Political Psychology, Vol. 18, No.

4, 1997

The Antinomies of Collective Political Trauma:

A Pre-Theory
Yaacov Y.I. Vertzberger
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jerusalem, Israel

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabins assassination has less of a lasting impact on the Israeli
publics 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
hypostheses form a pre-theory explaining the perseverence of core political cognitions, even
in the face of a considerable challenge to their validity and relevance.
KEY WORDS: collective trauma; cognition; information processing; critical moment; Prime
Minister Rabins assassination

COLLECTIVE POLITICAL TRAUMA

On the evening of November 4, 1995, after a peace rally in Tel Aviv attended
by the leadership of the Labor Party, Israels Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was
shot and killed by a fanatic opposed to his peace policy toward the Palestinians.
The event shocked Israeli society to its core and had a sobering effect on left and
right, doves and hawks, secular and religious alike. Political violence was not an
An earlier version of this article was presented at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the International
Society of Political Psychology, Vancouver, British Columbia, June 30 July 3, 1996. The author is
grateful to Cheryl Koopman, Alexander George and Stanley Renshon for their useful comments on
earlier drafts. Correspondence concerning the article should be addressed to Yaacov Vertzberger,
Department of International Relations, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91905, Israel.

863
0162-895X 1997 International Society of Political Psychology
Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK.

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unknown phenomenon in Israeli politics, but never before, since the state of Israel
was established, had a prime minister or any senior state official been assassinated.1
The shock waves that swept Israeli society marked a step-level rise in the intensity
of the political debate, which had gone out of control and run amok.
Yet, surprisingly enough, this critical moment had less of a lasting impact
on the publics political values, beliefs and attitudes than might have been anticipated from the magnitude of the event and intensity of the immediate responses.
Nothing is more indicative of this than the fact that Labors Acting Prime Minister
Shimon Peres lost the May 1996 elections to Likud Party candidate Binyamin
Netanyahu, even though Peres had initially been considered a sure winner because
of what seemed an overwhelming vote of sympathy following a powerful event
that gained immediate mythical proportions, of the type that is believed to alter
both affect and cognition.
Why did the assassination have such a short-lived effect? Here we shall
consider this 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. Specifically
we shall address the subject of trauma at the macrolevel, as distinct from trauma
at the microlevel. Collective political trauma is a shattering, often violent event that
affects a community of people (rather than a single person or a few members of it),
and that results from human behavior that is politically motivated and has political
consequences. Such an event injures in one sharp stab, penetrating all psychological defensive barriers of participants and observers, allowing no space for denial
mechanisms and thus leaving those affected with an acute sense of vulnerability
and fragility.2 Such traumatic events not only affect communities but sometimes
also create communities, so that otherwise unconnected persons who share a
traumatic experience seek one another out and develop a form of fellowship on the
strength of that common tie (Erikson, 1994, p. 311). Persons who share a traumatic
experience spontaneously seek each other out for mutual support and reassurance,
develop temporary emotional ties, and often have in common only a shallow
cognitive base. This collectivism allows individuals to better cope with the personal
impact of the trauma in three ways: (1) by knowing of others suffering, which
provides reassurance that one is not alone, (2) by actively developing an expressive
sense and rituals of fellowship in anger, shame, helplessness, grief, and threat, and
(3) by the emergence of collectively shared attribution of blame (whether toward
others or even the self) for the event. The resulting sense of community becomes
a powerful coping mechanism for effectively dealing with members individual
traumatic neurosis (Pierce et al., 1996). It provides cues as to the appropriate rituals
1 Political assassinations, though few in number, had occurred before in Jewish history, both in antiquity

and in 19th- and 20th-century pre-state Palestine (Ben-Yehuda, 1993).

2 This definition draws on those by the American Psychiatric Association (1994, pp. 424425); Erikson

(1994, p. 230); Janoff-Bulman (1992, p. 59); and Moore and Fine (1990, pp. 199200).

