Gender Perceptions and Support for Compromise in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

摘要

The goal of our study was to explore factors that underlie public support for compromise in protracted, asymmetrical conflict. We introduce a gendering for compromise model in which, in line with previous studies (Maoz & McCauley, 2008), support for compromise is determined by perception of threat from the opponent. However, innovatively, our model also presents perception of the opponent as having stereotypical feminine traits as an important predictor of willingness to compromise in conflict. This model was tested in the context of the asymmetrical, protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict using representative of Jewish-Israeli public opinion polling data (N = 511). In line with our expectations, the findings indicated that Jewish-Israeli perceptions of Palestinians as threatening and Jewish-Israeli perceptions of Palestinians as having stereotypical feminine traits both made significant contributions to predicting attitudes toward compromise.