Sacred values in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict: resistance to social influence, temporal discounting, and exit strategies

Abstract

Conflicts over sacred values may be particularly difficult to resolve. Because sacred values are nonfungible with material values, standard attempts to negotiate, such as offering material incentives to compromise, often backfire, increasing moral outrage and support for violent action. We present studies with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza demonstrating three other ways sacred values may make conflict more intractable, focusing on what we call devoted actors, people who regard issues central to the Israel-Palestine conflict as sacred values. We show that devoted actors (1) were less amenable to social influence, (2) perceived conflict-related events in the past as well as expected events in the future to be temporally closer, and (3) were blind to individual opportunities to escape the conflict. These results suggest that sacred values may affect decision making in a number of ways, which, when combined, contribute to common defense and continuation of conflict.

Beyond Impasse: Addressing Sacred Values in International Political Negotiations

“…Moreover, when asked to estimate how long until a return to their homes would be pos-sible (right of return), devoted Palestinians perceived that time to be closer to the present than did non-SV-holding Palestinians (Sheikh et al 2013 ). Lastly, actors devoted to the SV-related confl ict were less likely to embrace face-saving strategies of exit from a confl ict-such as to leave the resistance in order to make the hajeven, as in the haj, when the reason for exit was another sacred value (Sheikh et al 2013 ).…”

Handbook of International Negotiation

“…In the past year, research has further characterized the cognitive bounds of a devoted actor. Jeremy Ginges and his team have shown that devoted actors are unlikely to be swayed by ingroup or out-group opinion ( Sheikh et al 2013 ). Also, events related to the sacred value-whether in the past or the futureseem to be perceived by the devoted actor to be closer in time.…”

“…For example, Palestinians who viewed the right of return as sacred (as compared to other Palestinians) perceived the Nakba (when they lost or were driven from their land) to be closer in time than the end of WWII (which is farther). Moreover, when asked to estimate how long until a return to their homes would be pos-sible (right of return), devoted Palestinians perceived that time to be closer to the present than did non-SV-holding Palestinians (Sheikh et al 2013 ). Lastly, actors devoted to the SV-related confl ict were less likely to embrace face-saving strategies of exit from a confl ict-such as to leave the resistance in order to make the hajeven, as in the haj, when the reason for exit was another sacred value (Sheikh et al 2013 ).…”

“…Both activate a previously mundane preference or issue into something worth sacrifi cing for (e.g., time, money, etc.). As an alternative to the pairedvalue hypothesis (Sheikh et al 2013 ), future work might investigate whether rituals and sacred rhetoric are simply activating rule-based processing, affecting whatever issue is brought to bear during the process.…”

The neuroimaging of sacred values

“…Several remarks are in order here. First, Atran and collaborators have stressed on many occasions that the other side of the coin to trade‐off resistance is the backfire effect : attempting to trump an SV with utilitarian motivations—whether they be material incentives or threatening disincentives—actually engenders unintended negative responses and causes people to adhere to the SV in question with even more resoluteness . Second, the notion of quantity insensitivity is, to some degree, context dependent.…”