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.

Conflict narratives, having at their core the belief that the ingroup suffered more than the outgroup (competitive victimhood), are key in maintaining conflicts. Three experiments conducted with Jewish Israelis (Study 1), Turkish Kurds (Study 2), and Americans (Study 3) tested whether conflict narratives can reduce conflict. Studies 1 and 3 showed that people respond to inclusive victimhood narratives that emphasize both ingroup and outgroup suffering with a reduction in competitive victimhood and, in turn, reduced support for aggressive policies-but only when people were relatively less concerned that acknowledgment of outgroup suffering might risk loss of third-party support. Study 2 further found that inclusive narratives reduce conflict for low-power groups, yet without being moderated by concern. Together, these studies show that inclusive victimhood narratives can reduce conflict when people are not concerned about losing third-party support. The important role of third parties in conflict resolution is discussed.

Acknowledgments: More individuals were involved through the years in this study, originated by Daniel Bar-Tal, with different levels of engagement and involvement. The conception, design, analyses, and writing went through continuous changes until eventually they were finalized by the five of us. We greatly thank to all the researchers involved in different capacities in the study:

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