Perceptions of the Middle East conflict: Cognitions, emotions, and hostility

Kurzfassung/Abstract

The Mid–East conflict is one of the world’s most central conflicts. The way this conflict is perceived is decisive for conflict-reducing and conflict-enhancing emotions and for political action. In an online questionnaire study, cognitions about the origin, causation of and responsibility for the conflict were assessed along with emotions (e.g.hostility, indignation, and sorrow), general attitudes and dispositions (e.g. anti-Semitism, islamophobia, draconity, belief in a just world, injustice sensitivity) and different preferences for violent and non-violent forms of political action. The sample (N=500) includes two major groups: (1) broadly politically interested people, who do not feel direct involved, (2) people bonded to the conflict out of a strong adhesion to political or religious groups/beliefs and who regard themselves as sympathisers of one of the parties involved. Path analyzes show that the endorsement of different forms of political action is influenced by hot emotions (most notably by moral indignation), emotions are influenced by perceptions of causation, responsibility and norm violation, and these perceptions are partly influenced by justice-related dispositions.