Arie Nadler

Tel Aviv University | TAU · School of Psychological Sciences

Research indicates that sometimes people rely on limited sources of information when judging a person or group. Unable to see the “whole picture,” they, usually unconsciously, often fill in missing pieces of information themselves. Ascribed and achieved status dimensions assist in the process of social perception. Drawing on recent research on inte...

Reconciliation research revealed that the institutional acknowledgment of the group's sufferings does not always improve fractured intergroup relations. To get a better understanding of this issue, through a field experiment we explored whether its effectiveness could be dependent on the collective background against which it is provided. That is,...

Postprint and Figures for Shnabel, N., Ullrich, J., & Nadler, A. (2023). The Needs-based Model of Reconciliation: How Identity Restoration Processes Can Contribute to More Harmonious and Equal Social Relations. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 67.

In this chapter, the authors briefly summarize relevant research in two distinct fields of research before suggesting their merging to show how teachers’ help might promote their pupils’ future growth, eventually challenging the current unequal social status quo between advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Two studies, conducted with original resea...

The influence of group membership on perceptions of outgroup members has been extensively studied in various contexts. This research has indicated a strong tendency for ingroup bias – preferring the ingroup over the outgroup. We seek to further expand on the growing literature regarding the effects of group membership within healthcare contexts. Fo...

Help offered by a member of a high status group to a member of a low status group is often resented because it may be perceived as motivated by a desire to reinforce status relations between the groups. The present research explored how trust in a high status group by members of a low status group can ameliorate these negative consequences. Study 1...

Helping may be motivated by a variety of reasons, including the desire of helpers to enhance the power of the ingroup and diminish the power of the outgroup. Accordingly, receiving unsolicited assistance from an outgroup member is often responded to negatively by ingroup members because it can undermine feelings of the efficacy of one's group and u...

This chapter discusses individual differences in the tendency to perceive interpersonal victimhood, and parallels to collective victimhood. Specifically, some people are more likely than others to perceive victimization on the interpersonal level, experience it more intensely, and incorporate these experiences into their identity. The tendency to p...

In the present research, we introduce a conceptualization of the Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood (TIV), which we define as an enduring feeling that the self is a victim across different kinds of interpersonal relationships. Then, in a comprehensive set of eight studies, we develop a measure for this novel personality trait, TIV, and examine i...

In much of the literature on peacebuilding and reconciliation in the after- math of collective violence, it is implied or assumed that acknowledgment of the group’s collective experiences of victimization matters and is even a fundamental need. “Survivors of violence often ache for . . . public acknowl- edgment of what happened,” notes Minow (1998,...

The present work examines the acknowledgment of past ingroup victimization by adversary outgroup leaders as an effective means to promote intergroup trust. More specifically, through an experimental study we demonstrated that Israeli-Jewish participants who were exposed to Palestinian leaders’ messages acknowledging the Jews’ suffering from anti-Se...

Relations between groups are characterized by competition and suspicion. As a consequence, members of low status groups may question the meaning of apologies offered by a high status group, especially under unstable status relations. In two experiments, the present research investigated the role of the intergroup versus interpersonal apology and th...

Recently, research on helping has broadened the emphasis in this field from research on who gives help to whom, when and why (Dovidio et al., The social psychology of prosocial behavior, Mahwah, NJ, 2006) to a broader consideration of helping relations between individuals and groups (Nadler, The oxford handbook of personality and social psychology,...

This paper presents integrated sets of studies testing whether stable personal tendencies in help-seeking behavior: autonomy-oriented (asking for help to learn how to fix a problem) versus dependency-oriented (asking someone else to fix it) could be established and reliably assessed. We report on the reliability and validation of a new self-report,...

Building on research on helping relations and gender stereotypes, the present research explored the effects of gender-stereotypical perceptions on willingness to offer dependency- and autonomy-oriented help to women and men. Two studies were conducted in a 2 (Gender of the person in need) × 2 (Domain of achievement) between-participants design. Stu...

Collective victimhood, which results from the experience of being targeted as members of a group, has powerful effects on individuals and groups. The focus of this Special Issue is on how people respond to collective victimhood and how these responses shape intergroup relations. We introduce the Special Issue with an overview of emerging social psy...

