title: Overcoming the barrier of narrative adherence in conflicts through awareness of the psychological bias of naïve realism.
abstract: One significant socio-psychological barrier for peaceful resolution of conflicts is each party's adherence to its own collective narrative. We hypothesized that raising awareness to the psychological bias of naïve realism and its identification in oneself would provide a path to overcoming this barrier, thus increasing openness to the adversary's narrative. We conducted three experimental studies in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Studies 1 and 2, conducted among Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Israelis, respectively, revealed that participants with hawkish political ideology reported greater openness to the adversary's narrative when they were made aware of naïve realism bias. Study 3 revealed that hawkish participants at the baseline adhered to the ingroup narrative and resisted the adversary's narrative more than dovish participants. They were also more able to identify the bias in themselves upon learning about it. This identification may explain why the manipulation led to bias correction only among hawkish participants.
authors.affiliation: Tel Aviv University, Israel.
authors.forename: Meytal
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nasie
authors.affiliation: Tel Aviv University, Israel.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Bar-Tal
authors.affiliation: Tel Aviv University, Israel.
authors.forename: Ruthie
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pliskin
authors.affiliation: Arab College for Education in Israel, Haifa, Israel.
authors.forename: Eman
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Nahhas
authors.affiliation: IDC Herzliya, Israel eran.halperin@idc.ac.il.
authors.forename: Eran
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Halperin
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001290:Attitude; D001364:Awareness; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017008:Negotiating / Q000523:psychology; D012933:Social Identification; D012938:Social Perception; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: collective narrative; intractable conflict; naïve realism; psychological bias; socio-psychological barriers