Peace Psychology for a Peaceful World
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Peace Psychology for a Peaceful World Daniel J. Christie Ohio State University at Marion Barbara S. Tint Portland State University Richard V. Wagner Bates College Deborah DuNann Winter Whitman College Although the literature in peace psychology has been grow- peace studies (Barash & Webel, 2002) is a psychologist, ing rapidly, many American psychologists are unaware of and the text has a substantial amount of psychological how conflict is resolved and peace is conceptualized and content. achieved. This article reviews the long history and broad- The Division of Peace Psychology (Division 48), ening scope of peace psychology and introduces a model of which was established in 1991, shares with the American peace that is useful for organizing the literature. The model Psychological Association (APA) a commitment to pro- suggests that peace can be facilitated at four different moting human well-being. The goals of peace psychology points of intervention. The authors discuss relationships are to “increase and apply psychological knowledge in the between positive and negative peace, structural and direct pursuit of peace . [including] both the absence of de- violence, and peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peacebuild- structive conflict and the creation of positive social condi- ing. They advance some challenges for peace psychologists tions which minimize destructiveness and promote human and conclude that peace psychology is a crucial field for well-being” (Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and grappling with humanity’s most pressing problems in the Violence, 2006, para. 3). coming decades. The lack of knowledge about the psychology of peace reinforces a faulty assumption that peace is precarious, Keywords: peace psychology, positive peace, negative unusual, short-lived, or fragile and that the true state of peace, conflict, violence human affairs arises from deep-rooted urges for aggression, which sooner or later give rise to violence and war. Such lthough human beings manage to resolve their assumptions contradict empirical evidence (Adams, Bar- conflicts peacefully much more often than they nett, Bechtereva, & Carter, 1990; Ury, 1999) and also resort to violence, many American psychologists A increase the probability of violence, because often, at- remain largely unaware of how peace is accomplished. The tempts to defend against assault are interpreted by adver- comparative psychologist Franz deWaal (1989) once la- saries as aggressive behaviors (Jervis, 1989; Winter & mented that he had Cava, 2006). asked a world-renowned American psychologist, who specializes Clearly, human beings have abilities to manufacture in human aggression, what he knew about reconciliation. Not only both peace and violence. As Deutsch (1999) put it, did he have no information on the subject, but he looked at me as if the word were new to him. He reflected on my remarks, yet Humans have the potential for a wide range of thought, feeling, the concept had evidently never taken center stage in his thinking. and behavior: the potential for love as well as hate, for construc- (pp. 233–234) tive as well as destructive behavior, for “we” as well as “us versus them.” There is no reason to assume that one potential or another In fact, work on the psychology of peace has been is inherently pre-potent without regard to particular personal and accumulating for decades, yet it is still an emerging area of social circumstances as well as life history. (p. 19) inquiry for the larger psychological community. A signif- Finally, ignorance about the rich domain of peace icant increase in literature on peace psychology is evident psychology prevents practitioners from applying its valu- in several databases (Blumberg, 2007). Since the 1970s, able insights to promote peace in families, workplaces, peace psychology citations increased not only in absolute communities, and between nations. Such ignorance denies terms but also in proportion to the growing number of citizens and policymakers insights that could inform their records added to the PsycINFO database. Several thousand approach to critical issues such as the best ways of pre- research studies on peace psychology since the Cold War were reviewed in the recent publication Peace Psychology: A Comprehensive Introduction (Blumberg, Hare, & Costin, Daniel J. Christie, Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, 2007). Moreover, although the recent emergence of posi- Marion; Barbara S. Tint, Conflict Resolution Graduate Program, Portland tive psychology converges with peace psychology’s em- State University; Richard V. Wagner, Department of Psychology, Bates phasis on the creation of positive social conditions, we are College; Deborah DuNann Winter, Department of Psychology, Whitman