Peace-building with the hawks: attitude change of Jewish-Israeli hawks and doves following dialogue encounters with Palestinians

International Journal of Intercultural Relations

27 (2003) 701–714

Peace-building with the hawks: attitude change ofJewish-Israeli hawks and doves followingdialogue encounters with Palestinians

Ifat Maoz*

Department of Communication and Journalism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus,

Jerusalem, Israel

Abstract

This research examines the effect of initial political affiliation (hawks or doves) of Jewish-

Israeli youth on attitudes toward planned contact with Palestinians and examines the extent of

change in attitudes of these youth toward Palestinians following the intergroup contact. It was

hypothesized that Jewish-Israeli hawks will show less favorable attitudes towards these

encounters, indicating less motivation to participate in them and lower satisfaction with these

encounters. It was also hypothesized that attitude change following the encounter with

Palestinians will be smaller for hawks than for doves. These hypotheses were examined by

attitude questionnaires completed by Jewish-Israeli hawks and doves both before and after

participation in the encounter. In line with the first hypothesis, hawks expressed less favorable

attitudes toward the encounter than doves. However, in contrast to the predictions of the

second hypothesis, the findings of this study indicated that while doves showed no attitude

change following the encounter, hawks’ attitudes toward Palestinians became significantly

more favorable after participating in the intergroup dialogue.

r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Hawks and doves; Peace building; Israeli–Palestinian conflict; Attitude change; Intergroup

contact; Prejudice; Structured encounters; Dialogue groups

1. Introduction

A core aspect of intergroup relations in conflict is prejudice—typically defined as anegative attitude toward members of the other group (Mackie & Smith, 1998).

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*Tel.: +972-2-5881059; fax: +972-2-5827069.

E-mail address: [email protected] (I. Maoz).

0147-1767/$ - see front matter r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2003.08.004

Members of the groups in conflict tend to be characterized by hostility and antipathytoward each other; they reject members of the outgroup and wish to avoidinteraction with them (Brewer & Brown, 1998; Brown, 1995; Jackman & Crane,1986; Pettigrew & Meertens, 1995).One of the most prevalent devices used to reduce intergroup prejudice and to bring

about positive attitude change is planned contact (Pettigrew, 1998; Wittig & Grant-Thompson, 1998). Numerous studies conducted in the past decades have examinedthe effects of planned contact interventions. Their findings generally support thebasic propositions of the contact hypothesis (Allport, 1954). That is, intergroupcontact fulfilling four basic conditions of (a) equal status between members of thetwo groups, (b) intergroup cooperation within the contact situation, (c) individua-lized and non-superficial contact and (d) support by authority figures can be effectivein inducing positive attitude change (for research and reviews of research, see Cook,1984; Jackson, 1993; Patchen, 1995; Pettigrew, 1998). In a recent meta-analysis of440 studies conducted in 34 different nations, Pettigrew & Tropp (2000) found thatintergroup contact reduces racial and ethnic prejudice.However, most of these studies examined attitude change among each of the

involved groups as a whole and did not examine the effect of contact interventionson specific subgroups within the original conflict groups. The possibility that contactinterventions can differentially influence factions within a given group that holddifferent initial attitudes regarding the conflict and the other side has received scarceempirical attention.The present study focuses on a major division within groups in conflict—the

division between hawks and doves. Its goal is to examine the effect of politicalidentification with these two subgroups on the response to a contact intervention withoutgroup members. Specifically, it examines how hawks and doves within the Jewish-Israeli side respond to participating in grassroot meetings with Palestinians, designedto foster reconciliation and improve relations between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians.The study deals with two components of contact-related attitudes. The first

component concerns participants’ attitudes toward the contact intervention itself:their motivation to participate in it and their satisfaction with it. The secondcomponent concerns participants’ more generalized attitudes of prejudice toward theoutgroup as a whole, in terms of desired social distance from them, and the degree towhich these attitudes undergo change as a result of the contact intervention. Bothcomponents of participants’ contact-related attitudes can be clearly influenced bytheir initial positions toward the outgroup, or, more specifically, by their initialpolitical affiliation as hawks or doves within their group.In the next section, I present the conceptual framework and basis for the research

hypotheses.

