Page 5 - Psychological Constructs that Could Have Better Promoted Peace

In this experiment, conducted by Claus Lamm, C. Daniel Batson, and Jean Decety, the participants were told they were watching video clips of patients experiencing painful auditory stimulation due to medical treatment. They were told the patients were required to listen to these sounds because it was part of a new treatment for their neurological disease (Tinnitus aurium) that was being used for the first time. Patients were instructed to watch the video clips adopting either of two perspectives, imagining how that would feel if they were in that situation, “imagine self,” vs. imagining how the other person must feel in that situation, “imagine other.” A sample of the sounds was played to participants, and the researchers pointed out that the pain evoked in patients was much stronger due to the specific neurological disorder they suffered from. The figure shown here shows how when participants were told to take the “imagine self” perspective, their brain’s empathy response was higher. This is important because it shows how important it is for people on one side of a conflict to imagine themselves in the shoes of the people on the other side in order to feel the most empathy for them. If during the Standing Rock protests both sides had participated in this, then there would have been less violence and the conflict would have ended sooner with a more satisfactory conclusion for both sides. 

Ginges et. al. conducted an experiment in which they surveyed hundreds of real players in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (601 Jewish Israeli settlers, 535 Palestinian refugees, and 719 Palestinian students), and identified Moral-absolutionists among them from both sides. They then divided this group into thirds, and presented them with a hypothetical peace deal and the conditions described in this quote. They were testing two hypothoses: first, that "when reasoning about sacred values, people would not apply instrumental (cost-benefit) calculations but would instead apply deontological (moral) rules of intuitions;" second, that "antagonism to compromise over sacred values would be mitigated by equitable losses over sacred values by both sides."

This graphic confirms the validity of Ginges et. al.'s second hypothesis. It represents the reactions of Moral-absolutionist Israeli settlers (a and b) and Moral-absolutionist Palestinian refugees (c and d), and shows that Moral-absolutionists were much less likely to respond with anger or disgust, feel “joy” about suicide attacks, or support violence when the other side is willing to publicly sacrifice some of their own sacred values. The conflict over the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline could have been resolved in a more peaceful, constructive way that would have been satisfying to both sides if they both were willing to sacrifice some of their own sacred values.

This graph shows the increase in the average IQ of Americans, according to the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, from 1947-2002. According to this trend, the gains would have been even higher by 2016, when the Standing Rock Protests started.

When talking about the rise in IQ scores, Flynn is referring to a rise in Americans' abilities for postscientific operational thinking, which he goes on to describe as our ability to "(free) logic from concrete referents and (reason) about purely hypothetical situations." However, the actors in the Standing Rock conflict were viewing the situation more through prescientific lens, described here as focusing more on "What is important is orientation in space and time, what things are useful, and what things are under one's control." If the actors from both sides of the conflict had exercised more postscientific thinking, then they would have been better able to use logic to think about the situation's hypothetical outcomes, and also they would have a better understanding of the reasoning of the other side. Since IQs in America have been rising over time, theoretically they both should have been able to exercise this reasoning. If this had been made more salient, the conflict could have been resolved sooner and in a way that was more logical and more evenly benefitted both sides.

This graphic is helpful to show not only how much larger the poverty rates are among Native American communities than the national average, but also how they have remained largely unchanged and have not benefitted from increases in the logging and oil and gas extraction industries. As we previously discussed on Page 4 when talking about self-help justice, low-status people commit more crimes because they do not trust law enforcement officials to handle issues for them. Native American protestors at Standing Rock would have been better able to trust the United States government had it not violated so many laws with its decision to construct the Dakota Access Pipeline, such as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Clean Water Act, National Historic Protection Act, and National Environmental Policy Act. Another thing the government could have done to foster a trusting, working relationship with the Natives is if they worked with them when they tried to handle the situation diplomatically through the court system. Instead, they responded to these court cases by continuing to jump over legal measures kept in place to avoid these violations. If the Standing Rock Sioux tribe had felt listened to when they tried to handle the case through the court system, then they would not have felt the need to hold the protests in the first place.

These are two of the graphs that Steven Pinker uses to defend his stance that negative attitudes toward certain races have decreased over time in America. He claims that one of the reasons for this is anti-exclusionary, un-eliminationist policies known in America as "affirmative action." These policies better integrate the lives of Americans of color and white Americans, and this increased interaction between the groups has helped people to see the others as full human beings, and not just the embodiment of various stereotypes. However, this integration has not been fully experienced by Native Americans who reside on reservations, such as the Standing Rock Sioux. In order for the United States government to fully value Native Americans on reservations as full human beings, they need to interact with them on a more regular basis, or find another way to see them for their full humanity. If they were able to achieve this, then they would not be willing to take risks of oil leaking into their water supply and/ or would use all measures possible to avoid committing violence against them when they are protesting peacefully.

One piece of evidence that Pinker provides for this decline is racism is the fact that we have made racist caricatures socially unacceptable, but the fact that Native Americans are still subjected to so many offensive depictions of them for sports teams of all levels all across the country shows that the same statistics do not necessarily apply for the situation of Native Americans.