The Antinomies of Collective Political Trauma

865

of expunging the adverse emotions (e.g., singing together, crying, praying, lighting
candles, sitting silently in groups). The togetherness is also an opportunity for
re-experiencing collectively the traumatic event in a manner which tempers participants anxiety about facing their fears of intrusive trauma memories, which is
considered a necessary condition for working through this experience and integrating it constructively with other memories and the individuals sense of self in the
world. The alternative of re-experiencing the event individually and alone could
lead to avoidance of facing up to the trauma memories. If left unprocessed, these
memories may become potentially vulnerable to be triggered and reactivated later
in life with adverse consequences, especially if the person remembering were faced
with new traumatic experiences (Brewin et al., 1996; Foa et al., 1989, 1995;
Maldonado et al., 1997). The participants feel somehow transformed by the
traumatic event, but they recognize that others were changed in the same way so
that together they form a club of suffering, a camaraderie forged by purification
through pain and grief that nonparticipants cannot penetrate. They attribute to
themselves and their peers a new and more mature insight into the realities of the
situation, especially with respect to value priorities; there is a powerful sense of
instant learning and shared wisdom.
At the same time, another force is operating. As mentioned above, self-purification requires a scapegoatsomebody, preferably an outsider, against which to
blame and direct both individual and collective rage. In the absence of outsiders to
accuse, the community may single one or a few of its members as the guilty parties
and thus exonerate the rest of the community, or it may even accept collective
self-blame as a distinct alternative that assists in making sense (we have all
sinned) (Janoff-Bulman, 1992, pp. 123132). But it is most common in these cases
for the main burden of responsibility to be attributed to outsiders, or selected
individual insiders, with a residue of secondary indirect responsibility attributed to
self. The search for somebody to accuse could aggravate fault lines that already
exist in the larger community. On the whole, people prefer not to be on the receiving
end and be marked as deviants, so as not to be targeted for social antagonism and
retribution. Many will therefore instinctively ensure that they are not identified
with those likely to be held, correctly or not, responsible, by performing the social
rituals that identify themselves with the camp of those injured, the victims.
These dual effects, of social integration and disintegration, map the course and
dynamics of individual behavior following a traumatic event. I shall argue below
that these characteristics of trauma have important cognitive and affective implications for attempts to cope with the posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD). Most
of these responses involve heuristic rather than systematic information processing
and are more affect-driven than cognition-driven. The judgments and inferences
that flow from the process may result in dramatic change of beliefs and attitudes
in the short term, but the changes will not necessarily endure, since they are not
always internalized and result mostly from a combination of a need for order and
making sense on the one hand, and reflexive compliance with the prevailing social

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mood, on the other. So long as, and to the extent that, compliance with socially
imposed beliefs and attitudes lasts, it is characterized by reversal and/or polarization; that is, the pretrauma cognitions may be reversed, but may also be accentuated
to a higher level of extremism, and result in polarization at both the macro- and
microlevels, by (1) increasing the distance between the main competing views in
the affected society concerning the definition of political reality, and (2) pushing
individuals positions toward greater extremism. It is important, however, to
reiterate that no matter how important are the cognitive changes induced by
traumatic events, it is affect, the emotional brain (Le Doux, 1996), that drives
cognition in these situations, and not the other way around.
THE EFFECTS OF TRAUMA
The links among the affective, cognitive and behavioral attributes of trauma
can be framed into six deductively inferred propositions, which describe in detail
the specific impacts of traumatic events on the individual and the community, and
the nexus between the two. The propositions that include the unfreezing, distraction, community groupthink, false hindsight/foresight, differential effect and
bounce-back hypotheses integrate social-cognitive, information-processing, and
emotional-processing aspects of the traumatic experience (cf. Brewin et al., 1996).
These six hypotheses are then applied to suggest an exploratory explanation for the
puzzle discussed above concerning Israeli societys inconsistent response to the
Rabin assassination.
1. The Unfreezing Hypothesis
A sudden traumatic event, such as an assassination, penetrates defenses that
under normal circumstances would suffice to maintain confidence in ones core
beliefs and values, and calls into question their relevance and validity. The surprise
effect of the event does not allow for the preparation of alternative defenses, nor
for careful reassessment of currently held values, beliefs, and attitudes or at least
their rationalization and justification. The immediate consequence is, therefore, the
unfreezing of key, long-held, primed values, beliefs, and attitudes. Unable in such
circumstances to mobilize and rely on their inner resources, people look for
guidance from external sources of epistemic authority, to which they had looked
in the past as a source of reliable knowledge that would confirm their cognitions
or suggest appropriate modifications to them (Bar-Tal et al., 1994; Kruglanski,
1989; Kruglanski & Webster, 1996). The most salient epistemic authorities,
political role models and leaders, may fail to perform the leadership function that
is expected of them, being stunned and bewildered themselves. Thus individuals
in the affected community, overwhelmed by a sense of being at a loss, bereft of
normative anchors, and unsure as to how to regain their orientation and self-