2. Political affiliation, attitudes and attitude change

A central distinction that often appears within sides in conflict—and a crucialmarker in Israeli politics—is the distinction between hawks and doves. These

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subgroups tend to have different views of conflict, adopting opposing positions withrespect to relations with the outgroup and strategies that should be used. Generally,doves favor negotiation and problem solving with the outgroup, have an orientationtowards cooperation, and are willing to compromise and make concessions to theother side. In contrast, hawks favor a tough defense of collective interests, valuefirmness and determination, have an orientation towards struggle when dealing withthe other side, and oppose compromise and concessions in a conflict (Rubin, Pruitt& Kim, 1994; Sigelman & Sigelman, 1986). In comparison to doves, hawks also viewthe opponent as holding more extreme positions in the conflict (Rouhana, O’Dwyer& Morirson-Vaso, 1997), and feel more threatened by the conflict and by theoutgroup.The distinction between hawks and doves is a primary characteristic of the Israeli

body politic, used for organizing beliefs regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict in generaland the Palestinian problem in particular. In the current Israeli political context andespecially in regard to the Palestinian issue, hawks and doves can be seen as formingtwo groups that have well-differentiated opinions. Hawks take an uncompromisingstand in dealing with the Palestinians and support the notion of a greater Israel thatimplies keeping the territories (annexation), and advocate Jewish settlements there.Doves, in contrast, support compromise with the Palestinians, advocate yielding theterritories in return for peace, and oppose Jewish settlement in the territories (Bar-Tal, Raviv & Freund, 1994).The different initial positions in conflict may lead hawks and doves to hold

different attitudes towards an encounter with the outgroup. Thus, hawks that aregenerally more opposed to conciliatory moves, are likely to hold less favorableattitudes towards a reconciliation-aimed encounter with the other side and be lessmotivated to participate in it than their dovish counterparts.H1: Respondents’ motivation to participate in the contact intervention and their

attitudes toward it will depend on their political affiliation, with hawks expressing less

favorable attitudes than doves.

In addition, due to the difference in their conceptions of the conflict, and the out-group, the contact encounter may influence hawks and doves differently. Learningabout the outgroup is a major process that operates through contact and mediatesattitude change (Brewer & Brown, 1998; Pettigrew, 1998). The acquisition of newand more accurate information about the outgroup can lay the ground for dis-confirmation of negative stereotypes (Rothbart & John, 1985) and has been shown toreduce prejudice and improve intergroup attitudes (Stephan & Stephan, 1984).However, past research that has dealt specifically with attitude change in Jewish-

Israeli hawks and doves has demonstrated that hawks are resistant to attitudechange even when confronted with information or evidence incongruent with theirinitial attitudes. These studies showed that hawks tend to discredit sources ofinformation that present positions divergent from their own position (Bar-Tal et al.,1994), and to disregard messages that contradict their own initial views (Maoz, 1999;Temkin, 1987). Thus, in encounter groups, hawks may discount the counter-attitudinal and conciliation-focused messages of the Palestinian or Israeli ‘‘peace-loving’’ organizers and other like-minded participants.

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H2: Attitude change following the encounter with Palestinians will be smaller for

hawks than for doves.Hawkish or dovish political affiliation is considered an important factor that

significantly influences reactions to attempts at conflict resolution (Kelman, 1993;Bar-Tal & Vertzberger, 1997). However, the actual impact of this affiliation onreactions to peace-building contact interventions has not yet been studied.Investigating this issue is of both theoretical and practical importance, becausesuch investigation can help us understand how different actors holding divergentviews respond to attempts at improving relations. Specifically, it enables anexamination of how more hawkish groups react to attitude change attempts throughorganized encounters with the outgroup.

