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I Am Very Little About Israel And The Conflicts That Are Happening Over There Essay

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Allison Asbury PSY 462: Paper Assignment 1 Halperin et al 2011 I was interested to read this research article because I know very little about Israel and the conflicts that are happening over there. I had no idea that there were so many different groups of people connected to Palestine who feel tension and rejection. I always found the concept of fixed versus malleable nature and personality very intriguing. The first study had such a big sample size of 500 people that probably reflected an accurate view of the population. I was not surprised at the fact that Israeli-Jewish participants who believed that personality is malleable also had more positive attitudes toward Palestinians and were more willing to compromise. These participants who believed that groups did not have a fixed inherent nature would agree that groups can change basic characteristics. I agree with the findings and I feel that people who hold these beliefs will naturally have more flexibility towards accepting others. If they did a study of the opposite, they would probably find that people who think human nature is fixed and who think that groups cannot change probably have negative attitudes towards certain groups. This all ties back to the ultimate attribution error. It was enlightening to me that so many participants in this study thought that humans have a malleable nature. If many people hold this general belief, then there is more opportunity for openness and hearing the perception of the other

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