Page 4 - Psychological Constructs that Promote Peace

This chart created by Steven Pinker includes Alan Fiske's system of four relational models in which people conceive of their relationships, Communal Sharing, Authority Ranking, Equality Matching, and Market Pricing/ Rational-Legal.

Of the four relational models laid out by Fiske, Authority Ranking is the one that best applies to the relationship between the United States government and the Native Americans. This explains why the government and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers felt entitled to commit abuses against the Natives, their land, and the protestors at Standing Rock. However, this relationship kept them from having an asocial relationship, which leads to complete dehumanization and treating others like inanimate objects. Since they had some level of paternalistic desire to protect their inferiors, this kept the overall death toll at the low level that it was.

This triangular bubble plot shows the frequency and severity of democides under democratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian regimes.

In the late 1880s, the Ghost Dance movement became popular among certain Native American tribes, including the Lakota Sioux, in which they prayed for their old lives to return and for the settlers to vanish. However, U.S. government officials perceived this as a threat, and stationed troops near their reservations. Rumors spread and national anxieties about an impending war against the Natives grew. This all culminated in the Wounded Knee Massacre on December 29th, 1890, in which military personnel interpreted a Lakota Ghost Dance prayer as the start of an attack, and soon the troops began firing into the crowd. The violence resulted in the death of 25 US soldiers and over 250 Lakotas, many of whom were women and children.

In 1864, due to shortages of fuel and food, traditional campsites of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians became uninhabitable during the winter, and so they set up temporary shelters along the south bend of Big Sandy Creek in Colorado. However, the United States army commanders stationed at Fort Lyon nearby prohibited them from camping so close to the fort. On November 29th of that year, 675 Colorado volunteer soldiers attacked this encampment while, which housed around 750 Native Americans, while its inhabitants were sleeping. Many were wounded and over 230 were killed, the majority of which were women and children. This event has become known as the Sand Creek Massacre.

Here is a definition of "empathy", as described by Lamm et. al. in their article "The Neural Substrate of Human Empathy: Effects of Perspective-Taking and Cognitive Appraisal.”

In this passage, Pinker describes the need for incomplete justice in order for conflicts to have longlasting peaceful resolutions. As difficult as it may be, both sides need to grant "massive amnesty" to their enemies in order for everyone to be able to move forward, and to avoid slipping into continued future conflicts.

In this video, veterans of the United States military kneel before Native American leaders at the Standing Rock Protests and apologize for the sins of their ancestors. Even though they have every reason to be motivated to refuse this apology, the Native American leaders offer forgiveness and healing in a moving ceremony. This relates to Pinker's point about how in order for a conflict to be fully resolved you cannot punish every last person involved, or there will be no lasting peace. The Native leaders taking this brave step to offer forgiveness promoted peace within the protests.