3. Method

3.1. Research site

The empirical focus of this research is on structured dialogue encounters designedto promote coexistence and peace building between Israelis and Palestinians. Theseencounters were held in the spring of 1998, during the post-Oslo era. This period,after the signing of the Israeli–Palestinian Oslo peace accords in September 1993 andbefore the outbreak of violence between the sides on October 2000 (and the resultinghalt in the peace process), was marked by intensive Israeli–Palestinian peace-buildingefforts in which dialogue workshops played a central role. The dialogue workshopsstudied here were conducted by a joint Israeli–Palestinian organization (IPCRI—Israel–Palestine Center for Research and Information) in the framework of a peaceeducation project aimed at reconciliation between the sides. Participants were 15-and 16-year-old youths (10th graders) from two pairs of Israeli and Palestinianschools. Some 20–23 youths from each school participated in each encounter. The 2-day encounters consisted of a series of dialogues between the participants, led by oneIsraeli and one Palestinian facilitator. In these dialogues, the youths primarilydiscussed their respective cultures and societies, their personal lives in the conflict,and their national identities and political positions.

3.2. Design and respondents

Fifteen Jewish-Israeli hawks and 25 Jewish-Israeli doves completed attitudequestionnaires before and after participating in the encounter with Palestinians.(Since this study focuses on attitude change among Jewish-Israeli hawks and doves,it does not include data about the Palestinian participants.) Respondents were maleand female students in two secular high schools located in urban areas in the centerof Israel. This sample of 40 students included all Israeli-Jewish participants whoanswered questionnaires both before and after the workshops. Participation in theworkshops was a choice made by the school principals and the homeroom teachers.Students could choose, on an individual basis, not to participate in a workshop, but


since this was an important part of their schools’ social–educational curricula and ofthe schools’ activities, not very many students declined to participate.

3.3. Procedure and questionnaires

Upon their arrival at the encounter site, and before the beginning of the activities,respondents were asked to complete questionnaires examining their attitudestowards the intergroup encounter and toward Palestinians. Each respondentreceived a booklet that included several sets of items. The first set of six itemsexamined respondents’ motivation to participate in the encounter and theimportance for them of various goals of the intergroup encounter such as: ‘‘learningmore about Palestinians’’, ‘‘advancing the relations between the two nationalgroups’’, and ‘‘working in cooperation with Palestinians’’ (for a full list of theseitems, see Table 1). Respondents were asked to indicate their agreement to thesemeasures on 5-point scales anchored at 1 (not at all) and 5 (to a very high extent).These six items had a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.89. Another set of seven items examinedthe respondents’ social-distance attitudes toward the Palestinian outgroup.Participants indicated their agreement to seven statements concerning their readinessfor different degrees of contact with Palestinians (from working together tointermarriage; see Table 3 for a full list of these measures) on a 4-point scale, where 1indicated ‘‘not at all’’ and 4 indicated ‘‘to a very high extent’’. These items had aCronbach’s alpha of 0.94. Finally, two questions asked about the respondents’political affiliation.Questionnaires were also completed immediately after the end of the encounter.

One set of nine items measured the extent to which participants were satisfied with

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Table 1

Means (and standard deviations) of Israeli hawks and doves ratings of their attitudes toward participation

in the encounter.

Statement Hawks

ðN ¼ 16ÞDoves

ðN ¼ 25ÞT(39)

Value

Significance

of difference

I want to participate in the Israeli–

Palestinian encountera2.87 (0.96) 4.04 (0.79) 4.24 po0:001

Goals that are important for me in the

encounter

Creating lasting ties with Palestinian

students

1.73 (0.88) 2.79 (1.10) 3.14 po0:001

Working in cooperation with Palestinians 2.68 (1.10) 3.88 (0.93) 3.37 po0:001Getting to know Palestinians better 3.00 (1.25) 4.44 (0.58) 4.95 po0:001Advancing the relations between the two

national groups

3.12 (1.26) 4.48 (0.87) 4.08 po0:001

Learning more about Palestinians 3.50 (1.32) 4.52 (0.65) 3.31 po0:001Composite measures of respondents’

motivation to participate

2.81 4.02 4.79 po0:001

a1=not at all; 5=to a very high extent.

