MOTIVATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

For a long time, there has been a high level of tension in Israel. This is the result of two groups with different views and ideas populating the same region. The two groups are the Israelis and Palestinians. After decades of analyzing, experts still could not deny the basic reason why there has always been fighting amongst the Israelis and the Palestinians. That basic reason is that they simply hate each other and as a result, they like to kill each other. Through research, it has been revealed that the main issue has to do with what both groups call “homeland.” Both the Israelis and the Palestinians consider the land called Israel their homeland. As a result, the two groups have been fighting over the many years to which the land actually belongs.

Motivational perspective is one of the three ways to view intergroup relations. It states that people engage in prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination to raise positive feelings about themselves and their groups. Self-involvement plays a key role in motivational perspective. According to motivational perspective, if a person is an outsider (he is not part of one’s group), one will have strong feelings of prejudice, stereotype, and discrimination against the outsider.

Motivational perspective provides evidence to why the Israelis and the Palestinians fight. Both groups consider each other as an outsider. Because the other is an outsider, they feel prejudice, stereotype, and discrimination against the other. In other words, they simply hate each other.

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PLURALISTIC IGNORANCE

On September 1, 2005, President George W. Bush addressed ABC claiming, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” It is true that no one was able to predict that the levees would be breached, but the hurricane center warned that some of them in New Orleans could be overflowed. According to the National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield, there had been videoconference briefings to federal officials in Washington D.C., warning them about the possibility of the most horrible outcome of Hurricane Katrina. Also, two days before the storm hit, the hurricane center predicted that its strength, which was off by only about 10 mph. Even though there were warnings concerning Katrina, the people of New Orleans were not properly evacuated to safety, resulting in many deaths.

A term coined by Daniel Katz and Floyd Allport, pluralistic ignorance describes a situation in which everyone looks toward each other for what to do in a given situation and when not given an order of what to do, each person assumes that everything is good as it is. Sometimes this can be harmless, but other times it can be very dangerous. For example, if there was a smoke entering into a room, people would look to one another for guidance. Because they are all looking to others, however, they failure to express any concern and as a result, all of them would end up assuming that the nothing is wrong and that the smoke is harmless.

For in the case of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, pluralistic ignorance played a major role. Though the hurricane center warned how strong the winds were and how there were chances of the levees overflowing, no one heeded the warning not even federal officials. During times of crisis, people often look towards their leaders for guidance. Because the government failed to react properly, the people of New Orleans incorrectly concluded that Katrina was harmless and would not damage much.

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ETHNOCENTRISM

During November of 2003, while on a state visit to Europe, President George W. Bush took the opportunity to justify the war with Iraq. By doing so, he was hoping to ease tensions with European leaders. During his 39 minutes speech, he asked, “Who will say that Iraq was better off when Saddam Hussein was strutting or killing, or that the world was safer when he held power?" He also mentioned how it is important for democracies to confront terrorists, saying “In some cases, the measured use of force is all that protects us from a chaotic world ruled by force.”

Ethnocentrism is the tendency to believe that one’s own group is the most important and therefore, superior compared to all others. When applied to a nation, ethnocentrism causes it to feel that because it is superior compared to other nations, it must accomplish its duty to make the world into a better place, to help other nations to become as great as it is. This is evident during colonialism when Europeans, who considered themselves to be superior than the “savages” they met in Africa and the Americas, tried to impose their lifestyles unto other races.

From the speech, one can imply that Bush is affected by ethnocentrism. He believes that the U.S. knows what is good for Iraq. By removing Hussein from power, Bush claims that the world has become a better place. The important thing to notice here is the question for whom- for Iraq or for America. Also he claims that sometimes it is necessary to use force to protect innocents from a chaotic world ruled by force. By using force, however, he would be doing exactly what the rulers of a chaotic world were.

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DEINDIVIDUATION

On November 5, 1990, three men and two were arrested for a Halloween attack on Wards Island. The attack was on homeless men, during which nine were injured and one was killed. Four of the arrested were charged with second-degree murder while the fifth was charged with attempted murder. According to the police, besides the four, there might have been as many as 18 that have taken part in the attack. The arrest was made four days after the police discovered Carlos Melendez, a homeless man, lying dead with his throat slashed. The other nine were beaten and cut with meat cleaver on Halloween night by young men wearing masks. They carried with them many weapons to beat the homeless men.

First described by Leon Festinger, deindividuation occurs when there is a situation in which individuality is decreased, resulting in the dwindle of responsibility and identity. Festinger discovered that as deindividuation occurs, violence and aggressiveness increase. One experiment studying deindividuation took place in Halloween. During Halloween, children dressed up in costumes, hiding their identities. The purpose of the experiment was to see children would take more candy when they felt deindividuation. The result showed that children who felt that way had higher chances of taking more candy than needed.

Similar to the children who felt deindividuation, the young men who wore masks felt less responsible and lost their sense of identities. As a result, they were prone to violent and aggressive behaviors such as beating and killing of homeless men. The reason is not that they were delinquents and came from troubled family backgrounds, but rather that they felt less responsible for their behaviors.

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