Profile
Jeremy Ginges is Professor of Psychology at The New School for Social Research.
In my research I am investigating two deep problems: how do humans decide whether to cooperate across cultural boundaries, and why do people sacrifice everything (their own lives, the lives of loved ones) for an abstract cause like nation or god? These questions are related and may be seen as two sides of the same issue. To answer this question my co-workers and I do controlled psychological field experiments in places around the world - like Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, or Indonesia - that oscillate between extreme conflict and surprising cooperation. Understanding what feeds into cooperation between groups, and what causes people to kill and die for a cause may help us to adjudicate the pressing problems all humans have to deal with including maintaining a sustainable environment, protecting rights of the vulnerable, and reducing conflict.
Degrees Held
PhD 2004, Tel Aviv University
Recent Publications
Below is a list of some selected publications. * denotes publications with students. A fuller list of publications may be found on my Google Scholar profile.
Leidner, B., Ginges, J. (2017). "What you ask is what you get: Citizens' support for military action, but not diplomacy, depends on question framing." Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, doi: 10.1111/asap.12133
Ginges, J., Sheikh, H., Atran, S., Argo, N. (2016). "Thinking from God's perspective decreases biased valuation of the life of a nonbeliever." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(2) 316-319.
Atran, S. & Ginges, J. (2015). "Devoted actors and the moral foundations of intractable inter-group conflict." In Decety, J. & Wheatley, T. (Eds.), The Moral Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ginges, J. (2015). "Sacred Values and Political Life." In Ipsas, A. (Ed.), Psychology and Politics. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
Waytz, A., Young, L. L., & Ginges, J. (2014). Motive attribution asymmetry for love vs. hate drives intractable conflict. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111, 15687-15692.
Selected media coverage: NPR, The Guardian, ABC (for interview see here), Pacific Standard
Ginges, J. & Atran, S. (2013). "Sacred values and cultural conflict." In Gelfand, M. J., Chiu, C.Y., & Hong, Y.Y. (Eds.), Advances in Culture and Psychology (Volume 4). New York: Oxford University Press.
*Sheikh, H., Ginges, J., & Atran, S. (2013). Sacred Values in Intergroup Conflict: Resistance to Social Influence, Temporal Discounting, and Exit Strategies. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1299, 11-24.
Atran, S. and Ginges, J. (2012). Religious and sacred imperatives in human conflict. Science, 336, 855-857.
Selected media coverage: The New York TImes, The Chronicle of Higher Education, ABC News, The Daily Mail, Science Daily
Ginges, J., Atran, S., Sachdeva, S., & Medin, D. (2011). Psychology out of the laboratory: The challenge of violent extremism. American Psychologist, 66, 5017-519.
Ginges, J. & Atran, S. (2011). War as a moral imperative (Not just practical policy by other means). Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 278, 2930-2938.
Selected media coverage: Science, New Scientist
Malhotra, D. K. and Ginges, J., (2010). Preferring balanced vs. advantageous peace agreements: A study of Israeli attitudes towards a two state solution. Judgment and Decision Making, 5, 420-427.
*Obeid, N., Chang, D., & Ginges, J. (2010). Beliefs of wife beating: A Lebanese case. Violence Against Women, 16, 691-712.
Ginges, J., Hansen, I.G. & Norenzayan, A. (2009). Religion and popular support for suicide attacks. Psychological Science, 20, 224-230.
Selected media coverage: The Guardian, Science, New Scientist
Ginges, J. & Atran, S. (2009). What motivates participation in violent political action: selective incentives or parochial altruism? Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1167, 115-123.
Ginges, J. & Atran, S. (2009). Non-instrumental reasoning over sacred values: An Indonesian field experiment. In D.M. Bartels, C.W. Bauman, L.J. Skitka, & D.L. Medin (Eds.), Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Vol. 50: Moral Judgment and Decision Making. San Diego: Academic Press.
Atran, S. & Ginges, J. (2009). How words could end a war. The New York Times. *Reprinted in: The International Herald Tribune, Edge.org, and The Huffington Post.
Dehghani, M., Iliev, R., Sachdeva, S., Atran, S., Ginges, J., & Medin, D. (2009). Emerging sacred values: The Iranian nuclear program. Judgement and Decision Making, 4, 930-933.
Pintak, L. Ginges, J. & Felton, N. (2008). Misreading the Arab Media. The New York Times. *Reprinted in: The International Herald Tribune, Council on Foreign Relations
Ginges, J. & Atran, S. (2008). Humiliation and the inertia effect: Implications for understanding violence and compromise in intractable intergroup conflicts. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 8, 281-294.
Ginges, J., Atran, A., Medin, D., & Shikaki, K. (2007). Sacred bounds on rational resolution of violent political conflict. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 7357-7360. A secondary report of these findings appeared in the policy forum of Science, Volume 317, pp. 1039-1040.
Research Interests
Sacred values and cultural conflict; psychology of political violence; religion and inter-group conflict; conflict resolution in cultural, political and ethnic disputes; consequences of long term exposure of children to political violence.