nuclear war
- Post 1991
o Greater sensitivity to geo-historical context
...
g
...

In the US, uses and abuses of power such as consumption patterns
leading to resource wars

o Differentiated perspective on violence: differences between direct
and structural violence (see below)
...

Peace psychology becoming integrated into academia
...
Can vary
in scale from interpersonal aggression (e
...
bulling) to interstate violence
(war)
...
Insidious
form of violence built into the fabric of political and economic systems
...
(e
...
disarming child soldiers in an episodic manner ends the
conflict but if they are not educated and successfully reintegrated into society,
they will turn to violence later in life perpetuating the cycle)
...
g
...
g
...

- Manifest (surface appearance) and latent (underlying) nature of
intergroup relations interact in intractable conflicts
...

§ Tendencies and patterns that over time explode into your
life causing the conflict to explode
§ Provide coherent view of the conflict
§ Outside views are challenged as inaccurate
§ Provide a stable platform for action

Can sometimes be hard to identify because everything is
open to interpretation
o Resistant to external influence
o Ingroup and outgroup relationships: confined interdependence
perpetuates stereotyping and gives rise to possible malignant
social relations (us vs them mentality)
o Emotionality: conflict about values etc
o Can start up to 10 years after a major conflict (dormant)
Causes:
o Breakdown in self-regulation: positive or reinforcing feedback vs
negative or inhibitive feedback
...

To solve the conflict
o Not by fixing the tangible, proximate causes but through
transforming the system
o Attractor disassembly: change feedback loops from reinforcing to
inhibitory
o Build a new latent attractor
o Bifurcation scenario: changing the number and type of attractors
in the system
...

- A manifestation of autonomous processes in the collective and individual
psyche
...

- Arises from the cultural unconscious as it interacts with both the
archetypal and personal realms of the psyche and broader outer world
...
e
...

- Carl Jung suggested that the ego and conscious work together to form our
personality (unconscious è self è conscious è ego)
...
Perhaps due to his own personal history, Jung
feared the consequences of the individual falling into the grip of collective
life and thus, living in the collective is seen by Jungians as destructive
...
Consider the ‘bipolar complex’ (John Weir Perry): an
individual or group with a unique cultural identity that is not in the grips of a
cultural complex is much freer to interact with other groups without being
pretty to the highly charged emotional context that can quickly alter the
perception and behaviour of different groups in relation to one another
...


-

o Linked to cultural history: collect experience that confirms their
historical point of view
...

o Groups should become integrated to form a third community,
keeping the original two identities whole and linked to their
origins
...

- Personalising the ‘other’ reduces prejudices and projections and facilities
integration and peace
...

- The human experience implies a relationship to the natural, built and
human environments
...

- Places of intersection carry the identity of both cultures and in combining
these two opposites, a third unique identity is formed
...
The outer environment
can also be modified to help create these places of intersection and there
is the hope that the split can end and that they can become harmonised
(place vs space)
...
Connection and
disconnection to the human experience (above)
...

- What do they do?
o Justify political struggle
o Give people a cause to fight for
o Propel action
- What do they consist of?
o Evaluative beliefs: there are no other possible alternatives to a
story
o Attitudes: how one evaluates a situation or object
o Values: ideas that guide thought and action
o Influence
o Prescribed character
- How are they broken down? In general, specific ideologies stem from
broader ideologies:
o Universalistic: visions of the ideal society in general
o Particularistic: visions of the ideal arrangement of one’s own
society
o Totalistic: e
...
socialism or fascism
o Molecular or partial: focusing on only parts of society
- How to analyze ideologies?
o Individualistic (note: ultimately any dimensional approach represents a
simplification of a complex system)
§ One dimensional: e
...
left vs right
§ Two dimensional:
• Relationship and boundaries between individuals
and groups - autonomy vs embeddeness
• Interdependence among individuals - egalitarianism
vs hierarchy (gird system)
§ Individuals can be:
• Socio-psychological: strong beliefs transform into
destructive behaviors
• Right wing authoritarianism: sensitive to threats
about social norms and cohesion
• Social dominance orientation: sensitive to threats
about established social hierarchy
§ Individual ideologies form from:
• Motivational concerns (Note: forms violent conflict in the
individual context)
• Existential, epistemic and relational concerns
• Attracted to hopeful ideologies

o Group (note: groups that hold the same ideologies are not necessarily defined

by objective characteristics but by more of a personal sense of identification e
...

not all feminists are women)

