Perceiving intergroup conflict: from game models to mental templates.
This article puts forward a parsimonious framework for studying subjective perceptions of real-life intergroup conflicts. Four studies were conducted to explore how individuals perceive the strategic properties of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Studies 1 and 2 found theory-driven associations between people's subjective perception of the conflict's structure as a Chicken, Assurance, or Prisoner's Dilemma game and their ingroup/outgroup perceptions, national identification, religiosity, political partisanship, voting behavior, and right-wing authoritarianism. Studies 3 and 4 manipulated the saliency of the needs for cognitive closure and security, respectively, demonstrating that these needs affect people's endorsement of the game models as descriptions of the conflict.
Halevy
Nir
N
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Psychology, Israel. nyh@mscc.huji.ac.il
Sagiv
Lilach
L
Roccas
Sonia
S
Bornstein
Gary
G
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D018912:Arabs / Q000523:psychology*; D001318:Authoritarianism; D003163:Competitive Behavior; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D005260:Female; D005717:Games, Experimental; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D007557:Israel; D007585:Jews / Q000523:psychology*; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation; D011057:Politics; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D012933:Social Identification; D012938:Social Perception