Social Representations in Use: Israeli and Palestinian High School Students’ Collective Coping and Defense

Abstract

Israeli and Palestinian high school students are members of opposing ethno-national groups in a situation of intractable and violent conflict. We hypothesized that 16-year-old Israeli Jewish (N=1138) and Palestinian (N=1099) students share a collective representational field which serves them well in coping with the violent situation, but impedes them from taking alternative routes out of it. Collective (vs. individual) coping and defense are defined by the concepts of social representations (SR). The hypothesis is demonstrated on data taken from “Youth & History”, an international European project of historical consciousness (Angvik & von Borries, 1997). Our results show a similar pattern of SR among Israelis and Palestinians. Both attribute high importance to a combined facet of personal and ethno-national values, justify war as a means of achieving national independence, and exhibit either extremely optimistic (Israelis) or extremely pessimistic (Palestinians) historical consciousness. In addition, both groups were more reluctant than Europeans to pay a price for peace and both isolated their SR of war and peace from other parts of their representational field. Finally, speculations are suggested regarding the roots, function and the dynamics of change of this pattern.