Dr. Samar Zebian - One study on the relationship between humiliation, violence and willingness to compromise

There is a long history and a sizable quantity of psychological research on Palestinians and Arabs living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and Israel. The amount of research on this relatively small but politically significant population stands in comparison to the dearth of psychological research on the rest of the Arab region. Don’t be surprised. It is fashionable and also necessary for oppressive/apartheid regimes to fund and promote research on the psychological mechanisms of groups purportedly in need of external “aid” to achieve “modernization” and “democratization” (see also Holdstock, 2000 for the role of psychological research in apartheid South Africa). In this article I wish to review a recent study conducted by Ginges and Atran (2008) that examines the psychological processes that affect individuals’ support for violence and their willingness to compromise.

Ginges and Atran set out to examine the commonly held belief by many oppressive governments (and also insurgent groups) that if you make life unbearable for people and if you do it in a way that specifically leaves them feeling humiliated you will decrease support for political violence.

Ginges and Atran worked with the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey research (http://pcpsr.org) to administer a survey to 1264 Muslim Palestinians who lived in the West Bank. The survey asked them to consider aspects of Israeli occupation (e.g. constant increase of settlers, assassination of Palestinian activists, demolition of homes) and pick two emotion words that conveyed their emotional response to the tactics (sad, dignity, anger pride, oppression, justice, insult, fear, joy, humiliation etc…). To measure the participants’ sense of humiliation they counted how many times they selected humiliation as their first or second emotional response. Then, to asses support for violence, they did two other tasks: 1) pick an emotional response upon hearing about a suicide attack, i.e. joy, shame, pride, dread. Following this task, participants were asked whether they thought suicide bombings that target civilians were in accordance with Islamic principles. If you accept this methodology, the results are quite straightforward; individuals who report higher levels of humiliation as a result of Israeli occupation showed lower levels of support for suicide attacks. This relationship was observed for males/females, refugees or permanent residents /; those with less vs. more education, and regardless of one’s views about Palestinians’ right of return.

Two other studies published in the same report go into more depth about the nature of the relationship between humiliation and support for violence. Leaving the methodological details to those interested in reading the full report (cited below), the three main results were as follows:

Simply being reminded about Israeli Occupation tactics decreases support for suicide attacks.

Muslim Palestinians who felt humiliated by peace deals which involved compromises over sacred values (i.e., giving up Jerusalem, ) showed less support for those deals.

Feelings of humiliation decreased and subsequent support for a peace deals increased when the deal involved Israeli recognition of the legitimacy of the Palestinian state, whereas instrumental (financial benefits) had no positive effect on willingness to compromise.

Together the findings from all three studies suggest that humiliated people not only show less support for rebellious or violent action but they also show ambivalence towards finding a beneficial compromise. It is the second finding, the ambivalence or resistance towards finding a just solution, which Ginges and Atran argue is delaying the peace process.

Certainly the findings from these series of studies might contribute a psychological perspective on why peace deals are not popularly supported, but only if the methods employed support the conclusions. Self-report data from surveys are important for polling the opinions of hundreds/thousands of people, nevertheless they often do not reflect the unconscious processes or actual behavior of individuals.

Another question for these researchers concerns the rationale for selecting a subsample of students who supported Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) for the second study . Ginges and Atran reasoned that this population was appropriate because most Palestinian suicide bombers have been student members of these groups and thus their sample represents the pool of potential bombers (p. 287). If you look at statistics of suicide attackers they suggest that approximately half (possibly less than half) fall into the category of university students and of these students most are from Gaza (where conditions are worse) and not the West Bank. Thus it would seem that the sample polled is not necessarily representative of the intended population and therefore the findings of this particular study cannot be easily generalized to the OPT.