How cognitive psychology can help us make sense of the discourse surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict in its most recent instantiation.
A famous study in social psychology revolves, strangely enough, around a football game between Princeton and Dartmouth that took place in 1951. Such a game today would be overshadowed by, well, just about any other D-I college football game—but in 1951, it carried considerable import, and the tensions around it resulted in rough play and serious injuries on both sides. To conduct the study, researchers selected students from both schools and had them watch a replay. They found that despite being shown identical footage, Princeton and Dartmouth students came to strongly diverging conclusions regarding not only attributions of blame for the dirty play, but even simple facts about the infractions committed by each side.
The study is famous for demonstrating the power of group biases to shape basic cognition, but it is also a striking example of how objective truths can be elusive when facts and details are filtered through the thick and colored lens of subjective human perception. These students’ interpretation of the same game contrasted because they were members of particular social tribes, and they came to conclusions that supported the moral superiority of those tribes, as evolution has adapted all of us to do. This type of innate cognitive bias is seemingly innocuous when the competing groups are rival educational institutions and all that is at stake is public opinion on an ultimately meaningless sports event. However, in the frequently tribalized realm of geopolitics, such primal cognitive influences can cripple attempts at inter-group dialogue and understanding when they permeate the discourse. There is no clearer or more illustrative example of this phenomenon than the public response to the most recent outcropping of violence in the Gaza Strip this summer.
The incredibly fraught nature of this particular conflict, in combination with the powerful emotions that it evokes, demand that I provide a small disclaimer. This article intends to explore how cognitive psychology can help us make sense of the discourse surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict in its most recent instantiation. It is not engendered by, nor intended as support for, the actions of either side in the conflict itself. Nor is it meant as a statement of fundamental moral equivalence between the two sides. While I certainly have strong opinions on the conflict, I do not seek to express or impose them here. Rather, I seek only to understand how, and why, intelligent, critically-thinking individuals can look at the same historical and political facts, be exposed to the same stream of articles and talking points and opinions, and nevertheless confidently maintain – and loudly espouse – their polarized positions.
And there is no doubt that the conversation has become largely polarized. As Vox writer Zack Beauchamp notes in commenting on the conflict’s tribal nature, “There’s a broad range of positions that one could have on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But everyone who works on the topic feels a lot of pressure to take on one of two basic tribal identities: pro-Israel or pro-Palestine.” The now-common opening probe on the topic, “are you pro-Israel or pro-Palestine?” and its variants are more than a way to discern the general sentiment of the recipient; they function to sort the respondent into an easily-identifiable ideological tribe. Thus, given the identity-conferring label of “my tribe” or “enemy tribe,” attitudes and behaviors towards that person become apparent, and, all too often, the possibility of productive dialogue or reasoned exchange between the two parties is extinguished.
This stark tribal division is pervasive and has been intentionally driven into the public sphere. There is, of course, the predictable proliferation of media commentators: in print, on television, and on the air, the coverage has been replete with heated polemics and screaming matches disguised as debates. However, more unique in this conflict has been the vigorous outpouring of opinion on social media. Fueled by hashtags and the contemporary agora of the comment section, supporters of both sides have gone to great lengths to make their affiliation clear.
In a wonderful piece of analysis in the Huffington Post, data scientist Gilad Lotan shows how the algorithms underlying our social media experience construct our perception of the conflict. Because these websites succeed when users respond to and share the content they are provided, they have an incentive to show users information and news that corresponds with their view of the conflict. Social networks, says Lotan, “are perfectly designed to reinforce our existing beliefs,” to the extent that they have become “personalized propaganda engines” for users on both sides of the conflict. In what is perhaps his most dramatic (not to mention, artful) demonstration of this effect, Lotan includes network graphs of interactions between Twitter handles that show a literal yawning gap between commentators on the conflict. His analysis is eloquent and the graphs are worth a look, but the message is simple: when it comes to the conflict, social media is all too happy to construct for us the reality we wish to perceive. By partaking in these sites, we have tacitly consented to living in an echo chamber.
