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Whether it’s American politics or violent conflict in the Middle East, the roots of the vitriol and intractability begin to grow not from a hatred of the other side, according to Assistant Professor of Psychology Liane Young, but from a misunderstanding of that side’s motivation.
A new study co-authored by Young suggests that while this misunderstanding poses a barrier to solutions, it can be corrected through financial incentives.
In a survey of some 3,000 people of opposing views – Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East, Republicans and Democrats in the US -– Young and her colleagues found that each side felt their own group is motivated by love more than hate, while claiming that their rivals are driven by hate.
This belief that one’s rivals are motivated by emotions opposite to one’s own, says Young, is called “motive attribution asymmetry.” The perception is understandable, according to the study, because a group tends to see its own members engaged in acts of “love, care, and affiliation” but rarely if ever observes such actions among rivals since “we only see them during moments of heated conflict.” This makes arriving at possible solutions or compromises all the more difficult, said Young, who co-published an article on the study of motive attribution asymmetry in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“There’s so much research in social psychology suggesting we first think about who we are and what motivates us, and then we tend to apply that to other people. What we’re seeing here is just the opposite, where I say one thing for me and instead of extrapolating that it would be the same for you, I say it’s just the opposite for you – that you’re motivated by your hatred of my group. That’s pretty striking to me.
“These attributions tend to also track with other sorts of consequences: If you think that the people on the other side are motivated by their hatred of your group, you also are unwilling to negotiate with that group. You tend to think they’re more unreasonable, suggesting that people’s misattributions of other groups may be the cause of intractable conflict.”
When a financial reward was presented, however, a study participant would make the correct assessment as to what truly motivated the opposing group.
“We simply told them they would get a bonus for getting the answer right, so they had to buy into this idea that there was a right answer,” said Young. “It seems like we can at least move around people’s judgments, and that people can get it right when they are motivated to get it right.”
While the motive attribution asymmetry makes solutions and compromise unattainable, Young and her research colleagues concluded that there is cause for optimism: “Although people find it difficult to explain their adversaries’ actions in terms of love and affiliation, we suggest that recognizing this attributional bias and how to reduce it can contribute to reducing human conflict on a global scale.”