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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2014 Nov 4;111(44):15687-92.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1414146111. Epub 2014 Oct 20.

Motive attribution asymmetry for love vs. hate drives intractable conflict

Adam Waytz  1 , Liane L Young  2 , Jeremy Ginges  3
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Motive attribution asymmetry for love vs. hate drives intractable conflict

Adam Waytz et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Five studies across cultures involving 661 American Democrats and Republicans, 995 Israelis, and 1,266 Palestinians provide previously unidentified evidence of a fundamental bias, what we term the "motive attribution asymmetry," driving seemingly intractable human conflict. These studies show that in political and ethnoreligious intergroup conflict, adversaries tend to attribute their own group's aggression to ingroup love more than outgroup hate and to attribute their outgroup's aggression to outgroup hate more than ingroup love. Study 1 demonstrates that American Democrats and Republicans attribute their own party's involvement in conflict to ingroup love more than outgroup hate but attribute the opposing party's involvement to outgroup hate more than ingroup love. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrate this biased attributional pattern for Israelis and Palestinians evaluating their own group and the opposing group's involvement in the current regional conflict. Study 4 demonstrates in an Israeli population that this bias increases beliefs and intentions associated with conflict intractability toward Palestinians. Finally, study 5 demonstrates, in the context of American political conflict, that offering Democrats and Republicans financial incentives for accuracy in evaluating the opposing party can mitigate this bias and its consequences. 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.

Keywords: attribution; cognitive bias; ingroup love; intergroup conflict; outgroup hate.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Israelis’ attributions to Israelis and Palestinians in study 2. Means and SEs are taken from the total sample rather than from specific tests that exclude subjects who responded “don’t know/not applicable.” Error bars represent SEs.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Palestinians’ attributions to Israelis and Palestinians in study 3. Means and SEs are taken from the total sample rather than from specific tests that exclude subjects who responded “don’t know/not applicable.” Error bars represent SEs.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Comparison by condition of Democrats’ and Republicans’ attributions of love and hate to the opposing party in study 5. Error bars represent SEs.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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