When you realize that the arguments employed by advocates on one side are so rarely reaching the eyes or ears of those on the other, social media activism becomes apparent for what it so often is: tribal chest beating. In addition to the now familiar #freegaza and its ilk, links to sympathetic articles and interviews, the sharing of videos and pictures supposedly from the ground, and even the use of the loaded language that exists on both sides function less as persuasive argumentative tools than as sometimes subtle, yet ultimately unambiguous, markers of group affiliation and promotion. It might feel good to angrily post about the “terrorists” who are “using human shields” or the “apartheid state of Israel” which is trying to “commit genocide,” but in the end, it won’t do any good. Because even if you are absolutely convinced – from your analysis of the situation, the history, and politics – that your use of this rhetoric is justified, employing it is more likely to further ossify tribal polarization by antagonizing the other side and galvanizing yours than it is to make any meaningful contribution to dialogue.
But why should it matter to a strong supporter of the Israelis or Palestinians that the conflict in which they are engaged is one between two opposing tribes? After all, if you fall into one of these groups, you are likely to have a strong conviction in the moral righteousness of your position that has empowered you to advocate for it. If there is someone within the enemy camp just as convicted about their position, it is likely due to the propaganda they have been subjected to, the influences of the perpetually-biased media, or perhaps even their latent Anti-Semitism or Islamophobia. It shouldn’t even matter that there are people on the other side with arguments and justifications of their own, because history shows us that one side of a conflict can be objectively and morally right (Nazis! Apartheid!) and that side, of course, is yours. You are not just fighting for a side, you are fighting for a narrative of history – the true narrative – and for posterity’s sake, you must win.
The only problem with this sort of zero-sum, winner-takes-all reasoning is that it rarely get us anywhere. More specifically, it gets us right to where we are now, and keeps us there: two sides, each with unflagging belief in their own moral superiority, and both unable to communicate and unwilling to compromise, thus locked in a violent conflict with no end in sight. At this point, it is virtually inconceivable that either side will triumph definitively in battle or in the court of international public opinion and thus achieve the unequivocal victory of its narrative. That leaves the situation in its current state of stasis. The only way out is to achieve a multilateral diplomatic resolution, with which both sides will inevitably be unsatisfied. And the swiftest and surest path to such a resolution requires civil, productive communication between ideologues on both sides, the very thing that is precluded by the prevailing tribal polarization.
Of course, this is nothing new. Anybody who approaches the conflict looking forward to find a realistic solution, instead of backwards for culpability, knows roughly what is required for the conflict to end. They also bemoan the stubbornness of both sides in failing to come to these terms in negotiation after failed negotiation, the most recent of which was brokered by US Secretary of State John Kerry and collapsed while on the verge of success last year.
Why, the distanced observer is forced to ask, can’t both sides just be reasonable and accept a two-state solution? Because, cognitive science tells us, reason has little to do with it. And understanding just how little reason has to do with the conversations over contentious political issues, Israel-Palestine included, is the important first step towards fixing the way we approach those conversations, and even the issues themselves.
There is a long tradition of philosophical thought – going back to Plato – that worships reason and exalts humans as beings capable of overcoming animal emotions and evaluating situations in perfectly rational terms. The idea that we are exceptional in our ability to tune out baser emotions and apply this pristine rationality when making moral judgments is one that has dominated recent history and permeates popular thought to this day. It is also a delusion. Reason plays a role in our lives, but it is not the truth-seeking, noble role that we so frequently attribute to it.
