Can Appeals to Shared Suffering Provide a Recipe for Peace?

Abstract

Shared suffering can bond groups together and motivate fighting and even dying for the group leading to vicious cycles of violence while the suffering of the outgroup is routinely overlooked. But could the power of shared suffering also be harnessed to break the cycle? Here we present evidence that a speech appealing to suffering shared by both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict delivered by a professional politician can improve attitudes towards the outgroup – Palestinians or Israelis – in a sample of Muslim and Jewish Americans, even three days after exposure to the speech. In a follow-up study we found that the same speech also increased positive attitudes towards Israelis and Palestinians in a sample of the general population.