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Young generations' hopelessness perpetuates long-term conflicts

Hasler, Beatrice S.; Leshem, Oded A.; Hasson, Yossi; Landau, Daniel H.; Krayem, Yara; Blatansky, Chen; Baratz, Guy; Friedman, Doron; Psaltis, Charis; Cakal, Huseyin; Cohen-Chen, Smadar; Halperin, Eran

Authors

Beatrice S. Hasler

Oded A. Leshem

Yossi Hasson

Daniel H. Landau

Yara Krayem

Chen Blatansky

Guy Baratz

Doron Friedman

Charis Psaltis

Smadar Cohen-Chen

Eran Halperin



Abstract

Transforming long-term conflicts into peaceful intergroup relations is one of the most difficult challenges for humanity. Such meaningful social changes are often driven by young people. But do young people living in contexts of long-term conflicts believe that change is even possible? In a series of six studies (N-total = 119,671) over two decades and across two unrelated intractable conflicts in Israel/Palestine and Cyprus, we found that younger (compared to older) generations from both respective rival groups have less hope for peace, and consequently less conciliatory attitudes. We also show that this gradual improvement of peace-promoting emotions and attitudes with increasing age can be experimentally accelerated in young people through a virtual reality-based aging simulation. These findings provide a new perspective on the fundamental question of why long-term conflicts are so difficult to resolve and highlight the importance of instilling hope in young generations to advance peace processes.

Citation

Hasler, B. S., Leshem, O. A., Hasson, Y., Landau, D. H., Krayem, Y., Blatansky, C., …Halperin, E. (2023). Young generations' hopelessness perpetuates long-term conflicts. Scientific reports, 13(1), Article 4926. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-31667-9

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 15, 2023
Publication Date Mar 25, 2023
Deposit Date Oct 13, 2023
Journal SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Print ISSN 2045-2322
Publisher Nature Publishing Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 13
Issue 1
Article Number 4926
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-31667-9