In his hugely influential 2001 paper, “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail,” psychologist Jonathan Haidt laid out an alternative paradigm of moral judgment which takes primacy away from rationality and gives it to what he calls “social intuition.” According to this non-rationalist model, which harkens back to that of David Hume, “moral judgment is generally the result of quick, automatic evaluations,” and the reasons that we articulate for coming to these snap intuitions are actually post-hoc justifications for a conclusion that is more strongly influenced by subliminal social and cultural factors. Moral reasoning, says Haidt, is not what generates moral judgment. It comes afterwards, to sustain the veneer of rationality, as well as to serve the very important social function of getting other people to come to the same conclusions.
As Haidt explains in his more recent and wonderfully insightful book, The Righteous Mind, this reality of our moral decision making can be observed in experimental situations when people attempt (and fail) to use reason to justify one of their strongly held moral intuitions – a phenomenon known as moral dumbfounding. To cite his most common example, imagine a scenario in which a brother and sister have private, protected, consensual sex a single time, enjoy the experience, but agree to never do it again. Unsurprisingly, studies show that most people will morally condemn the siblings, and do so instantly. This is because the incest taboo is evolutionarily ingrained as a response to the genetic danger that comes from inbreeding. But because the siblings use protection, there is no risk of procreation in the example. The researchers have eliminated all possible harm from the situation, and yet people will frequently persist in condemning the siblings, sometimes to the point where even they recognize that their justifications make no logical sense.
Haidt has many more examples of situations such as these in which people will make a strong moral judgment, and then struggle to justify it rationally. The reasons they provide for their intuitive decisions often plainly contradict the details of the scenario, or don’t make sense. This moral dumbfounding makes plain the supporting role reason plays in moral decision-making. We make instant intuitive judgments all the time, and only afterwards employ reason to justify what our mind has long since decided. As Hume famously put it centuries ago “reason is, and ought only to be, slave of the passions.”
This social intuitionist understanding of moral judgment fits well into a new understanding of how the brain works that is being put together by such various disciplines as cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and behavioral economics. One of the most elegant attempts to conceptualize this new understanding of cognition comes from Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman and is articulated in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. In the book, Kahneman distinguishes between two functional systems of the brain: System One is the fast working, intuitive part of the brain that makes most everyday decisions and judgments; System Two is the slow working, deliberative part of the brain associated with logic and reason. System One, while efficient and necessary for daily functioning, is also subject to subtle yet powerful social, cultural and religious cues and generates implicit biases that shape our moral judgments—judgments that we “rational beings” usually like to associate with our process of rational decision-making. It is also where the psychological effects of tribalism originate.
The tribal mentality of in-group and out-group is a well-studied psychological phenomenon with its roots in the environment in which humans evolved. In small hunter-gatherer societies, loyalty to the tribe was paramount for collective survival, and in the context of small groups, emotional and communicative adaptations developed and were fine-tuned. When there was a competition between groups, adaptations that favored group solidarity were competitive advantages that facilitated victory in zero-sum competitions over resources or land. While we no longer live in literal tribes, our brains are still wired according to this evolutionary blueprint. As civilization developed and societies formed, the same instincts that were adapted for inter-tribal competition were put to use in the growth and interaction of social and religious tribes. The legacy of this development remains with us, and it affects every aspect of our social affiliations: from loyalty to a college football team, to devotion to a religious sect, to commitment to a political narrative.
When it comes to the current conflict in Gaza, being pro- or anti-Israel has become more a matter of tribal affiliation than one of reasoned analysis. To be clear, there are more than two tribes which filter people into this larger, pro-Israel pro-Palestine divide. For many people who take a position, that position was influenced by the social group in which they grew up, as with Arabs and Muslims who are pro-Palestine, and Jews and Israelis who are pro-Israel. This population was exposed to one tribe’s narrative from an early age, and has likely never had a compelling psychological reason to diverge from their group’s stand. Some of the most vehement and outspoken supporters of Israel would likely be some of its most vehement critics, had they been born Muslim in Gaza City rather than Jewish in Tel Aviv. Many of the people who fall into this category, who have a specific affiliation because of the environment in which they developed, will give rational explanations for supporting their side when pressed. But as Haidt explained with social intuitionism, this is a post-hoc justification of an intuition provided by Kahneman’s System One.
