Peace Psychology

Introduction: Chronology & Core Concepts

Faiz Younas
Institute of Applied Psychology
University of the Punjab
Lahore, Pakistan
 Key Learning Outcomes
• Definition of Peace Psychology
• Historical musings & growth and history of
western peace psychology
• Scope & Major trends
• Core concepts
• Contributions of peace psychology
 Peace Psychology
• ‘Peace psychology seeks to develop theories and practices
aimed at the prevention and mitigation of direct and
structural violence. Framed positively, peace psychology
promotes the nonviolent management of conflict and the
pursuit of social justice, what we refer to as peacemaking
and peacebuilding, respectively’ (Christie et al., 2001).
• ‘The study of mental processes and behavior that lead to
violence, prevent violence, and facilitate nonviolence as
well as promoting fairness, respect, and dignity for all, for
the purpose of making violence a less likely occurrence and
helping to heal its psychological effects’ (MacNair, 2003).
 History
• Based on long standing musings about the mental processes and behavior of war
and peace.
• Prophets suggest that the cause of wars is continued adherence to unhealthy social
norms which included exploitation of the poor, greed, lying, and worship of
multiple gods that approved such behavior.
• And adherence to universal and involved justice, care for the poor and attention to
only one divine authority is solution.
• In ancient India, Siddartha Gotama Buddha (c. 563-c. 483 BC) proposed that
suffering was caused by desires, and peace would be found through the discipline
of detachment. Advocated compassion and nonviolence, as essential to the
individual's spiritual well-being.
• In ancient China, Confucius (c. 551- c. 471 BC) proposed that war came from
disharmony and would be best remedied when individuals conform to an ideal
harmonious and hierarchical social order.
• By contrast, Lao Tse (c. 604 - c. 531 BC) suggested individuals should ignore
social dictates and seek to be in tune with the patterns of the universe involving
balance, harmony, and compassion.
 History
• The ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes (c. 447 - c. 380 BC) suggested that
the psychology of war was that of the arrogance of men and their lust for political
power.
• First-century Middle Eastern Christian writer James proposed as a psychological
cause of war that people had excessive desires for material wealth or prestige that
they could not get, and that people were bent on murder when envious and
wanting something they cannot have.
• More recently, seventeenth-century Czech education reformer Jan Amos
Comenius (1592-1670) proposed that the means to peace is education which is
international and universal. Beginning in 1628, he published a series of books on
educating for understanding between countries of different religions, languages,
and ways of life.
• Early nineteenth-century English Quaker writer Jonathan Dymond (1796-1828)
wrote a treatise on the causes and effects of war, collecting and articulating in a
coherent framework the ideas of many Quakers and other pacifists of the time
(Dymond, 1824).
 History
• In 1905, American writer Mark Twain wrote the short story called
"The War Prayer” on "war hysteria," a colloquial term for a state of
mind which is enthusiastic about war, ignores its predictable effects,
oversimplifies both the villainy of the enemy and the issues involved in
the dispute, and uses reasoning starkly different from everyday life,
making it puzzling to those not caught up in its emotion.
• Later psychologists like William James (1910) and Lawrence LeShan
(1992) tried to define and explain this phenomenon.
• William James wrote the classic essay ‘The Moral Equivalent of War’
in 1910 which set the stage for the sub-discipline of peace psychology,
though the term was not yet current.
• The essay argues that the aspects of war that make it psychologically
appealing should be replaced by nonviolent alternatives that achieve
the same appeal. He identified six such aspects.
 History
• One was pride in one's self coming from belonging to
and helping a greater group. This gives a sense of vitality as part of a vast
undertaking.
• The second was that war can give meaning and purpose to an otherwise
boring life.
• Thirdly, it can allow for projection of self-doubts or self-
hatred onto someone else.
• Fourth, group cohesion improves when faced with an external threat.
Arguments stop when there is a common enemy. When the war is over,
quarrels return. Many remember fondly the sense of unity.
• Fifth, some admirable virtues are involved. These include discipline,
courage, and self-sacrifice for the greater good. People like to think of
themselves as having and demonstrating such qualities.
• Finally, the anxiety of uncertainty vanishes when war hysteria arrives.
 History
• Following education for peace idea, Maria Montessori opened school in an
Italian slum in 1907 and started publishing a series of books since 1912 and
argued that children who are not trained to follow authoritarian teachers are
less likely to follow rulers urging them war.
