Knowledge Bank

More than 60 million people are now either refugees or internally displaced because of conflict and violence, while more than one-third of the world's peace agreements and ceasefires since the 1950s have relapsed into violence within five years (UNHCR, 2016). Our research seeks insight into how individuals’ perceptions of their group’s role in ongoing conflict can be modified to promote intergroup understanding and lasting conflict resolution. Acknowledging the role that one’s group has played in perpetuating conflict, and thereby experiencing collective guilt, can facilitate openness to conflict resolution (Schori-Eyal et al., 2015). In order to experience collective guilt one must self-categorize as a member of the group that committed the harm, as well as perceive the group as responsible for causing the harm (Roccas et al., 2004). However, one stumbling block hindering intergroup conflict resolution is a failure to take responsibility for past ingroup transgressions (Schori-Eyal et al., 2015). Our research aims to address this stumbling block. To this end, we build on findings from our previous work on judgments of individual responsibility and personal emotions to propose a novel process shaping judgments of group responsibility and collective emotions. Key to this novel process is the role that physical motion experiences may play in determining perceptions of ingroup responsibility for ongoing conflict, and accordingly, collective guilt. Ultimately, we hope to discover how simple features of physical experience can be leveraged to shape individuals’ psychological reality in ways that promote intergroup understanding and harmony.