As with any polarizing issue however, there are also smaller social groups that have formed within and against the prevailing affiliation of the environment in which their members grew up. In America, which is more pro-Israel than any other country outside of Israel itself, there are large communities of students and professors who are ardently against Israel and its actions, as evidenced by the growing BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement. Likewise, within Israeli and Jewish communities, there are loud voices of dissent from liberal anti-Zionists. But it doesn’t matter how or why they got there. What matters is that individuals in both groups are subject to the cognitive biases that go along with tribal psychology. And just as when watching a football game, these biases color the lens that filters new developments in the conflict to fit into our tribal narratives.
Of course, evolutionary psychologists are something of a tribe themselves, and choosing to analyze the conflict by examining biases through this lens does not ensure a clear picture – but it does explain a lot. Take for instance, the phenomenon of enclave extremism. Articulated by Professor Cass Sunstein in the context of polarization and the internet, enclave extremism is when individuals in like-minded groups will gravitate towards a more extreme ideology than the group originally espoused. Given certain causes such as civil rights, this can be a good thing, but it is not difficult to see how this natural human tendency has played a role in generating the extreme positions – like virulent anti-Semitism and Islamophobia – that have emerged from insulated ideological groups in the current conflict. Extremism like this benefits no one – it leads to hateful actions like the abductions and murders which started the most recent conflict in July, and furnishes each side with examples of inhumanity with which they can demonize the other.
Further research tells a similarly troubling story. It has long been known in politics that when a partisan ideologue is given equally strong arguments for both sides in a debate, he will internalize the information which avails him and disregard the rest. This unconscious tendency to seek out validation instead of truth – known as the confirmation bias – prevents you from really listening when the other side is speaking. In many cases, if something does not conform to your beliefs or expectations, it is not even registered. This is apparent in the instances in which activists from both sides come to the table for an ostensible discussion. Such debates or interviews are often characterized by the two sides talking past each other. Eventually the frustrations both sides feel from not being heard help devolve the meeting into a shouting match. Rather than stimulating productive discourse, direct confrontation puts the individuals onto a public stage and turns them into visible representatives of their groups, thus increasing the pressure and reinforcing the biases.
Moral dumbfounding, enclave extremism, confirmation biases, echo chambers. We can’t change that we are irrational, biased individuals. It is an inexorable fact of our evolution as social beings. It is a fact that has led to political and religious division and strife for as long as there have been political and religious tribes. But that it has bogged down the two sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict in decades of bitter division is no excuse for us to stay there. For just as these are tools we have been given to fortify and protect the group, to fight and discredit the enemy’s, so too do we have tools which can be used to reach across the boundaries of the group and start to build understanding. And none is more useful than our ability to empathize.
We are naturally inclined to empathize with members of our group – to a certain extent we are able to see things, and feel them, as they do. We are also able to do the same with members of opposing groups, but we don’t; the group is comforting, and hiding in it is easy. Leaving it means giving up dominion over the truth, and moral righteousness, and a simple, unambiguous view of the enemy. It also requires making the silent, unrecognized implicit biases which kept you there in the first place explicit – that is, coming to terms with the idea that what you considered compelling rational evidence was in fact a steady stream of selective information filtered subconsciously by your mind to support your predetermined conclusion.
In short, it is no easy thing. It might even be a quixotic thing. But right now, it is the only thing. Because until we can understand, and use empathy to overcome, the natural cognitive biases entrenching the conflict, it will continue. And the story of our intransigence will be written in blood.
Daniel Teehan is a sophomore from Brooklyn, NY with academic interests ranging from Cognitive Science, Religion, and Philosophy, to Arabic, History, and Near Eastern Studies, to Comparative Literature, Creative Writing, and Journalism; he is extremely undeclared. In his free time, he enjoys writing about reading, reading about rights, watching fantasy TV, and fantasizing about social justice.