I. Maoz / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 27 (2003) 701–714 705

the encounter and viewed it as improving various aspects of their relations withPalestinians (i.e. ‘‘creating better understanding of the attitudes and the opinions ofPalestinians’’ and ‘‘creating contact with Palestinians’’, for a full list of thesesatisfaction measures see Table 2)—using 5-point scales anchored at 1 (not at all)and 5 (to a very high extent). These items had a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.91. Inaddition, respondents answered again the social distance and the backgroundinformation items that were exactly identical to the items on the pre-encounterquestionnaire. All the questionnaires were completed anonymously.The two political affiliation items were used to classify the respondents into hawks

and doves: Participants indicated the Israeli political party they identify with (anopen-ended question) and then rated their political identification as hawks or doveson a 7-point scale where ‘‘1’’ corresponded to ‘‘strongly identified with hawks’’ and‘‘7’’ stood for ‘‘strongly identified with doves’’. Three independent judges, knowl-edgeable of the Israeli political situation, classified the parties listed by therespondents into two categories: parties nearer to the hawkish end of the continuumand parties nearer to the dovish end of the continuum. There was 100% agreementamong the raters concerning each of the parties. Participants were classified ashawks if they indicated identification with a hawkish party and rated themselvesas more identified with hawks than with doves (i.e. 1, 2, or 3, on the hawk–dovescale). Similarly, respondents were classified as doves if they indicated a dovishparty affiliation and rated themselves as more identified with doves than with hawks

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Table 2

Means (and standard deviations) of Jewish-Israeli hawks’ and doves’ ratings of their satisfaction with the

encounter

Question: To what extent were you

satisfied with each of the following

aspects of the encounter?

Hawks Doves T(39) Value Significance

of difference

Increasing my trust in Palestiniansa 2.44 (1.21) 3.48 (1.05) 2.93 po0:008Creating contact with Palestinians 2.50 (1.37) 3.72 (1.14) 3.10 po0:006Increasing my feelings of commonality

with Palestinian students

2.81 (1.38) 3.72 (0.84) 2.37 po0:02

Increasing my ability to work

cooperatively with Palestinians

2.94 (0.35) 4.04 (0.79) 3.25 po0:001

I enjoyed the meetings within the

encounter

3.00 (1.21) 3.76 (0.88) 2.33 po0:02

Increasing my openness to Palestinians 3.18 (1.17) 3.96 (0.69) 2.63 po0:01Learning about the culture of

Palestinians

3.31 (1.14) 4.12 (1.13) 2.23 po0:03

I have learned to know more about

Palestinians

3.31 (1.30) 4.32 (0.69) 2.85 po0:01

Creating better understanding of the

attitudes and opinions of Palestinians

3.62 (1.20) 4.54 (0.78) 2.93 po0:006

Composite measures of respondents’

satisfaction with the encounter

3.01 3.96 3.59 po0:001


I. Maoz / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 27 (2003) 701–714706

(i.e. 5, 6 or 7 on the hawk–dove scale. Three respondents did not meet both criteriaas hawks or doves; they were not included in the research sample.

4. Results

4.1. Effects of political affiliation on attitudes toward the contact intervention

Research Hypothesis 1 predicted that the respondents’ motivation to participate inthe contact intervention and their attitudes toward it would depend on their politicalaffiliation, with hawks expressing less favorable attitudes than doves. Thishypothesis was examined with t-tests comparing hawks and doves on two sets ofitems assessing participants’ attitudes toward the contact intervention: (a) pre-participation items measuring the participants’ motivation to participate in theencounter and (b) post-participation items measuring their satisfaction with theencounter. Consistent with the hypothesis, a significant effect was found for politicalaffiliation in which doves indicated more favorable attitudes than hawks on all thesix pre-participation items as well as all the nine post-participation items measuringattitudes toward the encounter (see Tables 1 and 2).

