PEACE PSYCHOLOGY

What is Peace Psychology?

Peace psychology is a branch of psychology that focuses on understanding the factors
influencing conflicts and violence while seeking ways to promote peace and harmony. It
examines the psychological aspects of aggression, prejudice, and fear, aiming to uncover
strategies for resolving conflicts peacefully.
William James, one of the early psychologists and considered the first peace psychologist,
was a most distinguished scholar and also an insistent public voice on issues of war and
peace. He talked about the psychological aspects of war, extreme patriotism, imperialism,
state-sanctioned violence, and how the public supports hostility. “Peace psychology”
started gaining attention during the major 20th-century wars. At the time, psychology was
still a growing field, and psychologists from different areas were involved in these wars.
The Role of Peace Psychology
Peace psychology plays a significant role in building more peaceful societies and addressing
global issues like war, discrimination, and social unrest.
 Conflict Resolution: Peace psychology provides strategies and techniques for
resolving conflicts and disputes peacefully.
 Preventing Violence: It helps identify the root causes of violence and offers insights
into ways to prevent it through intervention and education.
 Social Harmony: Peace psychology fosters empathy, cooperation, and
communication, contributing to social cohesion and harmony.
 Healing Trauma: Peace psychology supports the psychological recovery of individuals
and communities affected by violence and conflict.
 Promoting Human Rights: It aligns with efforts to protect and promote human rights,
working towards a world where all individuals enjoy fundamental freedoms and
dignity
Psychological Contributors to the Prevention of War and
Violence
Debunking the Inevitability of War
One of the earliest and most important contributions of psychologists and other social scientists was to
debunk the myth that war was inevitable because of mankind’s innate aggressiveness. As early as 1945, the
Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues published a book, Human Nature and Enduring Peace,
which included a statement endorsed by the leading psychologists of that time, “If man can live in a society
which does not block and thwart him, he does not tend to be aggressive; and if a society of men can live in a
world order in which the members of the society are not blocked or thwarted by the world arrangements as a
whole, they have no intrinsic tendency to be aggressive”. Amulti-national and multi-disciplined group of
scientists, organized by David Adams (a psychologist) issued the Seville Statement on Violence, which was
subsequently adopted by UNESCO. The statement was designed to refute “the notion that organized human
violence is biologically determined.” The statement contains five core ideas. These ideas are:
1. It is scientifically incorrect to say that we have inherited a tendency to make war from our animal
ancestors.
2. It is scientifically incorrect to say that war or any other violent behavior is genetically programmed
into our human nature.
3. It is scientifically incorrect to say that in the course of human evolution there has been a selection for
aggressive behavior more than for other kinds of behavior.
4. It is scientifically incorrect to say that humans have a ‘violent brain’.
5. It is scientifically incorrect to say that war is caused by ‘instinct’ or any single motivation.
The statement concludes: “Just as ‘wars begin in the minds of men’, peace also begins in our minds. The
same species who invented war is capable of inventing peace. The responsibility lies with each of us”.
Psychology and the Prevention of War
After the end of World War II, stimulated by the development of nuclear weapons, the emergence of the
United Nations, and the development of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, a
significant number of psychologists began to become active in applying psychology to the prevention of
war. Such psychologists were very active in writing papers, giving talks, participating in conferences with
citizen groups as well as with officials from the U.S. State and Defense Departments. They wrote about:
motivations and misperceptions which led to war; such processes as “autistic hostility”; “self-fulfilling
prophecies,” and “unwitting commitments” that perpetuate destructive conflicts; they analyzed and criticized
the psychological assumptions involved in “nuclear deterrence”; they considered processes for reducing
tension and hostility such as mediation and GRIT (the graduated reduction in tension); they identified
“group think” which, in tense situations, limits the alternatives of interpretation and action available to the
group; they identified the conditions which give rise to destructive rather than constructive resolution of
conflict; they analyzed current international hostilities. Scholars from other disciplines (political science,
economics, sociology, law, etc.) often participated with psychologists in multidisciplinary books and
conferences. They wrote about such topics as: arms control and disarmament; non-physical methods of
disarmament; economic steps toward peace; East and West; military defence; reducing international
tensions; building a world society; international cooperation and the rule of law, ethnic conflicts, negotiation
and mediation.