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867

confidence, consequently feel a powerful need for a demonstrative, active response

that will provide them with a sense of control and direction. This need is particularly
salient when members of the society believe that they are somehow responsible,
even if only indirectly, and have to atone and face the consequences of their poor
judgment in the past, with which the traumatic event becomes associated in their
minds. Under these circumstances there often emerges a strong reflexive urge to
morally distance oneself from the faulty judgments. In the absence of any individual epistemic authority that will determine what form this distancing should take,
the group and community become the main providers of cues about appropriate
expressions of views, emotions, and behavior (such as vocal criticism of the
leadership, mass demonstrations, emergence of spontaneous protest movements).
To some extent this is a variation on the common tendency to seek safety in
numbers.
The traumatic shock of the Yom Kippur (October 1973) surprise attack by
Egypt and Syria on Israel had immediate and intense consequences on Israeli
society. As looming charismatic and long-admired leaders, such as Prime Minister
Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, could not provide satisfactory
answers to the question of how this disastrous event could have happened, the
public lost trust in them and their security conceptions, in spite of the eventual
decisive military victories over both the Egyptian and Syrian armies. This led to a
search for scapegoats, in turn leading to scathing criticism of past political role
models, a months-long wave of demonstrations in front of the Israeli Knesset
(parliament), and the emergence of a spontaneous protest movement that eventually
changed the political landscape of Israeli politics, bringing about the demise of the
Labor Partys decades long political dominance (Barzilai, 1992, pp. 150173;
Nakdimon, 1982).
These responses, it should be remembered, are not the result of systematic
introspection but are induced by panic and anxiety. Individuals in such circumstances react reflexively and not reflectively, by choosing the most easily available
response that is at the same time the most representative symbol of atonement and
distancing.3 This may cause a tilt toward attitudes and beliefs at the other end of
the spectrum, away from those cognitions held before the traumatic event, which
are directly or indirectly associated with its causes. The pendulum effect on
cognitions and action preferences leads, at the minimum, to temporary reordering
of the mental set, and at the maximum to a substantial revision of cognitions and
affect. Yet even changes of the latter type are not finalized but are suspended and
do not become endowed with the status of permanent cognitions and affect. They

3 This results, in turn, from two different processes. The immediate need for coping is dominated by the

process of social comparison (Fiske & Taylor, 1991, pp. 499500; Kruglanski, 1989, pp. 149155),
but because the knowledge acquired from social sources, even if momentarily functional, contradicts
long-held cognitions, there is an underlying persistent reluctance and avoidance of closure until socially
inferred information is further validated (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996).

