The Nobel Peace Prize Increased the Global Support for Women’s Organizations: Prize and Praise in International Relations

Abstract

We examine the effects of the Nobel Peace Prize on the support for women’s rights groups to highlight the roles of the positive symbolic action, “prize and praise,” in international relations. Based on psychological theories, we argue that the Nobel Peace Prize increases the support for women’s rights activists by reassuring, persuading, and pressuring people across the world. We substantiate the claim by exploiting the as-if random assignment of interviews around the announcements of the Nobel Peace Prizes. The analyses indicate that when the prize was awarded to women’s rights activists, it increased people’s trust in women’s organizations. The analysis of mechanisms implies that the prize pressured conservative people to amend their attitudes. We also explore macro-level implications, finding that the prize decreased violence against women. However, these changes are short-lived. These results imply that symbolic actions entail real-world changes; however, the question of how to sustain these changes remains.