The challenges of social and political psychology in Pursuit of peace: Personal account

This article describes the autobiographical story of my professional and intellectual development. It describes sources of my values and begins the story of my doctoral study at the University of Pittsburgh that influenced my approach to making science. Next, the article describes the beginning of my academic career at School of Education of Tel Aviv University. Also the beginning was significantly influenced by the work of Arie Kruglanski who was developing his Lay epistemic theory. The shift of interest in the early 1980s to political psychology opened new avenues for developing theories and empirical research. The climax of this line of work was the development of the general theory of shared societal beliefs and more specific theory of the sociopsychological foundations and dynamics of intractable conflicts. Since the end of the second millennium my efforts have been focused on training graduate students according to developed principles of the "learning community".