Modern Peace Psychology

With the end of the Cold War, the break-up of the Soviet Union, and the dissolution of the
pro-Soviet Eastern Bloc during the 1980s, the attention of Western peace psychology
became less focused on preventing war between the United States and the Soviet Union.
During the Cold War, but especially afterwards, not only were there many psychological
articles and workshops aimed at psychological intervention into specific violent conflicts,
whether at the international, intergroup, or interpersonal levels; there was also much
psychological work to develop theory that might improve psychologically based
interventions. Galtung’s important distinctions between direct and structural violence
(Galtung, 1969) provides useful distinctions between much of the early and more recent
work of psychologists concerned with issues of peace, conflict, and violence.
 Structural violence; the values, social norms, laws, social structures, and procedures
within a society or community which systematically disadvantage certain individuals
 and groups so that they are poorer, sicker, less educated, and more harmed than
those who are not disadvantaged.
 Direct violence; the causes and conditions which give rise to aggression and physical
violence.
Much of the early work was focused on direct violence. More recent work has often been
concerned with the bidirectional relationship between conflict and social injustice
(structural violence).

Psychological Components of Sustainable Peace

The key psychological components are:
1. Effective Cooperation
The developmental of harmonious peaceful relations among nations will require effective
cooperation in dealing with such issues as climate change, proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction, pandemics of contagious diseases, global economic development, failed states,
and so on. Similarly, in interpersonal relations such as marriages, if a couple is unable to
cooperate effectively on matters that are central to their identities will be difficult for them
to have a harmonious, peaceful marriage.
2. Constructive Conflict Resolution
Among extended relations of interpersonal, intergroup, or international levels, it is
inevitable that conflict will arise. Some of the conflicts are not central to the relationship
and ignored without harming the relationships. Other conflicts which threaten the
wellbeing or identity of one or more of the participants in the relationship cannot be
suppressed or ignored without harming the involved parties and their relationship.
Whether the conflicts resolved constructively or destructively are critical in determining
whether harmonious, cooperative relationships will persist and be strengthened or will
deteriorate into bitter, hostile relations.
There has been extensive theoretical and research investigation, during the past decades,
of the effects of constructive and destructive processes of conflict resolution as well as of
the conditions which give rise to each process.
3. Social Justice
Relationships that are just foster effective cooperation and constructive conflict resolution.
Injustice and oppression, foster and are fostered by destructive conflict. The effective
cooperation is inhibited or destroyed by injustice and oppression. Oppression is the
experience of repeated, widespread, systemic injustice. It need not be extreme and involve
the legal system nor violent.
Harvey (1999) used the term “civilized oppression” and Wing Sue et al. (2007) used the
term “microaggression” to characterize the everyday processes of oppression in normal life.
 Civilized oppression refers to the vast and deep injustices some groups suffer as a
consequence of often unconscious assumptions and reactions of well-meaning people in
ordinary interactions.
4. Power and Equality
The distribution of power, the equality or inequality of the parties involved in any
relationship plays a critically important role in determining the characteristics of the
relationship. Adam Curle (1971) observed that as conflicts moved from un-peaceful to
peaceful relationships, their course could be charted from one of relative inequality
between the groups to relative equality. He described this progression toward peace as
involving four stages.
 In the first stage, conflict was “hidden” to the lower-power parties because they
remained unaware of the injustices that affected their lives. The activities resulting
in conscientization moved the conflict forward.
 An increase in awareness of injustice led to the second stage, confrontation, when
demands for change from the weaker party brought the conflict to the surface.
 These confrontations resulted in the stage of negotiations, which were aimed at
achieving a rebalancing of power in the relationship in order for those in low power
to increase their capacities to address their basic needs.
 Successful negotiations moved the conflicts to the final stage of sustainable peace,
but only if they led to a restructuring of the relationship that addressed effectively
the substantive and procedural concerns of those involved.