4.1.1. Pre-participation measures

The first set of six pre-encounter items examined respondents’ motivation toparticipate and the importance for them of various goals of the intergroupencounter. An exploratory factor analysis of these six items utilizing principlecomponent analysis was performed. The first factor was found to account for 65% ofthe variance of the items. Because the items were essentially unidimensional as wellas highly reliable, I performed the t-test analysis on the averaged sum of these sixitems, that will hereafter be referred to as the composite measure of respondents’motivation to participate. Consistent with Hypothesis 1, in comparison to the dovishrespondents, Jewish-Israeli hawks expressed less favorable attitudes toward theintergroup contact intervention at its outset:

%tð39Þ;¼ 4:79;

%po0:001 (this result of

significantly lower ratings of hawks was also found for each of the six individualmotivation items).

4.1.2. Post-participation measures

In the other set, of nine items, completed after participation in the encounter,respondents indicated the extent to which they were satisfied with the encounter (i.e.,the extent to which they viewed it as improving various aspects of their relations withPalestinians). An exploratory factor analysis of these nine items utilizing principlecomponent analysis was performed. The first factor was found to account for 66% ofthe variance of the items. Because the nine items were essentially unidimensional aswell as highly reliable, I performed the t-test analysis on the averaged sum of thesenine items, which will hereafter be referred to as the composite measure of therespondents’ satisfaction with the encounter.


Also in line with Hypothesis 1, as indicated in Table 2, hawks reported lower post-encounter satisfaction than doves:

%tð39Þ;¼ 3:59;

%po0:001: (This result was also

found for each of the individual satisfaction items separately.)

4.2. Effects of the encounter on hawks and doves attitudes toward Palestinians

Hypothesis 2 predicted an interaction effect in which attitude change following theencounter with Palestinians would be smaller for hawks than for doves. Thishypothesis was tested by performing a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA)—political affiliation (hawks vs. doves) by time of measurement (before vs. afterparticipation) on the seven items measuring participants’ social-distance attitudestoward Palestinians. In an exploratory factor analysis of these seven measures,utilizing principle component analysis, the first factor was found to account for 74%of the variance of the measures. Because these items were essentially unidimensionalas well as highly reliable, the statistical analyses in this study were performed on theaveraged sum of the seven dependent measures, which will hereafter be referred to asthe composite measure of the respondents’ social-distance attitudes towardPalestinians. However, because the seven items do not always have identicalrelations with the predictors, I will also report the results of the univariate analysesfor each measure separately.Before reporting the results concerning the hypothesized interaction effect, I will

briefly describe the analyses of variance results concerning the main effects ofpolitical affiliation and of time of measurement on social-distance attitudes.

4.2.1. Main effects

Results of the analyses of variance showed that political affiliation had a highlysignificant effect on the composite measure of social-distance attitudes towardPalestinians, F ð1; 78Þ ¼ 56:97; po0:001; R2 ¼ 0:42; as well as on each of theindividual social-distance items (all p’s o0:001; all R2’s between 0.23 and 0.44).As expected, hawks showed less favorable attitudes than doves toward thePalestinian outgroup. Results also showed that the time of measurement did nothave a statistically significant main effect on the composite measure of social-distance attitudes toward Palestinians, F ð1; 78Þ ¼ 3:41; po0:07; R2 ¼ 0:04; or onany of the individual social-distance items (all p’s ranging between 0.12 and 0.75; allR2 ranging between 0.01 and 0.05).

4.2.2. Interaction effects

A significant interaction effect of the time of measurement with political affili-ation was found for the composite measure of social-distance attitudes towardPalestinians,

%F ð1; 78Þ ¼ 6:66;

%po0:01;

%R2 ¼ 0:08; as well as for four of the

social-distance measures:%F ð1; 78Þ ¼ 5:05;

%po0:03;

%R2 ¼ 0:06;

%F ð1; 78Þ ¼ 5:58;

%po

0:02;%

R2 ¼ 0:07;%F ð1; 78Þ ¼ 9:74;

%po0:003;

%R2 ¼ 0:11; and

%F ð1; 78Þ ¼ 7:12;

