Defenders of a Lost Cause: Terror Management and Violent Resistance to the Disengagement Plan

Two studies, conducted 3 months before the Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip and the Northern West Bank, examined whether reminders of death would lead right-wing Israelis to endorse violent resistance against the disengagement plan. More specifically, we hypothesized that this reaction would be p...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Personality & social psychology bulletin 2006-06, Vol.32 (6), p.761-769
Main Authors: Hirschberger, Gilad, Ein-Dor, Tsachi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation, Psychological
Adolescent
Adult
Attitude to Death
Culture
Denial
Denial (Psychology)
Disengagement
Female
Humans
Hypotheses
Israel
Jews - psychology
Male
Memory
Middle East
Political Violence
Politics
Religion and Psychology
Resistance
Social Identification
Social Justice
Social psychology
Students - psychology
Terror management theory
Terrorism
Terrorism - psychology
Theory
Violence
Violence - psychology
Warfare
World Problems
Worldview
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Two studies, conducted 3 months before the Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip and the Northern West Bank, examined whether reminders of death would lead right-wing Israelis to endorse violent resistance against the disengagement plan. More specifically, we hypothesized that this reaction would be particularly strong among participants high in denial—those who were unable to come to terms with the Israeli withdrawal. In Study 1 (N = 63), right-wing Israeli undergraduates were primed with death and asked to indicate whether they view violent resistance as legitimate and whether they would be willing to partake in such violence. In Study 2 (N = 42), Israeli settlers in the Gaza Strip completed a similar procedure as in Study 1. In both studies, primes of death led to greater support of violent resistance, but only among participants high in denial. The discussion examines the applicability of terror management theory to understanding real-life political crises.
ISSN:0146-1672
1552-7433
DOI:10.1177/0146167206286628