Promoting Reconciliation Through the Satisfaction of the Emotional Needs of Victimized and Perpetrating Group Members: The Needs-Based Model of Reconciliation

Abstract

Guided by the Needs-Based Model of Reconciliation, we hypothesized that being a member of a victimized group would be associated with a threat to the status and power of one's ingroup, whereas being a member of a perpetrating group would threaten the image of the ingroup as moral and socially acceptable. A social exchange interaction through which victims feel empowered by their perpetrators and perpetrators feel accepted by their victims was thus predicted to enhance the parties' willingness to reconcile. Supporting the predictions across two experiments, members of the perpetrator group (Jews in Study 1 and Germans in Study 2) showed greater willingness to reconcile when they received a message of acceptance, rather than empowerment, from a member of the victimized group. Members of the victimized group (Arabs in Study 1 and Jews in Study 2) demonstrated the opposite effect. Applied and theoretical implications of these results are discussed.

The Official, The Empathetic and The Critical: Three Approaches to History Teaching and Reconciliation in Israel

“…We should note that change within each condition was not significant (Goldberg 2014b). The effect on Arab participants may show the power of affirmation in answering the needs of a weaker party in a conflict, as proposed above (Shnabel et al 2009). However, the inverse effect on Jewish participants is yet to be explained.…”

“…Arab learners may have perceived the teaching of both narrative as Jewish acknowledgment of the Palestinian narrative and the Israeli responsibility it stresses. An acknowledgment assumed to answer the unique needs of the weaker party in asymmetric power relations (Shnabel et al 2009). Jewish participants' tendency to reduce perceived in-group responsibility may be a reaction to the fact the Palestinian narrative contained no expressions of empathy with Jewish suffering or humanizing views of Jews, assumed necessary by Schnabel et al's needs based on model of reconciliation.…”

“…These results show that history teaching approach can increase (or decrease) the motivation to take out-group perspectives, an aspect of intergroup empathy be predictive of conflict resolution (Gehlbach 2004). Empathetic engagement with both in-group and out-group narratives had significant positive effect on minority members, perhaps due to their stronger need for acknowledgment and affirmation (Shnabel et al 2009). Minority members studying the conventional single (majority) narrative experienced a pronounced decline in interest in the majority perspective, apparently in defensive reaction to the silencing of their voice (Yonah 2008).…”

“…The relation was not symmetrical (Arab participants did not increase in-group responsibility due to encounter with historical perspectives, nor did they impact Jewish participants collaboration). This actor-partner interaction aligns with the assumptions as to the effect of the stronger party's acknowledgment of Table 4 Mean percentage of agreement and opposition utterances by condition and frequency of agreement on solution for the refugee problem, by condition Adapted from Goldberg and Ron (2014, p. 14), Goldberg (2016) Table 5 Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations of IGR and proportion of agreement, rejection, opposition and compliance utterances (% of total utterances), by ethnic group responsibility on weaker party's reconciliatory attitudes (Shnabel et al 2009). …”

Identidad Social y Emociones Intergrupales: Antecedentes de las Actitudes de Perdón y Reparación Política en Chile

“…Esta necesidad es satisfecha mediante la validación de sus experiencias de victimización y a través de demandas de reparación. En contraste, el grupo perpetrador destacará su necesidad de aceptación social e inclusión en la comunidad moral humana, la que puede verse amenazada debido a las atrocidades cometidas por su grupo (Shnabel, Nadler, Ullrich, Dovidio & Carmi, 2009). …”