Psychology and More

… is the title of an article that came to mind when I was reading the news this morning. In the day class, we’ve just finished studying Social Psychology, and this is relevant. Lee Ross is a social psychologist (who originated the term “fundamental attribution error”), who studies the social cognitive aspects of conflict and negotiation (among other things). The APS (Association for Psychological Science) Observer magazine covered a talk he gave at the APS convention a couple years ago.

In the article he describes “Naïve Realism,” a process where we all see our own perspective as “right,” and the perspective of others is devalued, ignored, or just not taken. Here’s one of his experimental findings:

During one experiment, Ross took Israeli created peace proposals, labeled them as Arab proposals, and showed them to Israelis.

“The Israelis liked the Palestinian proposal attributed to Israel more than they liked the Israeli proposal attributed to the Palestinians,” Ross said. “If your own proposal isn’t going to be attractive to you when it comes from the other side, what chance is there that the other side’s proposal is going to be attractive when it comes from the other side?”

So even though the Israelis understand that Palestinians see the world a certain way because they’re Palestinian, they believe being Israeli is central to understanding the issue, and that being a Palestinian blinds you to reality. (The case also holds true vice versa.)

link to the article from the APS Observer.

Technorati Tags: aggression, attitudes, cognition, peace psychology, psychology, social psychology