%po

0:009;%

R2 ¼ 0:08; for the: ‘‘I would have a Palestinian as a tenant in my apartment’’;the ‘‘I am willing to have a Palestinian as my supervisor in work’’; the ‘‘I am willingto have a Palestinian as a neighbor’’; and the ‘‘fair social relations between Israelis


and Palestinians are possible’’ measures, respectively. The interaction effect onratings of willingness to befriend Palestinians was marginally significant,

%F ð1; 78Þ ¼

2:83; po0:09;%

R2 ¼ 0:03; and did not reach significance for the remaining twomeasures of ‘‘I would accept a Palestinian to my family by marriage’’, and ‘‘I amwilling to work with a Palestinian’’ (

%R2 ¼ 0:03 and 0.01, respectively).

The significant interactions indicate that, in contrast to the predictions ofHypothesis 2, the magnitude of attitude change following participation in theencounter was greater for hawks than doves. As Table 3 indicates, although pre-encounter hawks revealed more unfavorable social-distance attitudes towardPalestinians than the doves, the hawks’ social-distance attitudes changed signifi-cantly more after participating in the encounter than did the doves! For example,hawks rated their readiness to have a Palestinian as a tenant in their apartment muchhigher after participating in the encounter ð

%M ¼ 2:19Þ than before it ð

%M ¼ 1:25Þ; a

difference that was highly statistically significant,%tð30Þ ¼ 2:88;

%po0:007:

In contrast, the data on Table 3 indicate that participation in the encounter had anegligible effect on the attitudes of doves. This subgroup expressed relativelyfavorable social-distance attitudes toward Palestinians both before and after theencounter. For example, they rated their readiness to have a Palestinian as a

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Table 3

Means of Jewish-Israeli hawks’ and doves’ ratings on social-distance measures before and after the

encounter

Measure Hawks Doves

Before After t-Test score

(p-value)

Before After t-Test score

(p-value)

I would have a Palestinian as a

tenant in my apartmenta1.25 2.19 t ¼ 2:88

(0.007)

3.12 3.08 NS

I would accept a Palestinian to

my family by marriage

1.25 1.88 t ¼ 1:95(0.06)

2.64 2.60 NS

I am willing to have a

Palestinian as my supervisor in

work

1.63 2.38 t ¼ 1:95(0.06)

3.32 2.96 NS

I am willing to have a

Palestinian as a neighbor

1.88 2.75 t ¼ 2:53(0.02)

3.72 3.40 NS

I am willing to befriend a

Palestinian

2.06 2.69 NS 3.72 3.76 NS

Fair social relations between

Israelis and Palestinians are

possible

2.13 2.88 t ¼ 2:01(0.05)

3.76 3.56 NS

I am willing to work with a

Palestinian

2.19 2.69 NS 3.68 3.76 NS

Composite measures of

respondents’ attitudes toward

social distance with

Palestinians

1.77 2.49 t ¼ 2:48(0.02)

3.42 3.30 NS


I. Maoz / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 27 (2003) 701–714 709

tenant in their apartment as similar both before and after the encounter(%

M ¼ 3:12 vs:%

M ¼ 3:08; for before and after, respectively,%tð48Þ ¼ �151;

%po0:14).

5. Discussion

A serious obstacle to forming peaceful relations between groups in conflict is oftenposed by subgroups within each side, such as political hawks, that actively object toprocesses of reconciliation (Bar-Tal & Vertzberger, 1997; Maoz, 1999; Shikaki, 1997;Rothstein, 1999). However, the impact of hawkish political affiliation on responsesto intergroup contact interventions designed to improve the relations between thesides has not yet been systematically studied. The present study examined thisquestion by comparing the responses of Jewish-Israeli hawks to those of doves inregard to structured reconciliation-aimed contacts with Palestinians.This study found that planned encounters did in fact induce a favorable change in

