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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 12, 1674-1689 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167206291947
© 2006 Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Perceiving Intergroup Conflict: From Game Models to Mental Templates

Nir Halevy

Lilach Sagiv

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Sonia Roccas

Open University

Gary Bornstein

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

This article puts forward a parsimonious framework for studying subjective perceptions of real-life intergroup conflicts. Four studies were conducted to explore how individuals perceive the strategic properties of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Studies 1 and 2 found theory-driven associations between people's subjective perception of the conflict's structure as a Chicken, Assurance, or Prisoner's Dilemma game and their ingroup/outgroup perceptions, national identification, religiosity, political partisanship, voting behavior, and right-wing authoritarianism. Studies 3 and 4 manipulated the saliency of the needs for cognitive closure and security, respectively, demonstrating that these needs affect people's endorsement of the game models as descriptions of the conflict.

Key Words: intergroup conflict • mixed-motive games • mental representation

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