College. aware of no introductory psychology text that has a chapter Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to devoted to peace psychology. Ironically, the lead author of Daniel J. Christie, 351 Hawthorn Boulevard, Delaware, OH 43015. E- the most widely used text in the interdisciplinary field of mail: [email protected] 540 September 2008 ● American Psychologist Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association 0003-066X/08/$12.00 Vol. 63, No. 6, 540–552 DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.63.6.540 By the close of World War II, 13 well-known Amer- ican psychologists (including Gordon Allport, Edna Heid- breder, Ernest Hilgard, Otto Klineberg, Rensis Likert, and Edward Tolman) circulated a “Psychologists’ Manifesto: Human Nature and the Peace: A Statement by Psycholo- gists” (reprinted in Jacobs, 1989, and in Murphy, 1945), which was signed by almost 4,000 psychologists (M. B. Smith, 1999). The Manifesto argued that “war can be avoided: War is built, not born” and urged lawmakers to work toward peace with attention to “the root desires of the common people of all lands” (M. B. Smith, 1999, p. 5). For several decades thereafter, social psychologists accrued insights about the situational mechanisms that pro- duce conflict and contemplated how situations might be altered to create peace. For example, Allport (1954) argued that conflict escalates from ignorance of one’s adversaries and that contact between groups in conflict is crucial for reducing enmity and prejudice. That same year, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed, ruling in favor of school desegre- gation to reduce racism. However, desegregation produced Daniel mixed results, and social scientists have since sought to J. Christie clarify conditions under which contact is likely to be ef- fective (e.g., cooperative interdependence, equal status, support from authorities; Pettigrew, 1998; Wittig & Grant- Thompson, 1998). Closely aligned with the various formu- venting terrorism, the costs and impact of torture, and lations of the contact hypothesis is the powerful effect of possible means of ameliorating protracted conflicts. Lack superordinate goals, that is, shared goals that parties in of visibility and misconceptions about the psychology of conflict can only attain through mutual effort. Such positive peace also hinder the attraction of new students and schol- interdependence can transform group conflict into cooper- ars to the field. ation (Sherif & Sherif, 1953), provided the goals are at- For these reasons, we present a current synopsis of tained (Worchel, 1986). peace psychology, outlining its rich history, scope, and promise. Our intention is to articulate its themes by pro- Cold War Peace Psychology viding both a historical account and a new model that The Cold War created widespread fear of nuclear annihi- represents the current state of the field. Our hope is to make lation, which supported further work in peace psychology. peace psychology more accessible to the broader commu- In 1961, a collection of articles on “Psychology and Policy nity of psychologists and, by doing so, to promote scholarly in the Nuclear Age” was published in the Journal of Social development and citizen awareness in the interest of con- Issues (Russell, 1961). The articles were written by well- tributing to a more peaceful world. respected psychologists who advanced some of the most Historical Roots of Peace Psychology durable concepts in peace psychology. For example, Urie Bronfenbrenner (1961) argued that the United States and Long before there was a field known as peace psy- the U.S.S.R. held mirror images of one another; Charles chology, psychologists were concerned about wars and Osgood (1962) promoted graduated and reciprocal initia- how to prevent them. Perhaps the first peace psychologist tives in tension reduction, or GRIT, as a means of coun- was William James (Deutsch, 1995), who, in a speech at tering enemies’ perceptions of each other’s malevolent, Stanford University in 1906, coined the phrase “the moral deceitful intent; and Morton Deutsch (1961) noted how the equivalent of war” (James, 1910/1995, p. 22). James ar- interaction of trust or distrust and the perception of supe- gued that war provides human beings with opportunities to riority or vulnerability led to the policy of mutual deter- express their spiritual inclinations toward self-sacrifice and rence, which guided much of the superpowers’ foreign personal honor; consequently, to end war, societies must policies during the Cold War. Many of these concepts were find alternative “moral equivalents” for the expression of further developed in books published during the Vietnam these profoundly important human values (James, 1910/ War, such as Misperception and the Vietnam War (White, 1995). Though his proposal to create a young citizens