Can Israelis And Palestinians Change Their Minds?

NPR:

What makes people change their minds? About the really hard stuff.

Covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the past three years, I’ve often wondered if people here ever do.

This conflict is frequently described as “intractable,” with neither side willing to give up their historical perspective or their entrenched positions to end it. And it does not take many interviews to hear repetitions of the same sweeping narrative repeated on each side. Palestinians from different places cite the same historical events to back their views. Israelis who have never met each other use similar turns of phrase.

“People have a lot of [psychological] resources invested in what they believe about the conflict,” says Thomas Zeitzoff, a political scientist at American University in Washington, D.C., who has researched Israeli and Palestinian attitudes.

…

Many Israelis cite repeated suicide bombings, in cafes and on buses during the second intifada, from 2000 to 2005, as the beginning of a national shift in attitudes toward Palestinians.

American social psychologist Jay Van Bavel says accumulated experience often leads to change.

“Like a rat pressing a lever. If it gets a pellet, it will press the lever again. People are the same way,” he says.

Read the whole story: NPR