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are, even when substantial, short-term measures of dealing with highly stressful
emergencies, and they await confirmation and validation before being allowed to
permanently replace prior cognitions and affect. Therefore, the power of situational
stimuli to induce short-term emotions and actions that are congruent with the newly
acquired values, beliefs, and attitudes should not be regarded as indications of
long-term change. For outside observers, however, these outbursts of emotional
and behavioral manifestation often cause misinterpretation of short-term responses
as expressing lasting cognitive transformations.
2. The Distraction Hypothesis
The seeming changes of cognition following a critical moment can thus often
be misleading. What actually changes is the salience of particular issues, so that
changes in measured attitudes may reflect what turns out to be only a temporary
attention shift. Once the effect of the critical moment wears off, attention shifts
back to normal, the distraction effect disappears, and attitude measurements return
to their former state. Only a permanent change in value preferences that underlie
political attitudes will result in a permanent shift in preferences about the policies
a state should pursue. In other words, even when faced with a traumatic event,
rather than adopt a true change in values people prefer to maintain their original
values and to temporarily change their action agenda. This tendency fits the
well-recognized phenomena of the tendency for central cognitions to persevere in
the face of contesting evidence (Anderson et al., 1980; Converse, 1964; Ostorm &
Brock, 1969). Over time, the discrepancy between the action agenda and the
unchanged value preferences motivates adjustment that drives out the new action
preferences, as the original action preferences take their place. Only rarely is the
realignment in the other direction; that is, the contents of values are transformed
to be in line with the newly adopted action preferences.
3. The Community Groupthink Hypothesis
The interactions among those who share in the confusion, helplessness, and,
occasionally, guilt produce an equivalent of the groupthink syndrome but on a
much larger, community-wide scale. Broadly speaking, the main antecedent conditions for groupthink can be observed in one form or another (Janis, 1982). A state
of shared helplessness, grief, and guilt results in greater societal cohesion; there is
growing closure and resistance to opinions that contest the dominant received
wisdom about the causes for and meaning of the traumatic event; the loaded
emotional atmosphere does not allow for level-headed, systematic assessment of
information; emotional stress and self-blame result in low self-esteem that increases interdependence among like-minded community members, enhancing their
need to band together as the main way of facing the bleak situation. These
conditions have a number of pernicious consequences. Deviants are exposed to the

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869

wrath of mindguards or employ self-censorship. Within the like-minded groups,

deindividuation sets in. Outgroups are viewed in stereotypic, mostly negative
terms. These outcomes tend to polarize the society so that communication across
the divide becomes difficult if not impossible. The consequent intensification of
between-group hostility entraps the antagonists in self-defeating societal conflict
that hardens with time, as the traumatic event becomes embedded in societal
consciousness and acquires mythical proportions that allow little flexibility for
reinterpreting its meaning (Ben-Yehuda, 1995; Doty, 1986). This type of bitter
intrasocietal antagonism excludes rational arguments for intrasocietal cooperation
among political opponents. In extreme cases the result may even be a process of
escalation toward societal disintegration.
4. The False Hindsight/Foresight Hypothesis
Collectively experienced trauma results not only in anger toward external
perpetrators, it often creates a deep sense of guilt and self-blame in those who
witnessed or survived it, caused by the belief that the event could have been
prevented. This hindsight usually results from counterfactual thinking that is
induced by the need to make sense of what happened and why, and involves a
mental process of undoing the outcomes (Baron & Hershey, 1988; Davis &
Lehman, 1995; Fischhoff, 1975; Hawkins & Hastie, 1990). In hindsight with
outcome knowledge available, the unfolding of the traumatic event may seem
unnecessary and relatively easy to prevent; the writing was on the wall, how could
we have missed it? This belief about how the chain of events could have been
broken is collectively reinforced and serves a number of functions. In most cultures,
admitting guilt is considered a necessary step toward atonement and eventual
absolution. Second, although acting collectively reinforces each individuals sense
of responsibility for not preventing the traumatic event, it also makes it much easier
for each person to bear the burden of individual guilt and makes individual guilt
less salient. At this stage attributions are internal, driven by guilt and the need for
atonement, which results in a reverse fundamental attribution error that attributes
the cause of the event to a dispositional attribute of the community of which the
individual is a member, and as such he or she bears part of the responsibility for
the occurrence of the adverse event. In fact, those members of the society who
claim exclusive external attribution are branded as immoral and undeserving of
being in the company of the more decent and righteous members who have the
moral courage to recognize their guilt. In an attempt to explain to himself and the
people of Israel how the 1973 military debacle could happen, President Ephraim
Katzir pointed a finger at Israeli society as a whole, saying we are all guilty,
meaning that, as result of the decisive victory in the 1967 Six Days War, Israeli
Society had acquired negative dispositional attributes. It had become placid and
arrogant, believing itself invincible. And thus every citizen bore a share in that
traumatic event and its disastrous consequences. This was not intended to detract