• 1912- School Peace League had chapters in nearly every state of the United
States
• Teachers thought schools had encouraged war by indoctrinating children in
nationalism. They taught international studies for better understanding of the
students
• 1924- Mary Parker Follet published ‘Creative Experience’ and pioneered the
concept of resolving conflicts by integrating instead of balancing interests. She
proposed that this is a preferable alternative to either domination or
compromise, in that outcomes are designed to address the roots of the conflict.
• 1927- William McDougall’s book ‘Janus: The Conquest of War’ highlighted
psychological causes of war and named weapons manufacturers, certain
business groups and politicians, and humanity's natural pugnacity. For war
prevention, he suggested to set up an international court of justice.
 History
• 1931-in another book he predicted the coming of nuclear weapons and argued that
technology will not bring security.
• The development of the nonviolent alternatives has also continued throughout the
twentieth century.
• In 1930 Ivan Pavlov promoted a petition against the armament policies that will lead
to economic disaster and inevitable war.
• 1936- The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) was
established and received the division status in 1937 APA. It provided support for
applied psychology in areas such as the study of war, racial prejudice, and industrial
conflict.
• 1947-nonviolent resistance led to Independence of Sub-continent
• 1971-The Stanford Prison Experiment was shut down due to excessive
dehumanization
• 1974- Milgram’s study of Obedience to Authority showed alarming results
• 1988- APA 48 Division of Peace Psychology was established for dedicated focus
• 1996-98 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) dealt positively with apartheid
• 2001- Christie & colleagues published their book
 Psychologists’ Role During World War I & II
• Psychologists did not follow James’ advice, but they did become involved in U.S.
military affairs during the World War I by developing group intelligence tests for
personnel recruitment that “put psychology on the map” (Smith, 1986)
• This involvement increased during the World War II where Clinical psychologists
developed and administered tests to place personnel within the military
establishment and also treated war-related emotional problems.
• Social psychologists contributed their expertise, developing propaganda designed
to promote the war effort by boosting morale at home and demoralizing the enemy
abroad. A number of psychologists worked with the Office of Strategic Services,
the precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency, selecting and training people
involved in “undercover” activities in Europe and the Far East.
• Human factors psychologists participated in the design of weaponry and other
instruments used by the military, and
• Experimental psychologists trained nonhumans to perform human tasks. The best-
known example of the latter was B. F. Skinner’s research in which he trained
pigeons to guide pilotless missiles to targets
• In the effort to win World War II, a war that was regarded by most people as a just
war.
 Psychologists’ Role During Cold War
• Peace psychology emerged as a distinct area of research and
practice during the Cold War, when the preeminent concern
was the prevention of nuclear war.
• Psychologists broke from the tradition of supporting U.S.
government policies.
• USA & The ideology of Realpolitik: three points
• Deterrence
• By the conclusion of World War II, a tidy bipolar superpower
arrangement had emerged in the world. The United States
and Soviet Union were locked into an adversarial relationship
in which they competed and concentrated their resources in
an arms race, a Cold War that resulted in enormous stockpiles
of conventional and nuclear weapons.
 Psychologists’ Role During Cold War
• ‘I urge you to beware the temptation…of blithely declaring yourselves above
it all and label both sides [United States and Soviet Union] equally at fault, to
ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to
simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove
yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil…[The
Soviet Leaders] are the focus of evil in the modern world’ (Ronald Reagan,
1983).
• The post ‘Evil Empire Speech’ survey showed a peak in anti-Soviet sentiments
by U.S. citizens (Yatani & Bramel, 1989), and a peak in the level of fear people
reported in connection with the threat of nuclear war (Schatz & Fiske, 1992).
and other reactions that could be categorized as hopelessness,
powerlessness, and futurelessness (Christie & Hanley, 1994).
• Both APA & SPSSI lacked focus but agreed that the major
psychological concern was citizens’ attitudes toward atomic warfare
and energy.
 Psychologists’ Role During Cold War
• On the whole, the public was quite supportive of government
policies though the Americans were well aware of the bomb, and
expressed little hope about the potential for international agencies
to harness the spread of atomic energy and bombs, very few
Americans expressed worry or fear (Cottrell & Eberhart, 1948).
• The usual psychological interpretation of the public’s low level of
concern in the face of the atomic threat was that ordinary
Americans felt helpless, relied on the authorities to deal with the
problem, and used a psychological defense that was called “fear
suppression” (Harris, Proshansky, & Raskin, 1956). No one in the
psychological community suggested that fear might be an
appropriate response to the threat of nuclear annihilation
(Morawski & Goldstein, 1985).
