Variations in conflict outcomes and their effect on social identification of group members

One of the most outstanding aspects of conflict is that it is practically intrinsic to the life and dynamics of groups. While a growing empirical literature estimates the effects of violent conflicts on later income, poverty, wealth, health, and education, such conflicts also affect individual’s identities as well as their relationship with each other and with the nation state. The context of real life conflict between groups has interesting characteristics that permit a close examination of some of the central assumptions in social identity theory, the most comprehensive theory of group relations. It has been maintained that identity’s salience changes over time, both within the lifetime of individuals and in terms of wider societal perceptions. A violent conflict, in particular, may not only increase groups’ identity but also shape group members’ identification with the group, their perception of the intragroup relationship (sense of community) and the sense of belonging to the group (the nation state). This paper will study the variations in intragroup social identification, generated by different violent conflict outcomes (victory, defeat, stalemate and agreement). I will do so by examining the shifts in national pride level and the sense of belonging among Israeli citizens during a ten years period, following nine military operations with varied aftermath. The results will be studied in both the individual as well as the group levels upon distinguishing between social subgroups (Jewish Israelis, Arab Israelis and immigrants). The results will lend support to my main hypothesis, confirming that not all the above-mentioned outcomes have the same effect on national and social identification of group members. I will than look into the specific changes associated with particular outcomes and discuss them in detail. The present research will consider a body of 9 fighting events, occurred between Israel and any other party in the period of 2003-2015. The body of cases was built using the Penn State Event Date Project (PSEDP) based on the AFP CAMEO data set for the Levant region. The current research is a repeated cross-sectional study, utilizing data from the Israeli democracy index (IDI) collected by the Guttman Center for Surveys in order to measure the dependent variable: Social identification. In addition, since the research looks into the change in social identification levels among Israelis, the assessment of fighting outcome following objective standards (such as the number or succeeding violent events) is not as valuable as the subjective perception of the Israeli public. The Israeli public responds to, and is affected by the Israeli media. As such, I will derive the perceived outcome of each fighting event from a content analysis (evaluative assertion analysis) of relevant commentary articles from the three main Israeli newspapers, and determine whether the fighting resulted in victory, defeat, stalemate of a ceasefire agreement by Israelis. The primary contribution of this study is in examining the effect of different violent conflict outcomes on group member’s social and national identity, sense of belonging and sense of community in the context of a real-life ongoing violent conflict.