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from the responsibility of the political and military leaderships miscalculations

but reflected a prevailing sense of broad social responsibility.
Third, in attributing the event to avoidable causes, members of the affected
community are better able to cope with the posttraumatic anxieties about loss of
control and the possible repetition of similar traumatic events in the future; they
feel that they deal with known risks and therefore are better positioned to control
their environment and prevent any further disasters (Foa et al., 1989, 1992;
Vertzberger, 1990, pp. 116117). Such beliefs are not necessarily founded on
realistic assessments, but they induce hope and reduce the despair and apathy that
would be generated by a sense of helplessness. The expectations of controllability
provide an incentive for proactive preparations to prevent future events of the same
type and for planfully coping with their consequences if they happen (Suedfeld,
1996).
5. The Differential Effect Hypothesis
Whose cognitions are most likely to be affected by the factors mentioned in
the hypotheses above? Generally speaking, it seems likely that the effects will be
experienced differentially but will be more pronounced for people who had had
fewer validating experiences for their original values, beliefs, and attitudes, or had
not yet acquired well-established cognitions in the affected issue area. That would
imply that younger people, whose values, beliefs, and attitudes on the issues
relevant to the traumatic event would usually be less definitive, would therefore be
more vulnerable to change of cognitions. Among this category of people, there
would be more individuals for whom the changes induced by the traumatic event
would tend to be more enduring than would be the case among older people.
6. The Bounce-Back Hypothesis
As the shock and stress begin to wear off with the return to everyday life and
the reduction of the intense communal interactions, the pendulum begins to swing
back. As argued earlier, among most of the affected individuals the conversion of
cognitions has not been finalized. Prior long-held attitudes and beliefs have not lost
their relevance, but have been only conveniently and temporarily suppressed but
not eliminated. It is at this point that a more systematic assessment of the event
begins, triggered by two factors. One is that with the decline of vividness of the
traumatic event, a process begins of defocusing on the event and broadening the
attention span to a more inclusive perspective within which the event is viewed, as
happened, for example, with victims of the San Francisco Bay Area earthquake of
1989, within four months of its occurrence (Cardea & Spiegel, 1993). This is
accompanied by a decrease in self-attributed responsibility for the event. This may
lead to the questioning of the validity of the new cognitions that were temporarily
adopted under the influence of the event. Second, with the defocusing, the older,

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871

deeply entrenched cognitions reemerge, causing acute inconvenience due to the

incongruence between old and new cognitions.
The dual motivations of removing the distress caused by the cognitive incongruence, on the one hand, and being released from the guilt over having failed to
do ones share in preventing the traumatic event, on the other, acts as a powerful
incentive to return to normality. In this more relaxed atmosphere, in the absence
of intense peer pressure with affect substantially reduced, external attribution
becomes more attractive to many individuals since it enables the shedding of guilt,
even guilt by association. With more time on ones hands to ruminate and the
prevalence of cold cognitive processes, making sense of what happened becomes
more self-serving and the lure of external attribution growsfor example: It was
nobodys fault; this was pure coincidence, a technical foul-up; it could have
happened anytime anywhere. Those who have not yet internalized the new
cognitions are relieved at finding a way to revert to the old, much more comfortable
values, beliefs, and attitudes. Yet they are still not sure as to how the community
will view this cognitive reversal and how they will be able to justify it. Hence,
cognitive reversal of this type will initially be private. But as more time passes and
life goes back to normal, people realize that others, too, have reconsidered, that
they are not alone, and hence cognitive reversal becomes public. They are now
more or less back where they were before the traumatic event affected them.
AN ILLUSTRATIVE VALIDITY PROBE:
THE RABIN ASSASSINATION
Put together, these six hypotheses provide a possible explanation for various
elements in the puzzle of why the traumatic event of Rabins assassination, which
seemed to have affected the Israeli mass public so deeply, did not have a lasting
impact on the cognitions of an important section of that public, resulting in the
Labor Partys loss of an election in May 1996 that had seemed a sure victory just
a few months earlier. The extent to which the emergent explanation is coherent and
convincing would serve as a testing probe of the plausibility of the hypotheses and
suggest whether further and more detailed case studies will be justified (George &
McKeown, 1985).
In the prevailing political culture of postindependence Israel, a premeditated
assassination of a targeted senior politician, driven by motives embedded in an
assassins moral universe, as an instrument of deciding a policy debate, was
considered virtually impossible.4 It was thought that such an act of radical social
deviance is not only morally wrong, but it would also backfire on the practical level