the attitudes of Jewish-Israeli hawks toward Palestinians. More specifically, thefindings show that Jewish-Israeli hawks and doves experienced, and were affecteddifferently by the contact intervention. As expected, before participating in theencounter, hawks expressed more prejudice toward the Palestinian outgroup thandid doves in terms of attitudes about preferred social distance. In addition, hawksshowed significantly lower motivation than doves to participate in the encounterwith Palestinians and ascribed markedly less importance to the contact-orientedgoals of the encounter (e.g. ‘‘advancing the relations between the two nationalgroups’’, ‘‘getting to know Palestinians better’’ and ‘‘working in cooperation withPalestinians’’).However, the post-participation results point to more intriguing and unexpected

differences between the two political groups. Doves were highly satisfied with theencounter and viewed it as improving their attitudes toward Palestinians.Specifically, they viewed the encounter as increasing their openness towardPalestinians; as increasing their trust in Palestinians; and as increasing their feelingof commonality with Palestinian students. However, in contrast to their ownsubjective ratings of their attitude change as the result of the encounter, before–aftercomparisons of doves’ social-distance ratings showed that the encounter hadpractically no effect on their social-distance attitudes toward Palestinians.The hawkish participants, in contrast, gave much lower ratings of their

satisfaction with the encounter and did not view it as significantly improving theirattitudes toward Palestinians. However, before–after comparisons did show asignificant increase in the favorability of their social-distance attitudes towardPalestinians following the encounter. Clearly, these findings can be partiallyexplained in terms of a ceiling effect: doves’ attitudes toward Palestinians were sofavorable at the outset that there was a little possibility of positive change, whilehawks started with much more negative attitudes that left more room for suchchange. However, even when this explanation is taken into consideration, it remainsthe case that the encounter with Palestinians was much more effective in reducingprejudice for hawks than it was for doves.


This difference may also be attributable to the uniqueness or primacy of theencounter experience for hawks compared to doves. That is, youth with dovishattitudes may have experienced more contact with Palestinians and have beenexposed to more favorable information about Palestinians before their participationin the specific encounter studied here. Therefore, this encounter may have been lessnovel for them and thus less influential on their attitudes. On the other hand, foryouth with hawkish attitudes, this encounter may have been a new and uniqueexperience of positive interaction with Palestinians that therefore had a morepronounced effect on their attitudes. Clearly, further research is needed in order toexamine the validity of these and other explanations for the larger effects of theencounter with Palestinians on hawkish Israeli participants.The findings demonstrating that planned encounters significantly improved

Jewish-Israeli hawks’ attitudes toward Palestinians have several implications ofboth theoretical and practical importance. First, in contrast to previous theorizingand results claiming that contact is ineffective or even counter-productive for thosewho initially hold negative attitudes toward the outgroup (Amir, 1969, 1976), thepresent study shows that under certain conditions (still not clearly specified) contactcan be even more effective for those higher in pre-encounter prejudice. On a practicallevel, these results should encourage the planning and implementation of contactinterventions targeted toward a larger percentage of population on both sides,including members of more extreme anti-conciliatory groups who currentlyconstitute serious barriers to peace making (Rouhana & Kelman, 1994).Second, on the theoretical level, the present findings suggest that a clearer

conceptualization of the relationship between respondents’ initial attitudes towardthe outgroup and their degree of attitude change following contact is needed, inorder to sharpen our understanding of the effects of intergroup contact. Clearlyrelevant to such a conceptualization are constructs developed and researched in thedomain of attitude change, such as message discrepancy, defined as the differencebetween the position advocated in the attitude change message and the receivers’initial position (Kaplowitz et al., 1991). Many studies have examined the relationshipbetween message discrepancies and attitude change, and have offered various modelsto account for these relationships (Fink, Kaplowitz & Bauer, 1983; Kaplowitz, Fink,Armstrong & Bauer, 1986). In the present case of intergroup contact intervention,message discrepancy may function as an intervening variable between respondents’initial positions and their degree of attitude change.Variations in the magnitude of this discrepancy can explain, for example, the

