International relations scholars have a lot of theories about what drives conflicts. At APSA, two Israeli researchers proposed a theory about how even peace offers can perpetuate conflict. If someone makes a peace offer but it gets turned down, then political leaders and citizens could become less likely to accept future peace offers — even if those offers are better than the status quo. The researchers, Lesley Terris and Orit Tykocinski of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, cite a psychological effect they call inaction inertia. Basically, if an offer for a deal gets turned down, that failed offer becomes the new baseline to judge any future offers. For example: lets say youre offered a deal to pay $40 for a $100 ticket to a ski resort if you buy before the October 15. You miss the October deadline, but find out theres still a $90 offer you can use. Weirdly, youre much less likely to take the $90 deal than someone who never had a $40 deal — despite $90 still being netting you a net discount on a trip, in this hypothetical, that youre going on anyway. Thats because youre judging a $90 deal relative to a $40 one. Terris and Tykocinski found this effect at work in an Israeli survey about prisoner exchanges. Israelis were less likely to support a prisoner exchange if they heard about past offers for prisoner exchanges that had not gone through if those past offers were better from an Israeli point of view. The upshot of their research is that first impressions matter in conflicts. If, in a war, an early peace or ceasefire offer gets turned down, both sides may be less likely to accept future deals that arent as favorable to their side. Theoretically, that could keep conflicts going well past the time that both parties are ready to sue for peace.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 14:33:52 +0000