Ever wonder why people do what they do? This course—which includes more than $1,000 of video and reading materials—offers some answers based on the latest research from social psychology. Students taking the course for a Certificate will also receive free membership in Social Psychology Network (SocialPsychology.org). COURSE DESCRIPTION FROM PROFESSOR PLOUS: Each of us is dealt a different hand in life, but we all face similar questions when it comes to human behavior: What leads us to like one person and dislike another? How do conflicts and prejudices develop, and how can they be reduced? Can psychological research help protect the environment, and if so, how? This course offers a brief introduction to classic and contemporary social psychology, covering topics such as decision making, persuasion, group behavior, personal attraction, and factors that promote health and well-being. Our focus will be on surprising, entertaining, and intriguing research findings that are easy to apply in daily life. The course will also draw from the websites of Social Psychology Network, the world's largest online community devoted to social psychology. I hope you'll join me for this course, have fun, and learn some useful information that enriches your life.
Lecture 6.5: Israel and Iran: A Love Story?
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Social Psychology
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WEEK 6: Helping, Hurting, and Peacemaking
This week's goals are to: (1) look at the factors that influence whether people will help one another; (2) examine the roots of aggression, violence, and terrorism; (3) learn psychological techniques to promote peace and sustainable living; and (4) carry out a personal experiment in which you spend 24 hours living as compassionately as possible.
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Scott PlousProfessor of Psychology; Executive Director, Social Psychology Network; recipient of the American Psychological Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching
Department of Psychology
In previous videos, we've been talking about reducing conflict by
taking the third side. One way to do this is by serving as a mediator.
In mediation, a third party works to resolve
a conflict by facilitating communication and offering suggestions.
Another way to take the third side is to arbitrate.
In arbitration, a third party studies both
sides of a conflict and imposes a settlement—
very different from mediation.
So, for example, in binding arbitration, the two sides agree,
or bind themselves, in advance, to accept whatever solution the arbitrator decides.
And in final offer arbitration, each side submits its very best offer,
and the arbitrator then chooses which one will be accepted.
The idea here is to motivate each side to come up with
the most reasonable offer it can because the arbitrator will be
choosing one of the offers rather than crafting a compromise position.
These are just a few ways to help reduce conflict.
Sometimes taking the third side means listening.
Sometimes it means simply being there, bearing witness,
or offering support by merely being present.
Sometimes it means offering encouragement and the hope that yes,
in fact, this conflict can be resolved.
In his TED talk, William Ury offered some great examples of taking the third side—
for instance, the story of the San Bushmen,
who hide the poison arrows when there's a conflict,
or the wise old woman and the 18th camel that helped
three brothers reach an agreement on how to divide 17 camels.
But given that this is an Internet-based course with
students from a wide variety of countries,
I thought it would be good to add at least one example
of how the Internet can be used to take the third side internationally.
The role of Facebook and Twitter is well documented in the
Arab Spring, including anti-government protests in the Egyptian revolution of 2011.
But the use of social media to take the third side is much less known.
So the 15-minute clip that I'm about to share with you,
which is another terrific TED talk, focuses on that topic.
The speaker is a graphic designer and former Israeli soldier who not only
found a way for Israeli and Iranian citizens to communicate peacefully,
but for people in many other countries to do so as well.
In our class we have over 1,000 students from Israel and
Iran in almost equal numbers, and of course, we have
students from many other countries that have a history of conflict.
So, as you interact with each other in this course,
I hope that you'll draw from the ideas in this TED talk to think of
other creative ways to replace conflict with understanding and goodwill.
If you do that—if you succeed— you'll be turning this MOOC
into an example of taking the third side.
>> On March 14 this year, I post this poster on Facebook.
This is an image of me and my daughter holding the Israeli flag.
I will try to explain you about the context of why and when I post it.
A few days ago, I was sitting, waiting, on the line at the grocery store,
and the owner and one of the clients
were talking to each other, and the owner was explaining
the client that we're going to get 10,000 missiles on Israel.