This article presents a new intervention model for intra-group dialogue. Twenty-four Jewish-Israeli undergraduate students underwent a year-long process to learn about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, encountered Palestinian narratives, and reflected on the impact of the Palestinian other on their own identity as Jewish-Israelis. We propose that s...

Two large-scale surveys conducted in Israel (Study 1A) and the Palestinian Authority (Study 1B) show that the belief by group members that people in the " enemy " group acknowledge their victimhood (i.e., Holocaust and Nakba for Jews and Palestinians, respectively) is associated with Israeli-Jews' readiness to accept responsibility for Palestinian...

Individuals empathize more and give more to ingroup than outgroup members. Help to the outgroup can represent ingroup members’ motivation to gain or amend group's prestige. In structurally unequal contexts the advantaged and disadvantaged groups seek, give and are receptive to outgroup help as ways to maintain or challenge existing hierarchy. The s...

The article begins by placing the present emphasis against the background of developments in two fields of social psychological research: intergroup relations and prosocial behavior. This interest in cross-group positive behaviors emanates, partly at least, from developments in Social Psychology the sociocultural environment in which it has develop...

The article begins with research on help giving across racial boundaries, and continues to consider the different motivations that underlie the giving of help to the out-group (e.g., secure rewarding relations with the out-group or repairing the in-group's damaged image). The article continues to describe the effects of group members' self-categori...

According to the needs-based model of reconciliation, transgressions threaten victims’ sense of agency and perpetrators’ moral image. Consequently, victims and perpetrators experience heightened needs for empowerment and acceptance, respectively. Exchange interactions (e.g., expressions of apologies and forgiveness) through which victims and perpet...

We discuss the complexity of the concept of intergroup reconciliation, offer our definition of it, and identify instrumental and socio-emotional processes as distinct processes that facilitate reconciliation. We then present the needs-based model, according to which conflicts threaten victims' sense of agency and perpetrators' moral image, and soci...

and Keywords The study of helping has been an independent area of study within social psychology since the 1960s. As the essays in the present volume indicate, the majority of this research has been concerned with the question of help giving and has sought to specify the variables that predict and explain people's readiness to give of themselves to...

This research extended previous work on the relationship between intergroup status and helping exchanges by investigating the conditions that moderate the willingness of members of a high status group (psychology students) to seek help from a low status group (social work students). In Study 1, when participants believed that there was a threat to...

Recent research on intergroup helping has shown that receiving and seeking help can be a way in which groups assert or challenge the existing hierarchy. The present research, consisting of two studies conducted in the Arab–Jewish Israeli context, examined how the manipulated perceived stability of social hierarchy and dispositional levels of system...

According to the Needs-Based Model, reconciliation requires the restoration of victims' sense of power and perpetrators' moral image, which can be achieved through the exchange of empowering and accepting messages. In two role-playing experiments, we extended the model by examining the role of message source, the other conflict party versus a neutr...

There are two typical approaches to requesting help: autonomy-oriented help-seeking (asking in order to learn how to fix a problem) versus dependency-oriented help-seeking (asking a helper to fix it). This article presents three studies demonstrating a systematic impact of a person's chronic or activated self-construal (interdependent vs. independe...

In the aftermath of the Liberian civil wars, we investigated whether it is possible to systematically influence how people construe their group's role during the conflict and how this affects intergroup emotions and behavioral intentions. In a field experiment, 146 participants were randomly assigned to think about incidents of violence during the...

On the basis of expectation states theory and Weiner's attributional model of help giving (Weiner, 1980), we predicted that low-status help seekers would be viewed as chronically dependent and their need as due to lack of ability, leading to the giving of dependency-oriented help (i.e., full solution to the problem). High-status help seekers were e...

Applying the Needs-Based Model of Reconciliation to contexts of group disparity, two studies examined how messages from outgroup representatives that affirmed the warmth or competence of advantaged or disadvantaged groups influenced their members’ intergroup attitudes. Study 1 involved natural groups differing in status; Study 2 experimentally mani...

Recent research on intergroup helping has shown that offers of help from a high- to a low-status group can be responded to negatively by members of the low-status group. The current research, consisting of two studies, explored factors that can influence how helping by a high-status group is responded to and how much it is sought by members of a lo...

