Individual trauma and national response to external threat: The case of Israel

This study explores the psychological underpinning of escalation in international conflicts. An analogy, the “vicious circle of war” hypothesis, was drawn between the behavior of rats in Mowrer’s experiment concerning the phenomenon of the “Vicious circle of fear” behavior and the reactions of human individuals to the recurrent experience of war. A number of predictions are derived from the “Vicious circle of war” hypothesis and subsequently confirmed by the results obtained from a survey.