Strong or weak groups characterized by:
• Strong or weak group boundaries
• Group or individual influence on decisions
• Social pressure or freedom to conform
• Frequent or infrequent interaction
• Solidarity or individualistic social order
§ Grid Groups: absence or presence of social classifications
that constrain people’s behavior and prescribe rules
§ Ideologies serve to:
• Manage group goals
• Protect or further group interests
• Justify power and unequal access to resources of
groups with an advantageous position in society
(hierarchy-enhancing legitimizing myths)
§ Violent conflict from group ideology forms when (note: more
successful with higher institutionalization and very particular beliefs):
• Collective efficacy: the expectation that the group
will be successful in achieving its goals
• Existing unstable social conditions: difficult life
conditions
• Opportunity arises in the political environment
• Adversarial attributions: believe a particular enemy
can be blamed
• Absence of broader community support
• Intergroup process linked to power and domination
• Resistance and Competition
§ There is either a top down process or a bottom up process
to forming ideological groups
...

o Societal (forms an ideological climate: the culturally shared,
consensual aspects of ideologies)


Developed nations
Undeveloped nations
levels of violence
levels of violence
Hierarchy
Lower
Lower
Intellectual
Lower
Lower
autonomy
Harmony
Lower
Higher
Embeddeness
Higher
Lower
§

Affective autonomy

§

Lower

Higher

Violent conflict from society ideology forms when
o Difficult life conditions
o Political turmoil
o Treats to vital interests
o Parameters of the social structure challenged (group
and grid)


The Scope of Justice, Intergroup Conflict and Peace (Chapter 5)
- Scope of Justice: Our psychological boundary for fairness which can
change and develop over time as key societal spheres change
...
Can have inside
(morally included, expanded vision) or outside (morally excluded,
shrinking vision) scopes of justice
...
g
...
g
...
g
...
g
...
Shows that hate can
be mild, intermediate or sever from interpersonal hate to
collective hate
...

Formation of the scope of justice in conflicts:
o High levels of conflict can narrow the scope of justice (bias, hatred,
history, revenge etc)
o High levels of conflict can also widen the scope of justice and lead
to positive change in the future
...
Conflicts can be important junctures for
surfacing urgent concerns about social justice that can incite
positive change
...

Mental overlap (blurring) between ‘self’ (I) and group (we)
Ingroup members have the same values and beliefs è any event
affecting one individual in the group affects the self
o More likely to seek retribution and revenge
o
o
o
o
o

-

o Perception of ingroup continuity (past event bias)
...

o Depersonalization of the outgroup
o Loss of individuality
How people identify with groups: (Note: these are explained separately but in
reality function in tandem with one another
...

i
...
resolving conflicts by changing the focus of identification from
a subordinate to a superordinate
...

o Crossed Categorization Model: creating an awareness that
people belong to several different groups at one time
...

o Social Identity Complexity: an individual's subjective
representation of the interrelationships among his or her multiple
group identities which reflects the degree of overlap perceived to
exist between groups of which a person is simultaneously a
member
...

When people strongly identify with their multiple identities separately
they have a high identity complexity but if they see them as overlapping,
they have a low identity complexity
...
g
...
g
...
s
...

- 24 male participants
- Clothing emphasised positions
- The results of the experiment favor situational attribution of behavior
rather than dispositional attribution (a result caused by internal
characteristics)
...


Collective Victimisation (Chapter 9)
- “the instrumental use of violence by people who identity themselves as
members of a group, whether this group is transitory or has a more
permanent identity, against another group or set of individuals, in order
to achieve political, economic or social objectives
...
It’s a way of changing the effects of
structural violence providing a space where conflicts are aired and solved
...
NVC proposes that
if people can identify their needs, the needs of others, and the feelings
that surround these needs, harmony can be achieved
...


Restorative Circles
- A Restorative Circle is a community process for supporting those in
conflict
...

- Participants invite each other and attend voluntarily
...
The process ends

-

-

when actions have been found that bring mutual benefit that nurtures the
inherent integrity of all those involved in the conflict
...
They commit to serving
the emergent wisdom of the participants through their willingness to
offer agreed upon questions and to track the co-creation of meaning and
action by those present
...
Their role is to keep perspective for the parties, and find the
common ground
...


In the context of middle east conflict, he talks of finding a common story between
the combatants
...
He mapped a walk along important
points in Abraham’s life and the hotspots of the conflict, walking the route
together and allowing enemies to experience the kindness of locals together
...

- Methods of prevention and reconciliation
o Humanising the other through words and contact
o Dialogue
o Creating constructive ideologies
o Healing from past victimisation
o Fostering altruism born from suffering
o Establishment of the complex truth
o Developing a shared history
o Positive socialisation

Intergroup Contact

Intergroup bias (elements which facilitate violence)
- Preference for one’s own group
- Prejudice towards other groups
- Prejudice towards individuals from other groups

Intergroup conflict:
- Intergroup conflict: one group’s goals are perceived as threatening to the
other groups reaching their goals
...
g
...
g
...

- Negative stereotypes: projected on the other group, associated with
negative emotions
...

- Younger generations e
...
schools
- Children with families



Conflict, Delegitimisation and Violence




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