4 Ben-Yehuda

(1993, pp. 394395) contends that after 1948 the institutionalization of the political
system and the system of justice eliminated the need for an alternative system of justice (by political
assassination).

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and only harm the perpetrators cause. Furthermore, Israels political culture
stressed Israels distinctness from and moral superiority over other political cultures in the Middle East, whose norms did not rule out political violence, including
assassinations, as means of political discourse and change. This sense of moral
superiority and uniqueness was shattered by Rabins assassination on November
4, 1996, creating a fear of looming political anarchy until then considered typical
only of other societies in the region. People reacted with an immediate, automatic
self-distancing from anything that smacked of even remote association of their
normative universe with the assassin and his normative universe (the unfreezing
hypothesis). This was particularly evident among individuals and groups from the
political right, whose political and religious convictions and attitudes placed them
in opposition to Rabins peace policy, especially as they were accused explicitly
and implicitly of not taking a strong stance against the extreme right wing groups
vicious personal attacks on Rabin. Even as they rejected these accusations, many
among them felt uncomfortable and had a sense of guilt by association, as the
assassin came from a religious right wing background and socialization.
On the cognitive level, this led individuals to a process of social comparison
with the objective of being part of the mainstream consensus and which involved
a temporary rather than a lasting change in value preference ordering (the distraction hypothesis). There also emerged a set of emotive and behavioral responses
that clearly and expressively intended to demonstrate moral distancing from the
resort to violence for the purpose of resolving political disagreements under any
circumstances. These responses had another purpose as well, that of symbolic
demonstration of self-purification and atonement for not preventing the assassination, and here again the acts performed were socially learned by emulation (the
community groupthink and false hindsight/foresight hypotheses). This response
was not a matter of insincerity; on the contrary, even people who fiercely disagreed
with Rabins path to peace felt an intense need to express their horror; they were
confused and their confidence in their political values, beliefs, and attitudes had
been shaken.
Hence, this critical moment opened a window of opportunity for change; in
other words, after the assassination the issue-to-value link (Pollock, 1994)
became sufficiently intense to weaken defenses and seemed to allow for revision
of political and security cognitions. Yet two elements constrained the scope of
change: a structural one, involving the centrality of the relevant security cognitions
(Arian, 1995; Bar-Tal, 1996; Bar-Tal & Jacobson, 1996), and a contextual one,
involving a set of suicide bombings by the fundamentalist Hamas and Islamic Jihad
that seemed to re-enhance among Jews the more hawkish prior cognitions, especially in light of what seemed a weak and insufficient response both by the
government under Peres and by the Palestinian Authority under Yasir Arafat. The
focus now shifted from associating the causes for the assassination exclusively with
the peace process toward a less specific association with the vulnerability of the