apparent contradiction between the findings of the present study, in which hawksproved to be more prone to attitude change than doves, and findings of previousstudies conducted in Israel (Maoz, 1999; Temkin, 1987), in which hawks showed ahigher inclination to stick to their initial attitudes. It may be that the messagespresented to hawks in the previous studies, concerning realistic political decisions orconcessions, were highly discrepant from their initial attitudes, beyond their realm ofacceptance, and therefore were rejected by them and did not induce attitude change(Fink et al., 1983; Sherif & Hovland, 1961). In contrast, the positions advocated inthis contact intervention regarding less prejudice toward the outgroup may have


been closer to or less contradictory to hawks’ initial positions and therefore moreeffective in inducing attitude change (Fink et al., 1983).Another related explanation for hawks’ marked attitude change in this study in

contrast to their resistance to changing their attitudes found in other studiesconcerns the type of attitudes measured. Previous studies indicate that affectiveattitudes toward the outgroup are more sensitive to the effects of contact thanattitudes pertaining to policy and political issues (Jackman & Crane, 1986, p. 472).Thus, it may be that hawks’ attitudes regarding the more ‘‘affect laden’’ social-distance measures were more prone to change through contact. However, hawks’positions would still be as resistant to change as doves’—or even more so—whenconcerning policy or political issues such as presented in previous Israeli studies.Both of these possibilities highlighted by the results of the present study suggest

the need to further refine, reconceptualize and systematically examine, variables thatmay underlie the attitude change in intergroup contact situations. More broadly, it issuggested that conceptualizations and definitions offered by central paradigms forthe study of message variable effects that were developed within the discipline ofcommunication (Brashers & Jackson, 1999; Jackson & Jacobs, 1983; McPhee &Fink, 1999) could contribute to the research and understanding of attitude changethrough intergroup contact interventions.Third, the findings reported here show that contact intervention can still be

effective for hawkish participants who express limited motivation to participate in anintergroup encounter and rate their satisfaction with it as very low. This discrepancybetween participants’ subjective rating of their satisfaction with the encounter andthe before–after comparisons of their attitudes also sheds a different light on resultsof studies that evaluate contact using only single post-intervention measurement ofparticipants’ self reports about the encounter. This study shows that participants’reports stating that the encounter contributed to their knowledge, understanding, oreven changed their attitudes may not be indicative of actual changes in attitudes.Methodologically, the discrepancy found here, between subjective ratings of

satisfaction and actual attitude change, suggests that each of these facets ofparticipants’ response to the contact intervention should be assessed separately, andthat one should not be taken as inferable from the other. Practically, the recognitionof this discrepancy raises the need for planners and scholars of contact interventionsto set a hierarchy of preferences, regarding the goals of the planned intergroupcontact and the criteria for its success. Preferences need to be clarified regardingpolicy issues pertaining to the planning and evaluation of the contact such as: Whowill participate in the encounter, those who are highly motivated to do so or thosewho we predict will actually be affected by it? Or: How do we define a successfulcontact intervention—by the reported satisfaction of its participants or by thechange found in their attitudes?Nevertheless, a note of caution should be added before we proceed to promote

contact interventions aimed at more extreme populations, where they would be, as itseems from the present results, more cost-effective. First, it should be taken intoconsideration that this study was conducted with youths, who could be differentiallysusceptible to attitude change compared to those who are older (Krosnick & Alwin,


1989). Therefore, these results may not generalize to adult populations wheredifferent patterns of reactions to contact may arise. Second, although our hawkishparticipants held initial negative attitudes toward Palestinians, they may notrepresent more extreme populations that hold even more negative positions towardthe outgroup, and may react differently to the contact experience. Finally, and mostimportantly, as the contact hypothesis itself has its conditional requirements, it maybe also the case that contact involving more hawkish and more prejudicedindividuals has to fulfill different or additional conditions that need yet to betheoretically and empirically identified and specified, in order for the encounter to beeffective rather than counter-productive. Though the present study made a first stepin this direction, more research is called for in order to continue this venture.

Acknowledgements

Sabbatical support to the author from the Solomon Asch Center for the Study ofEthnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania is gratefully acknowledged.

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Documents

Peace-building with the hawks: attitude change of Jewish-Israeli hawks and doves following dialogue encounters with Palestinians