5. Human Needs and Emotions

Neither effective cooperation, constructive conflict resolution, nor social justice is likely
when basic human needs are unsatisfied. Maslow (1954) has identified the basic human
needs as: physiological, safety, belongingness and love, esteem, and self-actualization.
Frustration of these needs leads to diverse emotional consequences such as apathy, fear,
depression, humiliation, rage, and anger. These emotions are not conducive to effective
cooperation, constructive conflict resolution, or any other psychological component of a
harmonious, sustainable peace.
Lindner (2006) described the view that the frustration of one’s needs is purposeful and
unjust gives rise to intense feelings of humiliation as “nuclear bomb of emotions”.
6. The Psychodynamics of Peace
The psychodynamic approach emphasizes the interdependence between internal conflicts
and external conflicts. Thus, internal conflict between a socially prohibited desire and guilt
feelings may lead to anxiety and such defence mechanisms against anxiety as projection
where the struggle in yourself is denied and is projected onto or attributed to another.
 External conflict can also give rise to internal conflict. Psychodynamic approaches also
emphasize the importance of understanding how an individual, group, or society’s past
and development play a critical role in forming self-identity as well as the values, symbolic
meanings, attitudes, and predispositions to behavior.
7. Creative Problem Solving
The freedom and ability to imagine new possibilities as well as the capacity to select
judiciously from these possibilities what is novel, interesting, and valuable are central to
creative problem-solving. The conditions which foster the freedom and ability to create
novel and valuable solutions not only are conditions in the problem-solver, but also are
conditions in the social context, which affects the problem-solver. Creative problem solving
is necessary to overcome the obstacles which block effective cooperation and the impasses
which hinder constructive conflict resolution.
8. Complex Thinking
Simple thinking does not take into account the future or past or what is occurring in
different locales and remote places and that solutions to problems often involve the
integration of apparently opposed alternatives and the creation of new alternatives. At the
international level such problems as climate change, depletion of basic resources, world-
wide economic recession, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction require the ability to
think of the future as well as of the past, to think globally as well as locally.
9. Persuasion and Dialogue
Persuasion involves communication by a source of a message, through a medium,
designed to reach and influence a recipient. Whether the recipient will be persuaded by
the message is a function of the characteristics of each of the foregoing elements as well
as the characteristics of the relationship between the source and the recipient.
Sustainable, harmonious peaceful relations require the mutual ability to persuade one
another. Without this ability, a convergence of values, information, and actions as well as
mutual satisfaction of needs is not likely to occur.
Dialogue, unlike persuasion, is not unilateral. It is a mutual process in which the
interaction parties openly communicate and actively listen to one another with mutual
respect and a feeling of mutual equality. Each communicates what is important and true
for her without derogating what is true and important for others. They seek to learn
together and to fi n d common meaning by exploring the assumptions underlying their
individual and collective beliefs. Dialogue is a collaborative and creative process in which
the participants are open to change as they seek common ground and mutual
understanding.
10. Reconciliation
After destructive conflicts in which the conflicting parties have inflicted grievous harm on
one another, the conflicting parties may still have to live and work together in the same
communities. This is often the case in civil wars, ethnic and religious conflicts, gang wars
and even family disputes that have taken a destructive course. After bitter destructive
conflict, it can be expected that reconciliation will be achieved, if at all, after a slow
process with many setbacks as well as advances. The continuous and persistent help and
encouragement of powerful and respected third parties is often necessary to keep the
reconciliation process moving forward and to prevent its derailment by extremists,
misunderstandings or harmful actions by either of the conflicting parties.
11. Education
In recent years, it has been increasingly recognized that schools have to change in basic
ways if we are to educate children so that they are for rather than against one another, so
that they develop the ability to resolve their conflicts constructively rather than
destructively and are prepared to live in a peaceful world. This recognition has been
expressed in a number of interrelated movements: cooperative learning, conflict
resolution, and education for peace. There are several key components in these
overlapping movements: cooperative learning; conflict resolution training; the
constructive use of controversy in teacher subject matters; and the creation of dispute
resolution centers in the schools; and development of knowledge of and a commitment to
human rights and social justice.
Students should acquire the substantive knowledge at the appropriate age, in such fields
as political science, international relations, arms control and disarmament, economic
development, the global environment, and world trade, which are also important to world
peace, and other substantive knowledge and skills necessary to function as responsible
adults. They should also become informed and sensitized to the many injustices that exist
globally as well as locally so that they can be intelligently active in bringing about social
change.
12. Norms for Policy
Psychological principles play a central role in the development of policies and norms that
support sustainable peace, where peace is de fi ned comprehensively to include the
prevention and mitigation of episodes both of direct violence and structural violence.
Sustainable peace requires changes at the level of norms, and policies and psychologically-
informed principles and activism have played a role in changing policies and/or norms.
13. The Practice of Sustainable Peace
Peace is never achieved, but rather is a process that is fostered by a variety of cognitive,
affective, behavioral, structural, institutional, spiritual, and cultural components.
Accordingly, there are wide arrays of ideas and methods that can be learned, practiced
and mastered to help bolster and sustain peace.