- May 2024
- In book: The Tribal Mind and the Psychology of Collectivism
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis
- Reichman University
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Abstract
To improve intergroup relations and resolve intergroup conflict, social psychologists have focused their efforts on processes such as empathy, understanding, and forgiveness that presumably steer people away from tribal alliances and direct them instead toward common, universal goals such as peace. They have also devised interventions to regulate emotions and unfreeze cognitions to foster peaceful attitudes among people immersed in intractable conflict. This burgeoning literature, however, has seldom asked whether conflicts in the real world occur because of a lack of empathy and whether they are resolved when emotions are kept in check. In this chapter, the authors challenge the conventional wisdom and examine the process of intergroup conflict resolution in the real world. Specifically, they analyzed 32 major conflicts since World War II, examining how they ended and whether psychological processes such as those posited by social and political psychologists were instrumental in conflict resolution. The analysis revealed that most conflicts (55%) were resolved through the defeat of an adversary, many were resolved due to international intervention (48%), and some (39%) were resolved due to frustration from the inability to subdue an enemy. There was little to no evidence for the involvement of the psychological processes posited by the conflict resolution literature. The authors offer a group survival perspective to understand the discrepancy between the literature and the real world and suggest that intergroup conflict resolution is not a primary human motivation but a means to the end of surviving and thriving at the collective level.