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873

norms of democracy in Israeli society, and the technical causes for the failure of
security and intelligence measures.
Surveys of value preferences among Israeli Jews are suggestive. These have
ranked four core values of Israels political culture that constitute reference points
for the domestic debate on the Arab-Israeli conflict: Israel as a Jewish State (with
a Jewish majority), Peace, Democracy, and Greater Israel. The most highly ranked
values were Israel as a Jewish State and Peace; Democracy and Greater Israel
scored considerably lower, with Greater Israel the lowest. Under the immediate
impact of the Rabin assassination, this ranking changed: Democracy rose to the
same level as Peace, with 36% of those surveyed designating each of these values
as the most important to them, whereas Israel as a Jewish State and Greater Israel
trailed far behind. The data for 19881995, in comparison, show only an average
of 18% ranking Democracy as the most important value (J. Shamir & M. Shamir,
1993; M. Shamir & J. Shamir, 1995, 1996). Yet although the assassination focused
attention on the value of Democracy, this change did not last: six months after the
assassination the ranking of value preferences reverted to its pre-assassination state
(the bounce-back hypothesis).5 The ranking of value importance showed that Israel
as a Jewish State was ranked by 37% of those surveyed as the most important, Peace
by 34%, Democracy by 18%, and Greater Israel, by 11% (Shamir, 1996).
There are, however, some indications that younger people, whose preassassination values, beliefs, and attitudes were less strongly held, were more
lastingly affected by the traumatic experience, so that the bounce-back was less
pronounced for them6 (the differential effect hypothesis). Arguably, what made the
bounce-back easier for other groups in the population was the lack of any act of
commitment, by those who were affected by the assassination, to their newly
formed cognitions, such as an act of voting for a party that represented these revised
cognitions, which might have locked them into their new cognitions. In the absence
of such an act, these people reverted to their original familiar cognitions once they
had the opportunity and justification to do so. They also saved themselves the
anticipated cognitive and affective exertions of restructuring and revising all other
political cognitions around the newly altered core security cognitions. Bouncing
back to their original cognitions saved them trouble and inconvenience, a consid-

5A

reversal of attitudes to their pre-assassination state was also found in a study of Swedish attitudes
following the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme; see Esaiasson & Granberg (1996).
6 Comparative survey data, before and after the assassination, concerning high school students beliefs
and attitudes of the peace process, are not readily available. But the fragments of survey data that are
available indicate that until 1994 high school students have shown more skepticism toward the peace
process than adults (Benyamini, 1994). A survey prepared in September 1996 indicates a shift to the
left (dovish) end of the political map, and that a year after the assassination only 55.1% of those
surveyed claimed that their political views had not changed, but that since the assassination 24.9%
have shifted to the left and 14.2% have shifted to the right (Hershman, 1996). This data, although not
conclusive, indicates that the assassination has had a more enduring effect on younger people than on
adults.

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erable temptation, taking into account that people tend to be cognitive misers
whenever they can justify it (Taylor, 1981).
CONCLUSIONS
The analysis of the Rabin assassination in light of the theoretical propositions
is suggestive and implies that collectively experienced trauma affects individuals
cognitions in the direction anticipated by the hypotheses. Specifically, cognitive
change initially reflects the perceived broad societal consensus about what is
normatively and politically correct as a result of the traumatic event. This process
of immersion in collectively shared cognitions has positive coping and healing
effects. However, intensely held prior cognitions refuse to fade away, and the
trauma- induced changes are often short-lived. More generally, collective traumatic
events have antinomic effects. They produce cognitive changes, but these seem to
be short-term changes. The experience brings people together, thus acting as an
integrative social experience, but also divides them in the search for scapegoats,
thus acting as a disintegrative social experience. Finally, traumatic events challenge
the psychological endurance of a community, but at the same time, if the challenge
is successfully met, it becomes proof of societys resilience and a source of societal
self-confidence.
It remains an interesting and open question whether trauma effects are relatively short-lived only in the case of political trauma, where core political cognitions are characterized by being both affectively embedded and central and thus
arguably more resistant to change than cognitions about issues involving, for
example, the environment, science and technology, and so on. Answering this
question would require a broad, systematic, comparative study that would determine the conditions under which traumatic events that are experienced collectively
have only incremental effects on core cognitions, and conditions under which such
events have more fundamental and enduring effects.7
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