Sowing Peace With Psychology: Q&A With Eran Halperin

Stories From the Field

Sowing Peace With Psychology: Q&A With Eran Halperin

Eran Halperin, Ph.D., a political psychologist and professor at Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, led the research featured in this toolkit.

SPARQ: What big question does your research tackle?

Halperin: The big question of interest to me is, how can we use psychological knowledge to support peace and conflict resolution? Because of my expertise in affective science and also because of my experience living in long-term political conflict [in Israel], I believe that emotions are dramatically important in answering this question. And so what I try to do is, first, figure out what role that discreet, group-based emotions play in these conflicts, in terms of shaping people’s attitudes and actions, and then try to change people’s emotions in order to influence their attitudes and actions.

SPARQ: What inspired you to do this research?

Halperin: I wanted to try and address the million-dollar question for me, as someone who’s been living in political conflict for so many years: “How can we explain a situation in which people understand that resolving the conflict would improve their lives dramatically, and yet they don’t resolve the conflict?” People know exactly what needs to be done to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and in most cases they are even willing to make the necessary compromises to do it. But they simply cannot get there. For me, this is a dramatically important question. This was the starting point for everything I do.

As the years went by, I realized, whereas my starting point was a political question, most of the answers could be found in psychological theory and psychological understanding.

SPARQ: How would you like to see your research used?

Halperin: I truly believe that this kind of applied research has important implications in informing theories. When it comes to prejudice reduction or emotion regulation research, I think researchers can learn a lot about basic processes in emotion regulation when testing them in the real world.

When it comes to the more applied aspects, I think my research is relevant to all aspects of group interaction, not just intractable group conflict. I can tell you that we’re using our ideas and our interventions in Israel in conflicts between religious and secular Jews, in conflicts on gender issues, to try and promote diversity in the workplace, and in more political interventions for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

More and more, we understand that you can’t simply take the same emotion regulation interventions and use them among different groups. So, adjustments need to be made, and we have definitely tried to understand how we can make the right adjustments among different groups in situations of conflict. But I think emotions are relevant to any conflict. And if emotions are relevant to any conflict, then emotion regulation interventions can be relevant to almost any conflict.