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The Antinomies of Collective Political Trauma: A Pre‐Theory
Author(s) -
Vertzberger Yaacov Y. I.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
political psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.419
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-9221
pISSN - 0162-895X
DOI - 10.1111/0162-895x.00083
Subject(s) - politics , phenomenon , cognition , relevance (law) , social psychology , psychology , event (particle physics) , political psychology , collective memory , positive economics , sociology , criminology , political science , epistemology , law , economics , psychiatry , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination has less of a lasting impact on the Israeli public's political values, beliefs and attitudes than might have been anticipated from the magnitude of the event and intensity of the immediate responses. Why did the assassination have such a short‐lived effect? This article considers the puzzle as a specific case of the broader phenomenon of collective political trauma and its consequences for values, beliefs and attitudes held by the mass public toward issues that it associates with the traumatic event. The article offers six deductively inferred hypotheses that describe, explain and link affective, cognitive and behavioral aspects of collectively experienced trauma. These hypotheses form a pre‐theory explaining the perseverence of core political cognitions, even in the face of a considerable challenge to their validity and relevance.