Collective emotions and emotion regulation in intractable confl icts

As presented in other chapters contained within this book, emotions, and particularly their social aspects, have a vast infl uence on people’s attitudes, motivations, and behaviors in almost every domain of life. Yet, in some domains emotions operate merely peripherally and at times even as negligible psychological forces. In other domains, however, and under specifi c circumstances, collective emotions play a pivotal role in producing the screenplay of events and orchestrating the behavior of all involved individuals and groups. Th is is the case in intractable confl icts, a particular type of severe confl icts that last for a long period of time, as the parties involved can neither win, nor are willing to compromise in order to reach a peaceful settlement (Azar, 1990). Anyone who has ever experienced, either directly or indirectly, a confl ict such as those ongoing in the Middle East, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, or Rwanda, knows that these confl icts are fueled by high-magnitude, negative emotions like fear, hatred, despair, and contempt. Th ese emotions can be felt when personally interacting with individuals involved in these violent confl icts, but they are also very dominant in these societies’ general atmosphere, and hence can be found in public discourse, mass media, cultural products (e.g., arts, literature), national ceremonies, etc. (e.g., Bar-Tal, Halperin, & de Rivera, 2007). Accordingly, to fully understand the nature of intractable confl icts and to reveal paths for the promotion of these confl icts’ resolution, one must decipher the ways in which various emotional phenomena operate within these confl icts and perhaps, more importantly, the ways they infl uence people’s individual, social, and political action tendencies regarding confl ict-related events. Hence, it is quite surprising that in spite of confl ict resolution scholars’ wide acknowledgment of emotions’ role in intractable confl icts (e.g., Bar-Tal et al., 2007; Petersen, 2002; Staub, 2005), empirical investigations into the nature and implications of emotions in these contexts were quite rare until the recent decade (see Halperin, Sharvit, & Gross, 2011, for a recent review). Th is chapter’s goal is to bridge this gap by bringing together recent theoretical frameworks as well as empirical fi ndings illuminating the role and implications of collective emotions in intractable confl icts. More specifi cally, I attempt to reveal the reciprocal infl uence of the unique context (physical and psychological) of intractable confl icts on the one hand, and the emotional reactions of those involved in such confl icts on the other.