And the client will say no, it's 10,000 a day.
This is the context.
This is where we are now in Israel.
We have this war with Iran coming for ten years now,
and we have people, you know, afraid.
It's like every year, it's the last minute that
we can do something about the war with Iran.
It's like, if we don't act now, it's too late forever,
for ten years now.
So at some point it became, you know, to me,
I'm a graphic designer, so I made poster about it,
and I posted the one I just showed you before.
Most of the time I make posters, I post them on Facebook,
my friends like it, don't like it,
most of the time don't like it, don't share it, don't nothing,
and it's another day.
So I went to sleep, and that was it for me.
And later on the night I woke up, because I always waking up in the night,
and I went by the computer, and I see all these red dots,
you know, on Facebook, which I've never seen before.
And I was like, what's going on?
So, I come to the computer, and I start looking on,
and suddenly, I see many people talking to me,
most of them I don't know,
and few of them from Iran. Which is... What?
Because you have to understand, in Israel we don't talk
with people from Iran.
We don't know people from Iran.
It's like, on Facebook you are friends only from—
it's like your neighbors are your friends on Facebook.
And now people from Iran are, like, talking to me,
so I start to answering this girl, and she's telling me she saw the poster, and
she asked her family to come, because they don't have a computer,
she asked her family to come to see the poster,
and they're all sitting in the living room, crying.
So I'm like... Whoa!
I asking my wife to come, and I tell her, you have to see that.
People are crying.
And she came, she read the text, and she start to cry.
And everybody's crying now!
So, I don't know what to do,
so my first reflex as a graphic designer, is, you know,
to show everybody what I just seen,
and people start to see them and to share them,
and that's how it started.
The day after, when really it become a lot of talking,
I said to myself, and my wife said to me, I also want a poster.
So, this is her.
Because it's working,
put me in a poster now.
But more seriously, I was like, okay, these ones work,
but it's not just about me. It's about people from Israel want to
say something, so I'm going to shoot all the people I know if they want,
and I'm going to put them in a poster, and I'm going to share them.
So, I went to my neighbors and friends and students, and I just asked them,
"Give me a picture— I will make you a poster."
And that's how it started. And that's how, really, it's unleashed,
because suddenly, people from Facebook, friends and others,
just understand that they can be part of it.
It's not just one dude making one poster.
It's we can be part of it. So, they start sending me pictures
and ask me, "Make me a poster." Post it.
Tell the Iranians, we from Israel love you, too.
It become, you know, at some point it was really, really intense,
I mean, so many pictures, so I ask friends to come,
graphic designer most of them, to make poster with me
because I didn't have the time.
It was a huge amount of picture,
so, for few days, that's how my living room was.
And we receive Israeli posters, Israeli image,
but also lot of comments, lot of messages from Iran.
And we took these messages, and we made poster out of it,
because I know people, they don't read—they see images.
If it's an image, they may read it.
So, here's a few of them.
This one is really moving for me because it's the story of a girl that
has been raised in Iran to walk on an Israeli flag to enter her school every morning.
And now that she see the posters that we're sending,
she start, she said that she changed her mind.
And now she loves that blue, she loves that star, and
she loves that flag—talking about the Israeli flag—and she wished that we meet
and we come to visit one each other in just few day after I posted the first poster.
The day after, Iranians start to respond with their own posters.
They have graphic designers.
What?
This is crazy!
So you can see they're still shy— they don't want to show their faces,
but they want to spread the message. They want to respond.
They want to say the same thing, so,
and now it's communication. It's a two-way story.
It's Israeli and Iranian sending the same message one to each other.
This never happened before, and this is two people supposed to be enemy.
We're on the verge of war and suddenly,
people on Facebook starting to say, I like this guy. I love those guys.
And it become really big at some point.
And then it become news.
Because when you seeing the Middle East, you see only the bad news,
and suddenly, there is something that was happening that was good news.