 Psychologists’ Role During Cold War
• During the 1950s, a growing number of psychologists were employed as
scientists and practitioners by the federal government and the military & used
their expertise to assess and change the public’s attitudes toward atomic
warfare, to deal with emotional problems experienced by persons exposed to
atomic testing, and to reduce soldiers’ fear and reluctance to participate in
atomic maneuvers (Rand, 1960; Schwartz & Winograd, 1954).
• Although the activities of psychologists were many and varied, most
psychologists shared the common goal of preparing the country—civilians
and military alike—for the anticipated nuclear confrontation with the Soviet
Union.
• The ideology of Realpolitik prevailed, despite the efforts of a few individuals
within the psychological establishment (such as Gordon Allport, Hadley
Cantril, and Otto Klineberg) who argued that the atomic age required a new
form of diplomacy and the abolition of war (Jacobs, 1989).
• Policy makers were not particularly receptive to the advice of psychologists,
especially in matters of foreign policy.
 Psychologists’ Role During Cold War
• Besides, most psychologists in the post–World War II era were preoccupied
with the development of psychology as a profession and those who wanted to
speak out knew they would be putting themselves at professional risk.
• Marked by the “McCarthy era,” in which anyone opposed to government
policy could be branded a communist and brutally punished, the U.S. political
climate in the early 1950s was not conducive to voices that opposed
government policy.
• In the late 1950s and early 1960s, signaled a shift; first, the level of analysis
was shifted from an exclusive focus on the behavior of individuals to a more
inclusive focus on the behavior of nations. Second, psychologists began to
emphasize the prevention of war rather than preparations for war. And third,
whereas previous research had attempted to document or generate public
consensus with government policy, the new work was critical of U.S. foreign
policies.
 Psychologists’ Role During Cold War
• Instead of analyzing methods of treating soldiers’ resistance, Osgood (1962)
proposed Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-reduction (GRIT),
a method of defusing international tensions by having each side take turns at
initiating tension-reducing actions.
• President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Khruschev drew from the GRIT model
back in the early 1960s when they took a series of initiatives that culminated
in a nuclear arms control treaty (viz., the Limited Test Ban Treaty). Etzioni
(1967) identified the steps that were taken by both sides, and they neatly
conformed to a GRIT pattern.
• From the mid-1960s until the late 1970s, domestic concerns (student
activism, population growth, changes ins ex-roles and racial issues) took
precedence over international issues and U.S. psychologists gave less
attention to the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war.
• Meanwhile, political scientists continued their scholarship on war and peace
and analyzed the Vietnam War driven by Domino Theory
 Psychologists’ Role During Cold War
• With the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, a second round of the
Cold War ensued in which the superpowers enacted the well-known
“security dilemma”
• During the 1970s, the policy of deterrence was taken to the height of
logical absurdity and stuck them with the reality of MAD, “mutually
assured destruction.” Now, no one would begin a nuclear war, it was
reasoned, because no one could win.
• Both sides’ excessive stockpiles of nuclear weapons meant that if an all-
out nuclear war did occur, the result would be not only the total
destruction of the superpowers but an end to life as we knew it.
• In the early 1980s, public concern about the threat of nuclear war
increased dramatically as the rhetoric grew more hostile on both sides and
the U.S. government began to openly discuss plans for achieving nuclear
superiority and for waging and prevailing in a protracted nuclear war
(Scheer, 1982).
 Psychologists’ Role During Cold War
• As tensions peaked, reactions of the scientific community in
psychology were varied (some took policy positions or advocated
political activism while others cautioned that taking positions on
such issues required extrapolating far beyond existing psychological
knowledge.
• Despite the thoughtful analyses of some psychologists,
psychological theory and practice had little if any influence on the
course of the Cold War. From the perspective of policy makers, the
Cold War was fundamentally an interstate problem, not an
intrapsychic problem that was amenable to psychological analyses.
• Through Ralph K. White’s (1986) edited volume, Psychology and
the Prevention of Nuclear psychologists and political scientists gave
coherence to the perspectives of political psychologists and also
added a measure of legitimacy to psychological analyses of the
nuclear threat.
 Psychologists’ Role During Cold War
• Emphasis was placed on the problems of an unbridled arms race, mutually
distorted perceptions, destructive communication patterns, coercive
interactions, competition for allies around the world, and other psychological
and political processes.
