Exposure to political violence can lead to various political and psychological outcomes. Using the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a natural laboratory, we explore the way in which exposure to conflict violence leads to changes in citizens’ political attitudes and behavior, offering a model for a stress-based process of political extremism. This model encapsulates three basic components in a causal chain leading to political extremism: exposure to political violence, psychological distress, and enhanced perceptions of threat. We find that prolonged exposure to political violence increases psychological distress, which in turn evokes stronger perceptions of threat that foment political attitudes eschewing compromise and favoring militarism. This causal chain fuels a destructive cycle of violence that is hard to break. Understanding these psychological and political consequences of exposure to political violence can help to shed light on the barriers that too often stymie peacemaking efforts and contribute to the deterioration of intractable conflicts around the globe. Thus, this review offers insights applicable to conflict zones around the world and suggests policy implications for therapeutic intervention and potential pathways to conflict resolution.
Cybersecurity represents a unique national security challenge for states: data breaches with the potential for national, macro-level consequences are most likely to occur at the micro-level, originating through the security errors of individual computer users. Thus, aspects of national cybersecurity can often critically depend on the personal attitudes and behavior of average citizens connecting online. However, to date, theories of state cybersecurity have almost exclusively focused on the macro-level, and very little is known about how the mass public reacts to—and protects themselves from—cybersecurity threats. This study addresses this gap, drawing on psychological theories of risk perception to explain why the public simultaneously reports great concern about cybersecurity, yet does little to protect their personal safety online. Using a novel survey experiment, we examine how exposure to different types of data breaches impacts citizens’ cyber risk assessments, personal online behavior, and support for various national cybersecurity policies. We find that baseline concerns about cybersecurity and knowledge about safe online practices are very low. However, exposure to a personally relevant data breach heightens risk perception and increases willingness to engage in safer online practices. But these effects are circumscribed—actual online behavior is more resistant to change. These results have important implications for the design of effective state cybersecurity policy.
How does the subjective conceptual framing of conflict impact the warring parties’ attitudes towards political compromise and negotiation? To assess strategies for conflict resolution, researchers frequently try to determine the defining dispute of a given conflict. However, involved parties often view the conflict through fundamentally distinct lenses. Currently, researchers do not possess a clear theoretical or methodological way to conceptualize the complexity of such competing frames and their effects on conflict resolution. This article addresses this gap. Using the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as a case study, we run a series of focus groups and three surveys among Jewish citizens of Israel, Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCIs), and Palestinians in the West Bank. Results reveal that three conflict frames are prominent – material, nationalist, and religious. However, the parties to the conflict differ in their dominant interpretation of the conflict. Jewish Israelis mostly frame the conflict as nationalist, whereas Palestinians, in both the West Bank and Israel, frame it as religious. Moreover, these frames impact conflict attitudes: a religious frame was associated with significantly less willingness to compromise in potential diplomatic negotiations among both Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Interestingly, differing frames had no significant impact on the political attitudes of West Bank Palestinians, suggesting that the daily realities of conflict there may be creating more static, militant attitudes among that population. These results challenge the efficacy of material solutions to the conflict and demonstrate the micro-foundations underpinning civilians’ conflict attitudes and their implications for successful conflict resolution.
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