Abstract
This chapter builds on the needs-based model of reconciliation, which posits victim groups’ primary need for agency and perpetrator groups’ primary need for morality, and examines dual conflicts in which groups are both victims and perpetrators. The authors posit that in such cases, the experience of victimization is more psychologically impactful than the experience of perpetration. They review empirical support for this “primacy of agency” effect, as well as evidence of the effects of interventions that affirm the group’s agency in such contexts. The findings show that agency affirmations increase conciliatory responses toward the other conflict party as well as the willingness to relinquish power and violence for the sake of morality. These effects were found across both higher and lower power groups in the conflicts that were examined.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | The Social Psychology of Collective Victimhood |
Editors | Johanna Ray Vollhardt |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Chapter | 19 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780190875190 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2020 |
Keywords
- needs-based model of reconciliation
- agency
- morality
- dual conflicts
- Israeli–Palestinian conflict
- primacy of agency
- reconciliation