Different age groups' similar outlook on nuclear war.

Hoorn, Judith Van; French, Perrin

doi:10.1037/0003-066x.43.9.746

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…The idea of peace activism as a reaction to worrying events or situations is by no means new and harks back to the interpretation of such movements as forms of coping. Peace psychology has studied in depth the theme of fear of a nuclear catastrophe in both the United States and Europe (Smith, 1988;Van Hoorn & French, 1988). If the findings of these studies are taken together with the description of the individual activist's distinctive characteristics, there emerges an overall picture that ties in with ways of coping with stressful situations (McKenzie-Mohr, 1992;Boenke et al, 1993).…”

Section: Social Representations: Possible Contribution To Peace Psychmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peace, War and Conflict: Social Representations Shared by Peace Activists and Non-Activists

Sarrica¹,

Contarello

2004

Journal of Peace Research

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The article suggests the use of social representations theory to provide a positive approach to peace research and a theoretical framework for understanding peace movements. Studying peace, war and conflict in this perspective enables exploration of these concepts as objects socially constructed, elaborated and shared by different groups. Four groups of activists are compared with people not belonging to any association, in order to investigate the existence of particular social representations of peace, war and conflict. As in previous cross-cultural research, an independent social representation of peace emerges only among activists. The social representation of war is also different in the two groups: nonactivists see it as frightening, whereas activists see ways of tackling it. The greatest difference between the two groups is in the social representation of conflict. Conflict is assimilated to war for non-activists, whereas activists represent it as more manageable and normal. The results support the idea of understanding peace activism as a particular form of coping -community coping -based on the group as a whole, rather than on individual capacity to manage problems. At a theoretical level, the article discusses the importance of linking social representations to practice and group identification. At a practical level, it suggests that support for pacifism will be only transient and superficial until these underlying differences in representations can be changed.* We wish to thank the editor and three anonymous referees from JPR for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript. We also wish to thank the individuals and the associations who cooperated in the study. A replication dataset can be found at

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Section: Social Representations: Possible Contribution To Peace Psychmentioning

confidence: 99%