A 2 (help present vs. help absent) by 2 (high- vs. low-need potential recipient) design explored the effects of helping a high- or a low-need other on the donor’s self-evaluation. The results indicated that there were more beneficial self-related consequences associated with helping high-than helping low-need others. The conceptual and applied impl...

The present paper extends the needs-based model of reconciliation to contexts marked by status inequalities rather than by overt intergroup aggression. Specifically, we investigated whether and when members of high-status versus low-status groups experience divergent socio-emotional needs vis-à-vis members of the respective other status group. Buil...

Previous theories concerning the “Big Two” dimensions have focused on people’s perceptions and judgments of various social targets. The research presented in this article extends current theorizing by shedding light on how the targets of these judgments respond, in terms of motivational outcomes, to being perceived as high or lowon agency or commun...

The chapter begins by considering the concept of reconciliation in scientific study in general, and research on intergroup relations in particular. On the basis of this review it proposes a distinction between structural, relational and identity-related aspects of intergroup reconciliation and suggests that these aspects are hierarchically organize...

This chapter surveys social psychological research on help-giving and helping relations from the 1950s until today. The first section reviews research on help-giving and considers the conditions under which people are likely to help others: The personality dispositions that characterize helpful individuals and the motivational and attributional ant...

Inter-group competitive victimhood (CV) describes the efforts of members of groups involved in violent conflicts to establish that their group has suffered more than their adversarial group. Such efforts contribute to conflicts' escalation and impede their peaceful resolution. CV stems from groups' general tendency to compete with each other, along...

The current research builds on work on social identity and helping and extends the Intergroup Helping as Status Relations Model theoretically and empirically by identifying the social structural conditions that moderate responses to intergroup assistance. Specifically, the study tested the hypothesis that Israeli-Arab participants would view help f...

Inter-group competitive victimhood (CV) describes the efforts of members of groups involved in violent conflicts to establish that their group has suffered more than their adversarial group. Such efforts contribute to conflicts’ escalation and impede their peaceful resolution. CV stems from groups’ general tendency to compete with each other, along...

The present study examined how group membership and need for help, variables that can operate independently or in combination, can affect reactions to receiving help. Arab participants (n = 164) received or did not receive help from an in‐group member (Arab helper) or from an out‐group high‐status member (Jewish helper) when the task was described...

Different concepts have been used to describe peacemaking between groups and nations, among them resolution, settlement, and reconciliation (Kelman, 2008). This article focuses on the latter concept, of which Gibson once commented, “No one seems to know what reconciliation means” (Gibson, 2006, p. 85). We aim to define reconciliation, to differenti...

The present chapter examines processes governing reactions to deviance in primary groups. Deviance in such groups is assumed to pose “group-identity” threat, and threat to psychologically significant interpersonal relationships within the group (i.e. “relational threat”). This last phenomenon is examined by analyzing primary groups' reactions to pe...

IntroductionTheoretical Background: The Intergroup Helping as Status Relations ModelThe Intergroup Helping as Status Relations Model: Basic DeterminantsThe Intergroup Helping as Status Relations Model: Empirical SupportDifferent Perspectives on the Same Phenomenon: Intergroup Help as a Source of Social TensionsSummary and Implications

IntroductionHelping and Social Inequality: The Basic LinkThe Threat to Self-Esteem Model of Receiving HelpAutonomy-Oriented and Dependency-Oriented Help: Chronic or Transient DependencyImplications of the Threat to Self-Esteem Model of Reactions to Receiving Help and Chronic vs. Transient Dependency for Real-World HelpingIntergroup Helping as Statu...

On the basis of development of the concept of "defensive helping," the authors demonstrated that high ingroup identifiers thwart a threat to group identity through defensive help-giving (i.e., by extending help to an outgroup member whose achievements jeopardize their status). Participants were 255 Israeli high school students (130 boys and 125 gir...

Guided by the Needs-Based Model of Reconciliation, we hypothesized that being a member of a victimized group would be associated with a threat to the status and power of one’s ingroup, whereas being a member of a perpetrating group would threaten the image of the ingroup as moral and socially acceptable. A social exchange interaction through which...

The present study explored the implications of an intergroup perspective on individual difference and situational influences on helping, specifically, outgroup members. In particular, we examined the effects of social dominance orientation (SDO) and group status threat on the amount and kind of help offered by Jewish participants (n = 99) to Arab a...