So, the guys on the news, they say, okay, let's talk about this.
And it just came.
And it, it was so much.
I remember one day, Michal, she was talking with the journalist,
and she was asking him, "Who's going to see the show?"
And he say, "Everybody."
So, she said, "Everybody in the— in Palestine? In where? Israel?
Who is everybody?"
"Everybody." She say, "Syria?" "Syria."
"Lebanon?" "Lebanon."
At some point, you just say 40 million people
are going to see you today. It's everybody.
The Chinese. And we were just at the beginning of the story.
Something crazy also happened every time a country start talking about it,
like Germany, America, wherever, a page on Facebook pop up with
the same logo, with the same stories.
So, at the beginning, we had Iran loves Israel, which is an Irani sitting
in Tehran, say, "Okay, Israel loves Iran? I give you Iran Loves Israel."
You have Palestine Loves Israel.
You have Lebanon that just few days ago, and these all lists of pages on Facebook
dedicated to the same message, to people sending their love one to each other.
The moment I really understand that something was happening, a friend of mine
tell me, "Google the word Israel." And that, those were the first images
on those day that pop ups from Google when you were typing "Israel" or "Iran."
We really changed how people sees the Middle East,
because you're not in the Middle East—you're somewhere over there.
And then you want to see the Middle East,
so you go on Google, and you say "Israel," and they give you the bad stuff.
And for few day, you got those images.
Today, the Israel Loves Iran page is this number: 80,000.
And 2 million people last week went on the page
and shared, like, I don't know, comment one of the photos.
So, for five months now, that's what we're doing:
me, Michal, few of my friends that just making images.
We showing a new reality by just making images,
because that's how the world perceives us.
They see images of us, and they see bad images.
So, we're working on making good images.
End of story. Look at this one.
This is the Iran Love Israel page. This is not the Israel Love Iran.
This is not my page.
This is a guy in Tehran on the Day of Remembrance of the Israeli
fallen soldier putting an image of an Israeli soldier on his page.
This is a—this is the enemy!
What?
And it's going both way.
It's like we're showing respect one to each other. And we're understanding.
And you show compassion, and you become friends.
And at some point you become friend on Facebook and you become friend in life.
You can go and travel and meet people.
And I was in Munich a few weeks ago. I went there to open an exposition about Iran,
and I meet there with people from the page that told me,
"Okay, you going to be in Europe— I'm coming." I'm coming from France,
from Holland, and from Germany, of course.
And from Israel people came.
And we just met there for the first time in real life.
I met with people that are supposed to be my enemies for the first time.
And we just shake hands and have a coffee and a nice discussion,
and we talk about food and basketball, and that was the end of it.
Remember that image from the beginning? At some point
we meet in real life, and we become friends.
So, you may ask yourself, "Who is this dude?"
My name is Ronny Edry, and I'm 41. I'm an Israeli.
I'm father of two. I'm a husband, and
I'm a graphic designer— I'm teaching graphic design.
And I'm not that naive, because lot of the time I've been asked,
many time I've been asked, yeah but,
this is really naive sending flowers over—
I mean, I'm, I was in the army. I was in the paratroopers
for three years, and I know how it looks from the ground.
I know how it can look really bad. So, to me,
this is the courageous thing to do, to try to reach the other side
before it's too late, because when it's going to be too late, it's going to be too late,
and sometimes, war is inevitable.
Sometimes, but maybe doing an effort, we can avoid it.
Maybe as people, because especially in Israel, we're in a democracy.
We have the freedom of speech,
and maybe that little thing can change something.
And really, we can be our own ambassadors.
We can just send a message and hope for the best.
So, I want to ask Michal, my wife, to come with me on the stage
just to make with you one image,
because it's all about images,
and maybe that image will help us change something.
Just to raise that—exactly.
And I'm just going to take a picture of it.
And I'm just going to post it on Facebook with kind of
"Israeli for Peace" or something.
Oh, my God!
Don't cry.
Thank you, guys!
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