• The Cold War generated research and practice on methods of resolving
conflicts. After Follet’s (1940) work Fisher and Ury’s (1981) book, Getting to
Yes came out and is still regarded as a useful guide on how to negotiate and
resolve conflicts.
• With the fall of Berlin Wall during late 1980s, the Cold War ended with little
assistance from conflict resolution procedures.
• Instead, the Soviet Union’s power diminished under the crush of its own
economic problems, which were largely caused by its overextension on
international commitments around the world far beyond its capabilities
(Kennedy, 1986).
• At the conclusion of the Cold War, only one superpower remained, and concerns
about the nuclear arms race and the possibility of nuclear annihilation subsided
dramatically (Schatz & Fiske, 1992).
 Peace Psychology Coming of Age in Post Cold War
• During the Cold War, the state as the focal unit of analysis was used & attention
was given to interstate wars, wars of liberation, secessionist movements, civil
wars, and wars in which the superpowers directly intervened militarily (i.e.,
interventionist wars).
• The violence that mattered the most was that had a direct bearing on the strategic,
U.S.–Soviet balance of power (George, 1983).
• Post Cold War, new categories of security concerns have emerged. Though the
states will still have conflicts to manage, but patterns of violence are complex
with emerging interlacing schisms that divides people not so much by state
boundaries but by ethnicity, religion, economic wellbeing, population density, and
environmental sustainability (Klare, 1998).
• A small sample of what we are now observing globally is the outbreak of ethnic
violence and other forms of identity group conflict and violence, a growing
number of economic and political refugees, ecological devastation and pockets of
food insecurity, concentrations of drug-related violence, and international
terrorism. These problems are within and across international boundaries and
underscore the need to reorient peace psychology and enlarge its scope of
practice.
 Scope & Major Trends
• A move from sole concern of nuclear annihilation to a
broader range of threats and opportunities that bear on
human well-being and survival.
• Major Trends
-Sensitivity to Geo-historical Context
-A Differentiated Perspective on Violence and
Peace
-A Systems Perspective on the Nature of Violence
and Peace
Core Concepts
Core Concepts: 2 × 2 Matrix (Galtung, 1969)
A systems perspective traces the preconditions of violent episodes to
structure-based disparities in human well-being, depicted in with a
bidirectional arrow that links structures and episodes of violence.
 Contributions of Peace Psychology
• The emergence of peace psychology as an area of interest with its
own journal, book series, international conferences, undergraduate
courses, and graduate specialties has provided a measure of
legitimacy for many psychologists who subscribe to a scholar –
activism model in their pursuit of peace and social justice.
• Behavioral scientists played a key role in the 1951 Supreme Court
decision to integrate graduate schools in the United States when
scientists offered testimony that segregation was “ psychologically
damaging. ”
• Psychologists also have drawn from Bandura’s social cognitive
theory as an intellectual scaffolding to produce serial social dramas
that have promoted social justice through demonstrable changes in
literacy, gender equality, HIV prevention, and family planning.
 Contributions of Peace Psychology
• Ignacio Martín-Baró , a social psychologist & Jesuit priest from El
Salvador, inspired the liberation psychology movement that swept across
Latin America in the 1980s and continues to spawn community based and
culturally grounded emancipatory agendas all over the world.
• Herbert Kelman’s Track II diplomacy or Problem Solving Workshops
helped create a political atmosphere and ideas that were building blocks
for the Oslo Agreement (i.e., the two - state, Israel – Palestine solution) in
1993.
• Irving Janis concept of groupthink has made its way into the popular
media and is regarded by current members of the executive branch of the
US government as an undesirable decision - making style.
• Hamdi Malik and colleagues at the University of Indonesia used a
grassroots and unofficial diplomacy approach to bring Christian and
Muslim communities together in a social movement called Baku Bae
(reconciliation), replacing violence with the cooperative pursuit of
common goals.
 Contributions of Peace Psychology
• Anne Anderson, former coordinator of Psychologists for Social
Responsibility, provided psychologically informed testimony to the
International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague which contributed to the
Court ’ s decision to increase physical protection and psychosocial support
for victims of rape who testified before the ICC.
• Finally, Brandon Hamber and colleagues in South Africa established
Khulumani (Speak Out), a support and self - help group for victims of
political violence in South Africa, a group that turned to activism and was
instrumental in having the “ secrecy clauses ” removed from the first draft
of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act. If the initial draft had
been accepted, all TRC hearings would have been behind closed doors, an
arrangement that was unacceptable to most victims.
• These and many other contributions that continue to accumulate attest to
the value and promise of peace psychology.