We propose that following a victimization episode, victims experience an enhanced need for power, whereas perpetrators experience an enhanced need for social acceptance. We present the needs-based model of reconciliation, according to which the reciprocal satisfaction of these needs may lead to improved relations between victims and perpetrators. W...

This chapter centers on processes of intergroup reconciliation and has three related goals. It begins with a definition of reconciliation, then considers the distinction between socioemotional and instrumental reconciliation. The Needs-Based Model of socioemotional reconciliation is presented. The chapter concludes by discussing the theoretical and...

This chapter examines how the provision of medical assistance across borders during times of medical emergency (i.e., the AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa) can improve relations between donor and recipient nations. On the basis of extant knowledge on intergroup helping and health psychology, the chapter suggests a set of conditions that will mak...

This chapter begins with a discussion of the socio-political and social-psychological background of intergroup reconciliation. It then discusses the various methodological approaches used by the chapters in this volume. An overview of the succeeding chapters is presented.

The authors propose that conflict threatens different psychological resources of victims and perpetrators and that these threats contribute to the maintenance of conflict (A. Nadler, 2002; A. Nadler & I. Liviatan, 2004; A. Nadler & N. Shnabel, in press). On the basis of this general proposition, the authors developed a needs-based model of reconcil...

This article examines the role of personality dispositions as determinants of people's reactions to threats to social identity. It is argued that since individuals characterized as high field-dependents have a greater tendency to anchor their identity in the social group than low field-dependents, they will be more affected by threats to social ide...

Integrating research on social identity processes and helping relations, the authors proposed that low-status group members who are high identifiers will be unwilling to receive help from the high-status group when status relations are perceived as unstable and help is dependency-oriented. The first experiment, a minimal group experiment, found neg...

The present study explores the effects of expressions of empathy for the ingroup's conflict-related suffering and assumed responsibility for causing it by a representative of the rival outgroup on recipient's willingness for reconciliation. It is suggested that such positive expressions by an adversary will have positive effects on reconciliation o...

The present investigation explored the link between an individual's self-esteem and willingness to seek help under conditions in which future reciprocity is, or is not, expected Based on past research on (a) the effects of perceived opportunity to reciprocate on help seeking, and (b) the effects of self-esteem on help-seeking and receiving, it was...

Emotion can result from interpreting group actions as reflecting on the self due to an association between the two. This volume considers the nature of collective guilt, the antecedent conditions necessary for it to be experienced, how it can be measured, as well as how collective guilt differs from other group based emotions. Research from Austral...

The present study explored the relationship between level of employees’ help-seeking behavior and their overall job evaluations. It was hypothesized that employees would seek more help from others whom they perceive as more knowledgeable than they are and that they would seek more help from superiors than from coworkers. Regarding the link between...

The article presents a model which proposes that groups may establish or challenge dominance through helping. It begins by noting the centrality of inequality in helping and inter–group relations. The implications of this to affirmative action programs are noted. Following this, a model of inter–group helping relations is proposed. It suggests that...

The article focuses on the changing themes of psychological theory in regard to posttraumatic effects of the Holocaust on its survivors in the course of the past 50 years. An examination of pertinent changes in the Israeli society during that time period helps clarify these themes. Three stages of change have been identified, each with its differen...

The article focuses on the changing themes of psychological theory in regard to posttraumatic effects of the Holocaust on its survivors in the course of the past 50 years. An examination of pertinent changes in the Israeli society during that time period helps clarify these themes. Three stages of change have been identified, each with its differen...

This study examined the proposition that interdependent behavior is related to two independent utility functions. Nonsocial utility is a measure of the intrinsic worth of rewards, which is unrelated to the circumstances of their attainment. Hence, it primarily affects individualistic choices. Social utility expresses the effect of interaction outco...

Consider an individual who is plagued by a constant feeling of self-doubt. He or she may be incapacitated in social relations and have difficulties concentrating on work. The person suffers and knows that a counselor, psychologist, or even a good friend could help. Yet, he or she fails to seek help. Alternatively, imagine a young engineer who has r...

Systematic Multiple Level Observation of Groups (SYMLOG) was applied to studying images of political leaders. Three left wing and three right wing Israeli leaders were evaluated by left and right wing voters along the SYMLOG's three dimensions—friendliness, task orientation, and dominance. It was found that right wing voters rated right wing leader...